Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Tell Maddox I Saw Her Too

Guinevere woke with her hand at her throat.

The bruise was still wet, and there were no arms around her.

She remembered his fangs in her neck, and the sense that something bad had happened before, but the details were fog.

On the other side of the stone, men spoke the way they only spoke when kingdoms had already bled.

"Cinderfall Keep fell at dawn. The garrison surrendered without a fight. Kael’s banner is flying from the eastern tower."

"Surrendered." Maddox’s voice was flat. "Or turned."

"Turned. The garrison commander was Hollis’s cousin. Secondary contact from the sweep. We cleared him too late."

She was up before her body could vote on it, pulling on a short silk robe and slippers.

Maddox looked up when she entered. His gold eyes tracked her in the doorway.

"You should be resting," he said.

"I rested." She moved to the table. "What happened."

It was asked as a statement. She had heard enough through the walls to know the answer was bad.

Sterling answered because Maddox’s jaw was doing the thing it did when he was deciding between speaking and breaking furniture.

"Kael moved while the Keep was in lockdown. Three border territories have declared for him. Cinderfall Keep, Thornmarch, and the Blackspire garrison. All three fell without resistance. All three had personnel in secondary contact with Kael’s men during his time in custody."

He placed three iron markers on the map in a line that ran diagonally from the northeast to the southwest.

"The dark mage’s work is in every one of them. Wards failing. Mindlinks severed. Our scouts reported two companies in Thornmarch whose dragons could shift but could not produce flame."

Gwen studied the map. She had grown up in a throne room watching her father play kingdoms like chess pieces. The pattern was familiar.

Then she zeroed in on Sterling’s hand, hovering a second too long over the Blackspire marker, followed by the pulse at his throat. She shook her head once, coming out of whatever that was.

Maddox’s brows furrowed, watching her.

She didn’t meet his eyes when she spoke.

"He is isolating you. It’s obvious."

Sterling looked at her. His expression shifted by a degree. The degree that meant he had arrived at the same conclusion and was recalibrating his assessment of the woman standing beside him.

"Yes. The three keeps form a line that cuts Velkaris diagonally. Every kingdom east of that line is severed from Drakencrest’s mindlink network and supply routes. He is carving the continent in half."

"Eighteen east of the line. Confirm?" Guinevere asked, eyes on the map.

Sterling didn’t answer until she looked up at him.

"Yes. Unexpected that a wolf would know—"

"Basic geography?"

The words were out before she could catch them. Guinevere Lunaris did not cut people off mid-sentence unless they were Cassian and being very dumb, and Sterling was neither. She felt the room register it the same moment she did.

Silence dropped like a guillotine.

"He is giving them a choice," she continued. "Declare for him while they still can, or be on the wrong side of the line when it hardens."

Sterling’s second recalibration was visible.

"That is exactly what he is doing."

Maddox’s fist came down on the table. The iron markers jumped. The maps shifted. The sound was loud enough to carry through the stone and into the hallway beyond, and three guards outside the door stiffened at once.

"I will burn every keep he touches to the foundation." His voice was the voice of a man holding a leash on something enormous, and the leash was fraying. "I will turn Cinderfall into a landmark people use to teach their children what happens when you fly the wrong banner."

Rage poured into Guinevere like boiling water, filling her chest. It was so violent that spots danced in her vision and blood whooshed in her ears. For one blinding second she saw the room through gold-slitted eyes.

She smothered the flinch, but still stumbled forward, catching herself on the table. Blood trickled from her nose. It took her a moment to understand that the one-way door of her matebond had just blown wide without warning.

Maddox’s head snapped to her and every ounce of rage went out like a candle in a storm.

"You will do none of those things," Sterling said, handing Guinevere a handkerchief without looking at her. "Because every keep he has taken is full of your own people, and burning them would prove his argument that you are unfit to rule."

Maddox’s eyes were still locked onto Guinevere when he spoke again.

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