Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King novel Chapter 54

Chapter 54: Your Personality, Dragon

"Holding a blade to my throat cancels out one of those life-saves, Kael."

"It does not," he snapped. "And I’m not arguing with a concubine bitch burning from the inside out."

"And yet here you are, arguing with a concubine bitch burning from the inside out." Guinevere’s mouth was going to be the death of her. Actually, the fact she was alive at all was a miracle.

"I have a blade pressed against your throat. I’m not doing this."

"You’re right," she said flatly. "You’re not arguing. You just killed seven fae for fun and now intend to kill me too. Understood."

Kael stiffened behind her. "Your mouth, wolf."

"Your personality, Dragon."

Sterling’s jaw tightened and Guinevere understood why. She was on a first-name basis with a war criminal and pushed to the point of mouthing off to him. The familiarity between them was broadcasting at volume.

Kael gave Sterling an irritated look over the top of Guinevere’s head. "I am absorbing the excess flame from her body that is currently cooking her organs." He paused long enough for the weight of it to settle. "Let me guess, you cannot shift right now, Sterling, and you are separated from your group. Which means you are going to need me to get out of this jungle either way, and we both know it, so you can lower the blade or you can keep holding it while she dies. Your call."

He looked back down at Guinevere. "What did you touch? Answer me."

"A blade." Her voice was hoarse, the words pushing past a throat that was trying to close. She swallowed against the nausea. "Did your dark magic have a falling out with their dark magic?"

"Dark magic is a spectrum, actually. The color being dark does not make it innately bad or the same." He said it like it was an elementary concept and she was stupid. "But I am going to save the lecture for a student who is not a judgmental concubine bought on sale with the delusion of permanence."

"Charming." Her body heaved again, harder this time, and the acid climbed her throat. "I am going to be sick on your blade in about two seconds."

Kael lowered the blade.

She fell forward onto her hands and knees. The vomiting was violent and produced almost nothing because the tank had been empty for days, but her body committed to the effort anyway, heaving stomach acid onto the moss in spasms that shook her frame and left her gasping between each one.

Nicholas moved towards her. Kael’s blade came up between them, casual, like he was directing traffic.

"She needs a mage, wolf. You can’t fix this with proximity and good intentions."

Kael looked back at Sterling. "Where is your mage? Whatever is in her system needs to come out before it reaches her marrow."

Sterling’s posture was rigid, his blade still drawn, his eyes measuring the distance between himself and Kael, between Kael and Guinevere, between the odds of a successful strike and the odds of Guinevere dying on the jungle floor while he attempted one.

"If you attack me, Sterling, I will kill you." Kael said it without heat, without bravado, with the flat certainty of a man stating a mathematical fact he found tedious to repeat. "We both know that. We also both know that neither of us wants it. So I am going to tell you something useful instead."

He gestured at the jungle around them with his blade. "I have operated in these jungles before. The fae have been engineering this canopy for centuries, designed to isolate and neutralize every advantage you have. Without fire, your dragon, or a guide, your odds of reaching the coast alive are close to zero. With me, they improve. Significantly."

Guinevere threw up more acid on the moss, not even fazed that she was puking in front of people because she was past that. The dark magic was moving through her blood in pulses she could feel.

Kael knelt beside her. His hand pressed flat against her back, and the gold heat poured into him through the contact, her fever dropping by a degree in the first three seconds. His dragon pulled it in greedily.

"Breathe," he said. "Slower heart rate, slower spread."

Sterling watched Kael’s hand on Guinevere’s back, his blade lowering two inches.

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