Chapter 465: Towels. Alibi. Game Face. Go.

TWO MINUTES PRIOR - KING SOLVEIL’S PRIVATE COURTYARD

On the other side of the doors, a mage was in his second pussy of the night, a High General got his pillow taken away, and a woman was getting fingerblasted by a dragon while her cousin rode his dick, blissfully unaware that one of them was a princess.

Guinevere Drakencrest was unaware of these developments. At the moment she was standing at a golden pool’s edge trying to understand how she hadn’t passed out from their venom.

That always happened when she was marked, even if just by one of them. Today, she had been marked by all four. But here she was, very much conscious. Standing. They were the ones unconscious.

"This is an opportunity," she narrated to herself aloud.

Towels? Check.

Alibi? Yes. Blame transferred to the runes.

Game face on? Yes.

Then the pain hit.

It split through her skull like something trying to get out, and her knees buckled. A memory punched through the locked door in her head, unannounced and uninvited: her own paws striking frozen ground, running in the dark, wolf-shaped and terrified, Stonehowl behind her.

Then it was gone. The courtyard came back. She was on her knees on warm glowing stone, breathing hard, blinking through the aftershock.

"Guinevere?" Nicholas was sitting up on the step, eyes locked onto her.

"Nicholas! Are you alright?" She pushed herself up and moved towards him with towels, wearing the face of a woman who had absolutely not just fucked four men in a sacred pool.

He shook his head once. Twice. Blinked several times. Then took the towel from her and stepped out of the pool.

"I’m fine." He scrubbed a hand down his face. "What the hell happened?"

"My light flashed and everyone passed out." The lie came out smooth, polished, frictionless. She followed it immediately with something true before the matebond could catch the taste of the first one. "I’m so glad you’re okay."

Yes, she had just buried a lie under real affection like a drug mule hiding contraband in a teddy bear. She was not a natural liar, but tonight she was performing at a professional level because the alternative was admitting she just had a fivesome.

She wrapped her arms around Nicholas. The relief in it was real, which was the entire point, and she let the real thing flood the connection so the fake thing could ride underneath it unnoticed. She had missed him. Even with everything the pool had very recently involved, something in her felt like she hadn’t actually seen him in a full day, and the missing had been sitting in her chest with nowhere to go.

Nicholas blinked down at her. "What’s wrong?"

"I missed you," she said, and that one needed no engineering.

His arms came around her, wet clothes and all. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. "Why was I in the pool?"

The question was music to her ears. The sweetest sentence anyone had spoken all evening. He did not remember why he was in the pool. The memory fog was doing its job and she could have wept from the relief of it.

He glanced down at her. She felt him register the relief flooding through the matebond, felt him file it as a thing that required investigation.

She pounced before he could start the investigation.

"You all ended up there after the light flashed," she explained. "Like the time you and I ended up in the tree pool. But it was this one."

Truth. Lie. Truth. The gaslight sandwich.

Nicholas nodded once, accepting the sentence like it was the most ordinary thing a person could say. "Weren’t you wearing a dress?"

Of all the questions Nicholas could have asked, and there were many, including "why are my pants wet," "why do I feel so relaxed," and "why was the Dragon King of Velkaris unconscious on my shoulder," the man chose that.

"Yes. I was dressed in Luminari tribal wear."

"Wait." His brow furrowed. "Did Kael not end up in the pool?"

"Kael ended up halfway in."

Kael was draped over the edge, upper half on the stone, lower half still submerged, the faint ghost of a smirk haunting his unconscious face like a man who had died proving a point.

"Why are their clothes folded like that?"

He was looking at the tidy stack now. Maddox’s shirt and cloak and boots. Kael’s folded beside them.

Guinevere’s face heated. "I don’t know. Theirs just did that."

His wolf made a low, confused noise beneath his ribs, the sound of an animal looking at a thing that did not add up and declining to pretend otherwise.

"Maybe similar to how the tree did that for us," she added.

Nicholas looked down at his own clothing. Soaked through. Boots full of gold water. Cloak hanging off him like a drowned thing.

He looked back at the stack. Then at himself. Then at the stack again. His clothes were wet. Theirs were not.

"What am I missing?"

Before she could assemble an answer, Landon sat up.

He blinked a few times, confused, glowing faintly, and the first thing Guinevere felt was pure relief that he had not slid back into another coma.

Nicholas looked down at her. Then he dragged a hand down his face, fighting the ghost of a smile. No, he was not in a coma.

"What happened?" Landon asked.

"My runes flared and we ended up in the pool," Guinevere replied, like it was fact. She believed it now.

Landon pressed a hand to his own chest, checking. The weight on his sternum was gone. He felt, against all medical expectation, extraordinary. "I feel incredible."

"I’m so glad you’re feeling refreshed, King Solveil." Guinevere handed him a fresh folded towel.

He took it, brows drawing together for a microsecond. "Guinevere. We’ve done this. Call me Landon."

Nicholas’s wolf growled. Before anyone could say anything, Maddox was upright on the step with his gold eyes open.