Chapter 346: Dungeon Dating Pools & Dirty Secrets

The standoff lasted three seconds. Three seconds where Blair Drakencrest and Sterling Emberfell locked eyes across a door handle and neither of them blinked and the dungeon corridor was so quiet you could hear Griffin’s hands sweating.

Damon cleared his throat.

Both heads turned.

This was not Damon’s kingdom. He was a guest. A Beta from Shadowfell standing in a Drakencrest dungeon at three in the morning because a princess had pulled him into an alcove and he had followed her here on instinct and judgment and something else he was choosing to examine later.

But Nicholas’s name had been thrown around in that corridor conversation. Whatever Marek Navarre was doing inside this Keep, it involved Shadowfell’s Alpha, and that made it Damon’s jurisdiction whether the dragons liked it or not.

"Why don’t I talk to him?" Damon said slowly. The pacing was deliberate. He was threading a needle between two people who each believed they were in charge and he was about to offer a third option that made both of them wrong. "Nicholas’s name was mentioned in that conversation. That makes this a Shadowfell matter as much as a Drakencrest one. He doesn’t know my face. He doesn’t know my voice. And I will have my Master Mage monitor from outside in case things go sideways."

He looked at Brennan.

"My Master Mage knows him, actually."

"He does?" Blair asked.

"He does?" Sterling asked.

"He DOES?" Griffin asked, hands finally lowering because the surprise of Brennan Pike having a social connection to a Solandris Master Mage was large enough to override the surrender.

Brennan gave a silent nod. The nod of a man who had been waiting for someone to ask and was going to deliver the answer with the emotional range of a brick wall.

"My ex is his ex."

The dungeon corridor went so quiet you could hear torches deciding whether to keep burning.

"Marek Navarre is double your age," Blair said. "What do you mean, your ex is his ex?"

"We ran in the same circles," Brennan said flatly.

"What circles?" Sterling asked with the genuine confusion of a man whose social life consisted of duty rosters and Sterling did not understand how a former convict and a Solandris Master Mage could possibly share a romantic Venn diagram.

"Small circles," Brennan clarified, which clarified nothing.

Damon blinked. The concept of Brennan Pike scoring a woman who was also involved with a mage double his age was so ridiculous it circled back to probable. Brennan’s entire life was a series of events that should not have worked but did, and his romantic history apparently followed the same structural engineering.

"Really?" All four of them said it at the same time. The synchronization was so complete it should have come with choreography.

Brennan’s face gave them nothing. He had said what he said. The circles were what they were. Further questions could apply in writing.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Damon asked.

"Why would it be a problem?"

"Because you share an ex with the man we’re about to interrogate."

"That’s why it won’t be a problem. I know what he’s like when he’s lying." Brennan paused. "She had a type."

"What type?" Griffin asked, because Griffin had never once in his life let a question go unasked regardless of whether the answer was going to ruin his evening.

"Complicated."

The word did a tremendous amount of heavy lifting and Brennan left it at that.

Ryker appeared at the top of the dungeon stairs looking like a man who had been asleep ninety seconds ago and had gotten dressed in the dark using whatever his hands found first. His shirt was inside out. One boot was laced. The other was not. His flask was already in his hand because Ryker’s flask had its own gravitational pull and found his hand the way matebonds found kings.

He surveyed the scene from the top step. Princess. High Marshal. Beta from another kingdom. A mage with relationship history. Griffin, whose hands were migrating back upward. And a soundproof door with something behind it.

"Blair, what the hell."

Blair rolled her eyes so hard her ancestors felt it.

"Listen. I was queen for a few days. I ran the council. I ran the lords. I ran this entire Keep while three kings chased my sister-in-law off a cliff and jumped into a frozen river. Things have changed. This is a monarchy, and the monarch is me, and none of your assistance is needed, required, or welcome."

She rounded back to the door.

Sterling’s hand was still on it.

"Sterling. I swear on our mother’s grave and everything Kael has ever loved, which is a very short list, if you do not move your hand off that door, I will paint your quarters pink. I will replace your bed frame with something from a children’s catalogue. I will put a canopy on it. With tassels. And I will tell every servant in this Keep that you requested it personally."

Sterling’s hand did not move. But his left eye twitched. The threat had landed somewhere between his professional dignity and his survival instinct and both were screaming at different volumes.

"Pink," he repeated.

"Blush. Floor to ceiling. With a floral duvet."

"You wouldn’t."

"I redecorated two rooms in four hours while the entire Command was out. You think a canopy bed is beyond me?"

Sterling looked at Damon. Damon looked at Sterling. Two men from different kingdoms, different ranks, different species, having an entire conversation in one glance that translated roughly to: she would absolutely do it.

Sterling removed his hand from the door.

"Damon goes in," Sterling said. "Brennan monitors. I’m standing outside this door and if I hear anything that sounds like dark magic, I’m coming through it."

"I’ll also be standing outside this door," Ryker added from the stairs. "For the record, I’m just here because Griffin woke me up."

"I did NOT wake you up," Griffin said.