Chapter 477: Right Back At You, Drakencrest

Nicholas didn’t reach for his glass. He didn’t shift in his chair. He sat still and gave the words the room they needed, because a man who fills silence around grief is a man who has never carried any.

"I’m sorry for your loss, Solveil," he said after a long moment. "I’ve watched men bury wives. There’s no version of it that gets easier to witness, and there’s no version of it that time actually fixes. It just gets quieter. You carried that for however long, married two months and mourning ever since, and you still sat across from us tonight and ran a clean negotiation. That took something. I see it."

Maddox turned his glass once against the table, then lifted it a few inches off the wood and held it there. He didn’t drink. The glass stayed suspended between his hand and the table like a man holding something heavier than whiskey.

"I didn’t know her, and I’m sorry for her all the same," he began. "No one should learn their wife was in danger by walking through a door into the smell of it. That’s a thing a man doesn’t set down."

Landon’s throat moved once. The swallow of a man who had been holding something for years and just felt two strangers touch the edge of it without flinching.

He lifted his glass toward both of them and drank, and the gesture closed the subject with more grace than words would have.

Maddox met Landon’s eyes, king to king, the earlier heat gone out of it. "You waited your whole life for a woman who might never come, because your blood told you to, and when you finally saw her, you found out she was married. That’s a cruel order to receive. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand it. Guinevere is the first fated dragon queen in the Drakencrest line in four centuries. I dreamed she was running for her life, dragged my men across an ocean, and the dream ended up being real. The next day, a wolf king claimed she was his fated mate at an auction and I wrote it off. A month later that wolf king entered my war room claiming he could feel my wife, and he ended up being the one who found her. He defended my keep when it was under siege. His blood was a perfect match for her. And he also ended up being a good man, which made it ten times worse."

Nicholas swirled his glass once. The corner of his mouth moved a fraction. "Right back at you, Drakencrest."

Maddox leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. "Your sister is running a fever right now, or she’s about to be. That’s not a guess. That’s what a dragon mark does."

Landon’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth and stayed there, suspended.

"Guinevere ran one for a full day after I marked her the first time," Maddox continued. "It can be dangerous if left untreated. It is also miserable and the fastest way through it is the mate. Let Sterling lie with her and pull it out of her. Leave her to a healer and a cold cloth and she’ll ride the whole thing out the long, painful way for no reason."

Landon’s face did something that faces should not be asked to do during a whiskey negotiation. The request was medical. The visual was a man asking a brother to tuck in the dragon who’d been inside his cousin an hour ago.

"You are asking me to put the man who marked my unconscious sister back into a bed with her."

"I’m telling you how your sister stops being in pain," Maddox replied. "And I’ll tell you something else. My Third is feeling every bit of it right now, through their matebond, whether he says so or not. He walked out of that room with his eyes on her and he hasn’t thought about anything since. That’s not strategy and it’s not performance. That is a dragon whose mate is hurting three rooms away, and I guarantee you he is already sick with it." He paused. "You can hate the circumstances. I’d hate them too, in your chair. But the pain is real on both ends, and there is exactly one thing that fixes it, and it is standing in your courtyard trying not to walk back through that door."

Landon set the glass down and looked at Maddox.

"Let me be clear on something, Drakencrest. My sister has always had a choice to back out of her marriage with Solandris. She chose to keep the arrangement intact to honor my father’s wishes. If she tells me she wants to be with your Third, then I will respect her choice. Unless something has changed in the last two hours, her choice was Solandris."

"She found her fated mate. She is marked, Solveil." Maddox’s voice carried no argument, just the calm of a man stating geography. Mountains exist. Water is wet. Sterling is your sister’s fated mate. "I understand the change is difficult to accept. But a dragon mark is permanent. That is beyond politics. Beyond arranged marriages. Beyond your father’s wishes or mine. It is biological, and it has already happened."

"If she has a fever right now," Landon replied, "and your Third can pull it from her, then I will take your word for it, Drakencrest. You are the Dragon King. But Luminari light is permanent as well and Guinevere needs me to balance hers. It builds like a pressure, even with your Young Light Bearer pulling the excess. That is not politics or gold. I am the King of Light and I would know. You have to see the logic in that."

Maddox leaned back in his chair and crossed one arm over his chest. The posture of a man who had just been outmaneuvered on one flank and was opening a different one.

"You had your men install wards in my keep, Solveil, so the Eclipse King cannot breach Drakencrest. My wife does not have her memories. She has been flashing without warning. She spent time in a prison cell when she should have been in a bed. And her flame is still unbalanced. It takes months for that. She runs fevers still. Send your healer and your mage to Drakencrest. Come yourself. My doors are open. But she needs to sleep in her own bed tonight. That is what stability looks like for her right now."

"Done. I will have a mage there at all times, and Octavian will work on it." Landon’s chin lifted a fraction, the micro-adjustment of a king who had accepted a deal and was already pricing the next one. "But once this is solved, let us compromise. One week of every month."

Nicholas uncrossed his ankle from his knee and planted both feet on the floor.

"She comes to Shadowfell one week a month as well."