Chapter 466: What Happens In The Pool

If you say a lie enough times, you start to believe it.

The runes had become Guinevere’s shield and her religion, and she was preaching with the unshakeable conviction of a woman whose alternative was explaining a fivesome.

"Maddox. You’re awake!" Guinevere’s face brightened all over again, like she hadn’t seen him in a year.

She ran to him with the towel like a medic sprinting across a battlefield, except the battlefield was a courtyard and the wounded soldier was a shirtless dragon king who didn’t remember how he got wet.

The genuine adoration she felt was real. She was glad to see him and that he was alright.

Maddox looked down at himself. Bare chest. His folded clothes sitting in a neat stack on the stone like evidence of a version of the evening he could not access.

"Why am I—"

"The runes flashed and we ended up in the pool," Guinevere explained.

It felt like the truth. It sounded like the truth. Therefore it was the truth.

Nicholas was watching. Landon was watching her. Both had already accepted the lie as the truth and were now watching a third man receive it. The audience was growing. The production was scaling. Good. The more they see each other believe it, the easier it is to sell.

Maddox took the towel from her. "Why are my clothes over there?"

A reasonable question from a man who had last seen his clothes on his body. The clothes had traveled. He had not traveled with them.

"I don’t quite understand the mechanics," she answered. That was the truth. She didn’t quite understand the mechanics of her story and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. "But we ended up in the pool and your clothes ended up there."

The dragon, an ancient and wise creature of fire and instinct, had no memory of the evening and was running the same gaslit answer as his host.

Kael was the last to surface, and he did it the Kael way, which was to come to consciousness already offended.

"Fuck."

He sat up slowly looking around, disoriented. Then he clocked that he was halfway out of the pool.

"Why am—"

Guinevere had the answer loaded before the question left his mouth, and she was going to intercept it like a goalkeeper.

"The runes flashed and you landed there," Guinevere explained with full conviction, mind, body, and soul.

Kael opened his mouth but closed it, having no dispute to that. The runes did what they wanted. That tracked.

Then it didn’t quite track.

"Why are my pants soaked?" he asked, genuinely confused because his calves were in the water but the rest of him wasn’t.

"I woke up in the pool, so I’m not sure. Maybe there were two flashes," Guinevere offered as she handed him a towel.

The lore was expanding. But she wasn’t lying, she was speculating, which was the truth. Based on the facts, that would be her best guess.

Kael then noticed his clothes in a neat pile next to Maddox’s. Two sets of men’s clothing, folded, stacked, side by side, as if placed there by someone with time, proximity, and opposable thumbs.

"Why are my clothes—"

"I don’t understand the mechanics, but both you and Maddox had that reaction from it. It might have something to do with you being a dragon, but I am no expert," Guinevere answered like an expert.

Maddox picked up his cloak and a glowing ball fell out of it. It bounced across ancient stone and every complicated thing happening in Guinevere’s skull, the lies, the cover-up, the locked door, the memories trying to escape, all of it paused because a glowing ball chimed and she was delighted. The emotional pivot was instantaneous.

Her whole face lit up. "You have one too!"

Nicholas shook his head, a smile tugging at his mouth that he didn’t bother to fight, because he had gotten her one of those exact things and he knew precisely what that look on her face meant.

Maddox clocked the look. He bent, scooped the ball off the stone, and held it out to her. "I got this for you."

Guinevere’s hand flew to her mouth. She looked down at the ball, then up at Maddox, like he was presenting her with a diamond the size of Velkaris.

"You did."

"Yes, of course I did, baby."

Guinevere took it with care looking at Maddox with so much love it made his chest hurt.

Across the pool, Kael rolled his eyes so hard his skull nearly rotated, because he knew full and well who had actually bought that ball, and that person was currently in the sitting room with three concussion knots, probably nerding out about fountains.

Guinevere’s face bloomed. She bounced it once with a DING.

"I love it. Thank you so much, Maddox."

Then she looked at Nicholas, and her expression did something complicated, a small war between gratitude and the specific horror of a woman trying to compliment two children’s drawings at the same time without starting a war. "I loved the one you got me too. They both are lovely."

Nicholas handled it with grace. "Now you have two. You can keep one in Shadowfell."

A perfect solution. One that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Wolf King of Nyros may or may not have been planning to play with that ball himself at the first unobserved opportunity.

Guinevere beamed at him. "Good idea."

Behind Guinevere, Maddox’s expression soured. "I have something else for you at home."

The Dragon King dropped it casually, absolutely not fucking competing. Nicholas’s ball was okay. Maddox had gotten her one of those too. But Maddox’s mystery gift was just better than the ball. Those were facts.

Guinevere’s head swiveled toward him. "You do?"

Maddox pulled his shirt over his head.

"Yes. Something I guarantee you don’t have, and that I have been meaning to give you for a while. Now we’re going home."