Maddox: Sterling. What does that mean.

Sterling: She merged with your flame, Commander.

Maddox: WHY WOULD MY WIFE TAKE MY FLAME WHILE I WAS GONE.

Maddox dove towards Kael, wings at full extension, fire erupting from his jaws to clear the path. Sterling and Ryker were closing in from the south and west.

Sterling: I advised against it. She overruled me.

Maddox: SHE DID NOT. YOU ABSOLUTE-

Guinevere stood in front of Kael, his arm banded around her waist. He banked north, pulling away from the three dragons converging.

That’s when he noticed a handful of the dark fae on surrounding dragons were watching. He looked down at her. Then at the fae. Then back at her.

"Why are you glowing brighter than you should be?"

He picked up her hand. Turned it over. Examined the gold light pulsing beneath her skin. Then he moved her hand to the left.

Every fae head on every surrounding dragon tracked the motion. In unison.

Kael moved her hand to the right.

They followed.

His eyebrows rose. He looked at the dark mage riding the dragon beside his, a hooded figure whose hands were still raised in the casting position that maintained the compulsion over the turned dragons.

"You. Knock her out."

The mage’s hood turned toward Guinevere. Beneath the cowl, his mouth split into a grin. He knew this one. The girl who had thrown rope at Varek’s face and delivered a public eulogy for Hollis’s dignity.

He jumped onto Kael’s dragon, landing behind them.

"With pleasure, Your Highness."

He reached for her.

Just when his hand got within an inch of her shoulder, gold flame erupted from her palms. Pure Drakencrest fire, bright and focused, carrying the specific heat signature of a king’s flame channeled through a body that had no idea it was doing it.

The fire hit the mage in the center of his chest with a force that launched him backward off the dragon. His scream cut through the wind, high and raw, fading as he tumbled through open air trailing smoke.

Kael stared down at her. Her face had changed exactly zero. Still vacant. The flame in her palms extinguished as if it had never been there, and her hands returned to her sides.

He waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing.

His voice lifted into the draconic register, carrying across the sky toward the gold dragon closing from the east.

"What did you do to her, little brother?"

Maddox’s roar in response shook snow from the treeline below.

Maddox: I will say this once. Release her.

"If her wolf brain was fried in the fever, that is your fault." Kael’s voice carried the specific cadence of a man surrounded by idiots. "I told you to feed her. Water her. Keep her alive. Three instructions. And she comes back from summer camp a golden zombie. I am genuinely impressed by the incompetence."

More dragons hurtled toward his position from the Drakencrest formation.

Kael sighed.

He unsheathed his blade, and pressed the edge against the artery at her throat.

One motion and the girl who had thrown a rope at his face would bleed out in under a minute at this altitude.

Kael lifted his voice into the draconic register.

"Maddox. I have your second-in-command’s mate with a blade against her throat. You will land your soldiers and surrender or I will open her in front of your army and let gravity do the rest."

Maddox’s wingbeats broke rhythm for the first time in the engagement. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Another fae’s head rotated towards Guinevere. His augmented eyes dilated until the irises disappeared entirely, swallowed by black. The hum that came from his throat dropped an octave into something that vibrated in Kael’s sternum.

Then it began to spread. More joined the humming until every dark fae had their mouths open and producing a single, sustained note.

The dark mages on Kael’s left exchanged a glance. One of them shrugged.

Kael’s grip tightened on the blade. "What is—"

The first bolt of dark magic came from the fae standing on the brown dragon forty yards to his right, aimed directly for his chest.

The dragon under him dropped in time for the bolt to scorch the air above his scalp, hitting a dragon on the other side. Before the sound of the impact had finished traveling, two more bolts came from opposite directions.

"Oh, wonderful," Kael said to absolutely no one. "Mutiny."

More bolts of dark magic came. Kael deflected them all.

The fae abandoned their dragons. Fifty of them launched into the air on their own, using wings they never reveal to dragons on principle.

He was now fighting his own army. To protect himself. From the allies he had hired. Over a girl he had kidnapped. The layers of irony were stacking faster than the incoming fire.

"Alright, the recruitment pipeline comment stung. But in my defense, they looked competent on paper."

No response.

Kael’s free arm came up, releasing his own black flame to block a volley that would have taken his head off.

She recoiled in his arms, pulling away from him.

"Stop squirming. Relax, I forgot." The instant he stopped his black flame, she stilled.

He switched to gold flame, intercepting another attack. The collision lit the sky in a flash of amber and violet that made the dragons below them flinch.

From above, Maddox saw the explosion, followed by a gold sphere forming around Kael’s. This was his fire. Coming from the woman he loved, on an enemy’s dragon, in a shell so precise it was deflecting dark fae magic at calculated angles while she was unconscious.

Maddox: Gwen. Can you hear me? We’re trying to get to you but Ryker and Sterling won’t be able to help with that up, baby.

Inside the orb, Kael was frozen. The flame was pouring from her palm in steady waves. He looked down at her.

"What are you..."

His hand was trembling on the blade. The steel vibrated against her throat in small, involuntary oscillations that had nothing to do with the turbulence.

She was shielding him. Her subconscious had the self-preservation instincts of a golden retriever.

"You know, most people do not protect the person holding a blade to their throat."

Then it happened. Her scent changed, slamming into him.