Kael: Which one will you save, little brother?

Blair made a choking noise. Maddox’s head snapped to her, only to see her holding the blade she had in her hands up to her own throat now.

"Blair. Drop it." The Dragon King command did not work on her either.

Maddox: Sterling. He is running divination through the mindlink. Trace it.

Sterling: Already on it. Jaxon is moving.

Ryker came through the door at dragon speed and right when both women started to draw blood.

He moved to Blair, knocking the blade from her hand, one arm locking around her chest.

His other hand closed over hers on the blade’s hilt and pried it free, finger by finger, and the steel rang when it hit the stone floor. Blair thrashed against him without sound, her mouth open in a scream that produced nothing, her black eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Gwen still had the blade to her throat. The edge had drawn a thin line of blood that ran down her collarbone. Her hand was shaking so hard the steel vibrated against her skin.

Maddox dashed across the room, knocked away the blade, and dropped his fangs into her neck in the same motion. Full extension. Dragon fangs, longer and sharper than wolf canines.

His venom hit her bloodstream like liquid fire. He felt her through their matebond in flickers. He pushed flame through the flicker. It didn’t go at first.

Then his gold flame erupted, surrounding her. The dark magic inside her began to hiss. He could feel it recoiling through their matebond, more and more vividly. More than he should safely. She hadn’t taken his flame yet. Something that might take years even with their connection.

But his dragon hadn’t steered him wrong once and he fully agreed: clear whatever was blocking their matebond at all costs. He couldn’t help if he couldn’t feel her.

Black smoke poured off her in thin ribbons, curling upward towards the ceiling. It tried to touch Maddox, but his dragon was on it. His whole body lit in gold flame.

Then her body seized and she grabbed his arm, not fighting him. Fear washed into him through their matebond aggressively. Hers. A relief. He could feel her.

Jaxon Valerios entered his chambers at that moment. He moved to Blair first, placing both palms against her temples. His hands glowed blue at the knuckles, and he pulled the dark magic from her like drawing poison from a wound.

Blair convulsed once, hard, and then her eyes rolled back to white and she went limp in Ryker’s arms.

"She’s clear." Jaxon said. "Don’t stop until I say."

Maddox held. He wasn’t going to drop until he knew it was gone. Every. Last. Ounce.

His fangs stayed in her neck. His venom kept pumping. His fire kept burning around them in a cocoon of gold that cast the room in amber light.

Gwen’s eyes had cleared for three seconds. Green bleeding back through the black, tears spilling down both cheeks, her mouth forming his name without sound.

Then they closed.

Her body went limp against him. Dead weight. The venom and the fire and whatever her nervous system had just survived took everything she had left.

Maddox retracted his fangs from her neck, holding her. The puncture marks were already closing, his venom accelerating the heal. Her pulse was steady under his fingers. Strong. Present.

Jaxon moved to her, touching her temple. He glanced up at Maddox, part disbelief, part curiosity. "That worked."

"Everyone who made physical contact with Kael during his time in the Keep," Sterling said from the doorway. His voice was the flat, clinical tone he used when his brain was already three moves ahead of the conversation. "The guards who escorted him. The Herald. Every person who touched him, and every person they touched after. The dark magic transfers through contact. Patient zero is whoever first put hands on him when he arrived."

"How many," Maddox said. His arms had not loosened around Gwen.

Sterling paused.

"Conservatively, forty. If secondary contact counts, and Jaxon’s assessment suggests it does, we are looking at half the Keep staff. The number grows the longer we don’t get it contained."

Silence.

Ryker, still holding a semiconscious Blair against his chest, looked at Maddox across the room. The usual joke was absent from his face.

"We sweep tonight," Ryker said. "Every guard, servant, and elder. Jaxon checks them all."

"I will need the other mages," Jaxon said. "This will take until dawn."

"Then it takes until dawn." Maddox’s voice filled the room without raising. "No one sleeps until this Keep is clean."

✦✦✦

They swept until morning.

Jaxon and his mages moved room by room through the Keep, pulling dark threads from thirty-seven people before the sun crested the eastern range. Some were guards. Some were kitchen staff. Two were the new elders Maddox had sworn in after the massacre.

Sterling tracked the contact chain backwards and mapped it on parchment that covered an entire table by the time he was finished.

Patient zero was Hollis, still in custody. The same Hollis who lost his dignity to Gwen.

Maddox held Gwen the entire night.

She did not wake. Her breathing stayed even and shallow against his chest, and the color came back to her skin in slow degrees as the hours passed, the gray giving way to gold in increments so small he could only measure them by pressing his lips to her forehead and checking the warmth there against his own.

His fire ran low and constant under his skin. Warm enough for her to feel even unconscious.

Blair slept in the chamber adjacent, with Ryker in a chair beside the door. He had not been asked to stay. But he was staying because the alternative did not exist.

At some point before dawn, Maddox pressed his mouth to the top of Gwen’s head and spoke into her hair.

"I will kill that bastard with my bare hands."

Kael had reached into the king’s bedroom and turned his wife and his sister into weapons. The message was received.

The answer would be delivered in person.