The bodies of eight elders were still warm in the crypt below.

Five replacements. And every single one of the replacements wanted to talk about the girl before the bodies were cold.

Maddox had sworn them in forty minutes ago, in a ceremony that had consisted of one sentence, two signatures, and zero celebration.

Three of them had the slightly dazed look of men who had walked into the Keep as generals and walked out as statesmen inside the span of an afternoon.

Ryker sat at Maddox’s right. Sterling at his left.

Elder Varro spoke first, voice calm.

"Your Majesty. With respect. The girl is causing problems we did not have before breakfast. I have respect for your instincts. I have more respect for mathematics. One girl, no dragon blood, no rider training, no house backing, set against forty kingdoms full of women who check every box she does not. The calculation is not complicated. Send her home. Choose someone the continent will kneel for without being told to."

"Over my dead body. No."

Varro inclined his head. "So noted. Moving on."

Sterling spoke next.

"The council is operating on the faulty premise that Kael came to Drakencrest for her. When he admitted he came for high-blood women. The girl’s mention came after he had already played three other cards and watched them fail. If he had known who and what she was coming in, he wouldn’t have fished for that information. The assumption that sending her back solves the Kael problem is incorrect. Kael is not a girl problem. He is a continental one, and she was collateral insight."

Ryker looked at the note-taking elder’s parchment. "You misspelled ’collateral.’"

Elder Cassia, the only woman at the table, lifted a hand.

"Sterling is right about Kael. Let us move to the problem the council can actually solve tonight and no one will say aloud. She is sleeping in your private chambers, Your Majesty. That reading will not be kind to her or the crown. The protection afforded her should extend to envoy status. A foreign guest of the crown. Quartered and escorted appropriately."

"No." Maddox’s answer was immediate. "She is not a guest. She is my fated mate. Sacred under our laws, under our gods, and under every scroll in the Keep’s archive older than this council. Pick a different word, Elder Cassia, or I will pick a different council."

Elder Drystan leaned forward. His expression was hesitant.

"Your Majesty. I mean no disrespect. But the scholarship on fated mates requires dragon blood on both sides. She’s a wolf shifter from Nyros, a continent that has not produced a dragon in recorded history. Is it possible what you felt was her biology imprinting on you rather than a fated bond?"

Maddox gave him a flat, unimpressed look.

"Yeah. I am sure."

Drystan waited.

"My dragon made it very clear. She ran through my flame and did not burn. Aldric confirmed my flame signature in her blood three days ago and again this morning. If you need a case to draw from, she is in this keep."

"She held his flame in an open palm in front of over two hundred witnesses in Lunaris’s hall," Ryker said. "I was one of them. Every alpha king on the continent of Nyros was one of them. Let the record reflect that."

The elders considered those words. Elder Varro cleared his throat.

"I do not question the matebond. I question the coronation. Those are different doors and require different keys. The queen of Drakencrest must be a dragon rider. She cannot be crowned otherwise because the people will not accept it. I am not the one who wrote that law, Your Majesty. I am the one reminding you it exists."

"The queen of a dragon kingdom who was not born to fly will take training. Even high-blood daughters take a decade before they are cleared to fly in combat."

"I will take my chances."

Ryker laughed out loud. Actually laughed, the sharp one that Sterling usually elbowed him for.

"The girl fell asleep on her first dragon ride, gentlemen, and held flame. Why are we assuming she doesn’t have dragon blood? We know nothing of her mother’s lineage."

The table went quiet.

Elder Drystan frowned. "I have never heard of a wolf carrying dragon blood. The bloodlines do not mix."

Elder Cassia exhaled through her nose, leaning forward in her chair. "I have never heard of a wolf glowing either. At what point does this council stop defending the textbook and admit the textbook did not account for her?"

"Which is my point." Varro’s voice hardened a fraction. "We do not know what we are dealing with. In the absence of confirmed bloodline, the protection afforded her under law extends to guest of the crown. Nothing more. We are entering a civil war. The Keep has just lost eight loyal elders inside a single hour. Until we have the continent under control, the girl is safer in Lunaris than she is in Drakencrest, and the crown is more defensible without a foreign queen on an uncrowned throne. She is not one of us. Yet."

"No."

The single word filled the room.

Maddox leaned forward on the obsidian table. His gold eyes moved down the line of the five new elders, one by one, and every one of them held his gaze like they had been trained to and not one of them enjoyed it.

"If the issue is that she has no formal standing under Drakencrest law, then that’s the easiest problem I’ve solved all week. I will marry her tonight. Before sundown, she will be wife of the king with full protection."

Elder Varro cleared his throat.

"We will respect the protection accorded to a wife of the king, Your Majesty. A queen consort under your house protection, yes. A high queen of Velkaris, no. There are too many traditions our people hold."

Maddox’s jaw worked. He did not like it, but he knew they were right.

"Fine." The word came out clipped. "Wedding and house protection tonight. She stays."

Elder Varro exhaled, relieved in the way a man is relieved when a king has stopped one step short of a cliff.

"Thank you, Your Majesty. There is one further consideration the council must raise. There will be upset in the high houses. A foreign marriage without a dragon-blood queen on the throne beside you will read, to half the continent, as a throne without an heir-bearing line. In a civil war, the optimal choice is to take a second wife of dragon blood from one of the houses you rule over. A rider. A woman of the houses who can stand as crown queen and can give you an heir. The Lunaris wife holds your house and your bed. But the dragon blood holds the continent together."

Maddox laughed.

It was not a nice laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had just been offered the same insult twice in one meeting and was deciding whether to escalate.

"There will be a coronation. One. Hers. I am not taking a second wife. Instead of assuming what she can and cannot do, let us see how she handles basic riding. Then the council can update its scholarship in writing."

Elder Varro did not flinch.

"Then the council bends. But I will say what this room is thinking, because someone has to. A foreign queen crowned during a civil war will be the most scrutinized woman on this continent from the moment the crown touches her head. Words will not hold the continent together. Demonstration will. The houses and armies will need to see her ride."

Maddox held his gaze.

"Give her two weeks."

The table did not move.

"Two weeks?" Elder Drystan could not quite keep it out of his voice. "Two weeks is the training cycle for a saluting formation. Not a combat-cleared rider."

"Two weeks."

Maddox stood. The obsidian chair did not scrape. He rose with the kind of control that said every muscle in his body wanted to do the opposite, and every one of them was held exactly where he put it.

"Start the clock."