"Holding a blade to my throat cancels out one of those life-saves, Kael."

"It does not," he snapped. "And I’m not arguing with a concubine bitch burning from the inside out."

"And yet here you are, arguing with a concubine bitch burning from the inside out." Guinevere’s mouth was going to be the death of her. Actually, the fact she was alive at all was a miracle.

"I have a blade pressed against your throat. I’m not doing this."

"You’re right," she said flatly. "You’re not arguing. You just killed seven fae for fun and now intend to kill me too. Understood."

Kael stiffened behind her. "Your mouth, wolf."

"Your personality, Dragon."

Sterling’s jaw tightened and Guinevere understood why. She was on a first-name basis with a war criminal and pushed to the point of mouthing off to him. The familiarity between them was broadcasting at volume.

Kael gave Sterling an irritated look over the top of Guinevere’s head. "I am absorbing the excess flame from her body that is currently cooking her organs." He paused long enough for the weight of it to settle. "Let me guess, you cannot shift right now, Sterling, and you are separated from your group. Which means you are going to need me to get out of this jungle either way, and we both know it, so you can lower the blade or you can keep holding it while she dies. Your call." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He looked back down at Guinevere. "What did you touch? Answer me."

"A blade." Her voice was hoarse, the words pushing past a throat that was trying to close. She swallowed against the nausea. "Did your dark magic have a falling out with their dark magic?"

"Dark magic is a spectrum, actually. The color being dark does not make it innately bad or the same." He said it like it was an elementary concept and she was stupid. "But I am going to save the lecture for a student who is not a judgmental concubine bought on sale with the delusion of permanence."

"Charming." Her body heaved again, harder this time, and the acid climbed her throat. "I am going to be sick on your blade in about two seconds."

Kael lowered the blade.

She fell forward onto her hands and knees. The vomiting was violent and produced almost nothing because the tank had been empty for days, but her body committed to the effort anyway, heaving stomach acid onto the moss in spasms that shook her frame and left her gasping between each one.

Nicholas moved towards her. Kael’s blade came up between them, casual, like he was directing traffic.

"She needs a mage, wolf. You can’t fix this with proximity and good intentions."

Kael looked back at Sterling. "Where is your mage? Whatever is in her system needs to come out before it reaches her marrow."

Sterling’s posture was rigid, his blade still drawn, his eyes measuring the distance between himself and Kael, between Kael and Guinevere, between the odds of a successful strike and the odds of Guinevere dying on the jungle floor while he attempted one.

"If you attack me, Sterling, I will kill you." Kael said it without heat, without bravado, with the flat certainty of a man stating a mathematical fact he found tedious to repeat. "We both know that. We also both know that neither of us wants it. So I am going to tell you something useful instead."

He gestured at the jungle around them with his blade. "I have operated in these jungles before. The fae have been engineering this canopy for centuries, designed to isolate and neutralize every advantage you have. Without fire, your dragon, or a guide, your odds of reaching the coast alive are close to zero. With me, they improve. Significantly."

Guinevere threw up more acid on the moss, not even fazed that she was puking in front of people because she was past that. The dark magic was moving through her blood in pulses she could feel.

Kael knelt beside her. His hand pressed flat against her back, and the gold heat poured into him through the contact, her fever dropping by a degree in the first three seconds. His dragon pulled it in greedily.

"Breathe," he said. "Slower heart rate, slower spread."

Sterling watched Kael’s hand on Guinevere’s back, his blade lowering two inches.

"Get your goddamn hands off of her." Maddox’s voice hit the clearing before his body did. He came through the southern treeline at a speed that should have required wings, his sword wet to the hilt, his gold eyes so bright they lit the undergrowth ahead of him.

The distance between the treeline and Kael closed in under two seconds, and the man crossing it looked like he had killed every living thing between himself and this clearing and was prepared to continue the streak.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake." Kael rolled his eyes, pulling Guinevere up against his chest, blade back to her throat. The motion was muscle memory at this point.

Maddox froze. His eyes locked on the blade at her throat, then on the arm around her waist, then on Kael. Every muscle in his body was engaged in the act of not moving, because moving meant the blade moved, and the blade was on skin he had kissed in the dark and promised to protect.

"I will kill you."

"You are so dramatic, little brother."

Nicholas’s head snapped up. His eyes found Guinevere’s across the clearing, and the question in them was immediate and unfiltered. She held his gaze for one fraction of a second. Then she looked away, her eyes dropping to the moss, and the fraction of a second she had given him sat between them carrying a weight that neither of them acknowledged.

Maddox’s expression did not change. If the word brother had detonated anything, he buried it beneath a composure that had been forged in war chambers and tested in worse places than this.

"She’s known for hours, so you can relax." Kael’s tone was conversational. "Though I am surprised to see you out here personally. For a cheap concubine."

Maddox did not correct him. The silence where the correction should have been was deliberate, expensive, and louder than any word he could have spoken.

"Nothing?" Kael tilted his head. "The High King himself is standing in a jungle without his shift or his fire, covered in blood, for a woman you will not even name. And your Second and Third have both bled for her. You are either very committed to this concubine arrangement or lying about it entirely. I wonder which."

Maddox gave him nothing. His gold eyes were steady, flat, unreadable. The sword in his hand was still. The man holding it was a locked vault, and Kael was picking at the hinges with a crowbar made of accurate observations, and the vault was not opening.

"Fine. Keep your secrets." Kael glanced down at Guinevere, then back at Maddox. "She has dark fae toxin in her blood. A blade and direct skin contact with at least two of them." He glanced down at Guinevere. "No punching fae in the face. No portals. No touching objects. Understood, sweetheart?"

He waited. But at that moment, Guinevere was going to vomit again. She dry heaved.

Kael rolled his eyes, then glanced up at Maddox. "Your mage can extract it if he reaches her within the next ten minutes. After that, it roots in the marrow and extraction becomes significantly more complicated."

He waited. Maddox’s jaw worked once, the only tell he gave.

"I can absorb the fever," Kael continued. "You cannot, because you are standing fifteen feet away pretending you don’t want to rip my throat out, and the moment you touch her in front of me, you confirm every suspicion I already have." The corner of his mouth lifted. "Quite the dilemma."

"Release her, and I will let you walk out of this jungle."

"Generous. Except I know this jungle and you do not, and the fae who scattered when I killed their lord will regroup within the hour and come back with numbers that make this clearing feel cozy." Kael’s blade stayed at Guinevere’s throat, steady, a negotiating tool that happened to be sharp. "I’ll get you out of here. Then I want safe passage. Forty-eight hours. No pursuit. After that, you are welcome to hate me from a distance."

Sterling’s eyes moved to Maddox. The look was brief, loaded, carrying a question he wouldn’t ask out loud: Do you want me to take the shot?

Maddox didn’t return it.

"You kidnapped her, Kael."

"I also saved her. Four times by my count, which is more than anyone else in this clearing can claim, including you." Kael’s iron eyes held Maddox’s. "The clock is running, brother. Her skin is getting darker. You can see it from where you are standing."

Maddox could see it. The black threads spreading beneath her skin in rivers that chased the gold and consumed it. The light was retreating inward, pulled back by something cold and invasive that was winning the war inside her blood.

Her body convulsed against Kael’s chest. Weaker than before. The spasms were losing force, which was worse than the force itself, because a body that stopped fighting was a body that had started losing.

"Tick tock, little brother. Your concubine is about to throw up on herself."