Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 20

Chapter 20: I Shield. I Burn. I Claim. I Keep.

Guinevere was trying very hard not to think about the fact that she’d been in this man’s bath eight hours ago when she woke, and was now marrying him.

She was succeeding. Mostly.

"We begin with the Dragon Code initiation," Master Mage Jaxon Valerios intoned. "Do you swear fealty to the crown of Drakencrest?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to honor the flame, the sky, and the house you enter this night, and to uphold the laws of Velkaris above all others?"

"I do."

"The code receives you."

Maddox turned to face her with a gold dagger in hand. He lifted her bruised hand gently, turning it palm-up.

He pricked the pad of her index finger, and guided it over the stone bowl. One drop fell.

The flame roared.

It doubled in height, turned a deeper gold, and settled into a signature pattern the elders along the east wall recognized on sight. The pattern was his. Exactly his. The bowl was burning, to the last flicker, in the High King’s personal signature.

Stunned faces along the wall.

Maddox’s lips twitched. He looked at the faces of his elders, and the specific quality of stunned silence he found there was, apparently, funny enough to crack his composure for the first time all evening.

Guinevere made a mental note to ask him later what exactly the flame was supposed to have done and why it had clearly done something else.

Jaxon cleared his throat. "Place your hand in the flame for pack judgment, my lady."

The elders winced as one, bracing for her scream. Three of them actually closed their eyes.

The flame judgment burned anything non-dragon blood including Fae, Mages, and half-bloods. It was still done for initiation, but that usually meant someone comes out screaming.

Maddox had mentioned zero of this to her.

She felt warmth. Familiar warmth. The same warmth that had rolled over her fur the night she had run through his column of flame in her escape.

Her skin glowed gold for a full second under the fire. She looked up at Maddox and caught his pleased expression.

More than pleased, Maddox was flat out smiling. The one she had seen exactly once, in the bath, when she had told him he smelled good.

Along the east wall, Cassia opened her eyes, registered Guinevere’s hand unburned inside the flame, and sat back in her chair with the expression of a woman whose scholarship had just updated itself in writing.

She pulled her hand from the flame.

"By the dragon code. By the First Accord. By the flame that witnessed the founding of this house and every house that answers to it. We gather tonight to bind King Maddox Drakencrest of Velkaris to Princess Guinevere Lunaris of Nyros as one."

Maddox went down on one knee.

Every person in the room exhaled at the same time. A small, stunned sound that moved through the witnesses like wind across dry grass. Guinevere understood the temperature of the room well enough to know that Maddox Drakencrest kneeling in front of a woman was zero on the list of things Maddox Drakencrest did on a regular afternoon.

He lifted his face to her, gold eyes steady, and spoke in a language she had never heard before.

Jaxon translated after each line.

"I shield."

"I burn."

"I carry."

"I return."

"I claim."

"I keep."

Maddox rose.

Six lines. Short enough to sit inside her ribs. Long enough that by the last one, Guinevere’s throat had tightened.

Jaxon produced two rings from a velvet cloth on the stone.

Maddox took the smaller one.

The scale was inside the band. He had pulled it from his own dragon form two hours ago in a small private ritual in the eastern courtyard, and the smith had forged it into the gold by sundown. She had no idea about any of this. He had chosen to not mention it. Some surprises were worth keeping.

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