Chapter 443: He Did Not Give It Back

The mission was retrieval. The target was a queen. The Citadel was close.

A vendor’s stall sat on the corner, its wooden frame draped in luminescent fabric that pulsed with a soft heartbeat of light. Hanging from hooks and scattered across the counter were balls. Small, round, glowing, in multiple colors. Meant for children.

Brennan’s stride shortened.

His head turned toward the stall the way a compass needle turns toward north, involuntary, magnetic, the pull of a man who had been told he could not have a glowing ball twelve hours ago and whose desire had not diminished but had in fact compounded overnight like a debt he refused to acknowledge.

He kept walking. His eyes did not keep walking. His eyes stayed on the stall for three full steps past it, his neck rotating to maintain visual contact until his body physically could not twist any further and his eyes were forced to rejoin his face in the forward direction.

Ryker was doing the same thing. His head had turned at the same moment, tracking the same stall, his eyes landing on a ball that was cycling through a deep red that matched his dragonfire and the matching was a coincidence that felt like destiny.

Neither man said anything. Both men kept walking. The silence between them was the silence of two grown warriors who wanted a children’s toy and were choosing pride over acquisition and the choice was killing them in real time.

Sterling was gone.

The disappearance was surgical in its execution and invisible in its occurrence. One second the Third in Command of Drakencrest was walking between Ryker and Maddox with three concussion knots and a posture that suggested he was held together by spite and schedule. The next second the space he had been occupying was empty and the empty was so smooth that four steps elapsed before anyone registered the absence.

Then he was back.

He materialized in the group’s formation the way a man returns from a bathroom break at a formal dinner, seamlessly, without acknowledgment, without explanation, and with a glowing ball in his right hand that had not been there before.

He bounced it once.

The ball hit the stone, lit up on impact, and returned to his palm with a sound that was half bounce and half chime, a musical note that rang through the street with the cheerful audacity of a toy designed to bring joy and succeeding at its purpose against the backdrop of irritated men on a retrieval mission for an imprisoned queen.

Maddox whipped around.

The whip was fast enough to blur. His gold eyes locked onto the ball in Sterling’s hand with the laser focus of a dragon spotting something shiny and the something being in someone else’s possession and the dragon having opinions about the distribution.

"It glows, Commander," Sterling said, tossing it.

The toss was underhand, casual, and geometrically perfect because Sterling didn’t know how to do anything at less. The ball sailed through the air, cycling through pink, green, and gold.

Maddox caught it.

His hand closed around the ball on instinct and the instinct was faster than his dignity and the dignity arrived three seconds later to discover that the Dragon King of Velkaris was standing in a foreign street holding a children’s toy and looking at it.

He turned it over in his palm. The light responded to his touch, brightening, shifting toward a gold that matched his eyes.

His dragon let out a confused whine beneath his ribs, the same noise it had produced at the fountain, the noise of a beast encountering something it could not eat or fight or burn and was choosing instead to be fascinated by it.

He turned and kept walking.

The ball was still in his hand. He did not give it back. He did not acknowledge that he had kept it. He did not look at Sterling or Ryker or anyone. He walked forward with a glowing ball in his fist and the fist was the fist of a man who would deny wanting it under oath and would perjure himself with zero hesitation.

Ryker and Sterling exchanged a look behind his back. The look was brief, loaded, and carried the shared satisfaction of two men who had just watched their king steal a toy from his own Third in Command and were choosing to interpret the theft as emotional progress.

Ryker slipped away. The technique was less elegant than Sterling’s. Where Sterling had vanished like smoke, Ryker detoured like a man who had spotted an old friend across the street and needed to say hello. The old friend was a vendor. The hello was a transaction. The transaction took eight seconds and produced four glowing balls, one red, one blue, one purple, and one green, purchased in bulk.

He tossed the blue one to Brennan without breaking stride.

Brennan’s hand shot up and caught it with a reflex that was faster than his brain and the catching produced a sound from his mouth that was somewhere between a gasp and a laugh and landed in the territory of pure, unfiltered joy.

He looked at it. Looked at Ryker. Looked at the ball again. His fingers closed around it with possessive tenderness. He had been denied this object by Damon Tavian and was now holding one that nobody could take away from him and the holding was everything.

"Thank you," he breathed, and the gratitude was so sincere it could have powered a small chapel.

"Don’t mention it," Ryker replied, already bouncing the red one as he walked. He tossed the purple one at Sterling, who caught it. Bounced it.

The green one went into Ryker’s cloak pocket. Saved for Griffin.

Two kings, a young dragon, a concussed Third, a dehydrated Second, and a sandwich-powered mage walked on the streets of Solveil. Three of them were bouncing glowing balls. One was holding his without bouncing because bouncing was beneath a king and holding was apparently not.

The Citadel rose ahead of them like a mountain made of moonlight.