Chapter 349: Interrogate, Intimidate, Then Domesticate

"WHO. WAS. IN. THAT. CORRIDOR." Blair had escalated from shaking to holding the sack with one hand and pointing at Marek’s chest with the other, the universal posture of a woman who was going to get her answer or she was going to remove the bag and let him see exactly who was about to ruin his entire life.

Marek’s breathing cracked. The held inhale released in a rush that took the resistance with it.

"I don’t know his name," he said. "Hooded. I’ve only met him twice. He gives me instructions and I carry them out."

Blair pulled the sack up again. Marek flinched before she even raised her hand, which meant the first slap was still paying dividends.

She didn’t slap him. She let him flinch. Let the anticipation do the work. Then she flicked him on the forehead with two fingers.

Bag back down.

"That’s for wasting my time. The slap was for Guinevere. We are on a SLIDING SCALE, Navarre, and you are sliding toward the side that has buckets."

"You don’t know his NAME." Blair released the sack and stepped back with the energy of a woman who had just been personally insulted by an answer. "You are a MASTER MAGE. Of a GREAT HOUSE. And you are taking instructions from a man whose NAME you don’t KNOW? That is the most embarrassing thing anyone has said in this room, and I’ve watched you lie for three minutes."

"Instructions from who?"

"I can’t—"

"You CAN’T." Blair grabbed the bucket. The empty one. She held it upside down over his head and let the last three drops of water fall onto the sack one at a time. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was the most psychologically devastating thing Damon had ever witnessed done with an empty bucket.

Blair reached for the bag. The threat of unmasking herself, of letting him see who had been asking the questions, was apparently worse than any bucket because Marek flinched away from her hand like it was on fire.

"FROM WHO, NAVARRE?"

Damon watched Blair crack a mage in under three minutes using nothing but cold water, blackmail, and the threat of being seen. No drugs. No spells. No torture apparatus. Just a princess with a grudge and a bucket who had decided that patience was a virtue she could not afford and was billing it to someone else.

He was in so much trouble.

The professional kind was manageable. The other kind was going to require a conversation with his Alpha that Damon was not looking forward to, because explaining to Nicholas Shadowfell that he had developed feelings for the Dragon King’s sister during a dungeon interrogation was a sentence that should not exist and yet here he was, constructing it in his head while a woman shook water off a war criminal.

Blair looked around the room, realized there was no second chair, and pointed at Griffin.

"Chair."

Griffin disappeared. He came back eleven seconds later carrying a chair above his head like a man delivering furniture to a burning building.

Blair sat down in front of Marek, crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at the sack covering his face with the energy of a woman who had just decided to get comfortable because this was going to take as long as it needed to take and she was going to enjoy every second of it.

"Now," she said pleasantly. "Let’s start over. From the beginning. And this time, I want you to pretend I’m the last person you’re ever going to speak to, because depending on how this goes, I might be."

✦✦✦

5 HOURS LATER

Guinevere Lunaris opened her eyes to the sound of voices. She realized she was on Kael’s lap.

His arms were locked around her waist with the structural commitment of a man who had fallen asleep mid-cuddle and never updated his grip. His chin was on top of her head. His heartbeat was slow and steady against her ear and every exhale moved her hair.

She didn’t move. She assessed. Standard protocol for a woman who had woken up in enough compromising positions this week.

Maddox was in the armchair next to them, holding her ankle. Nicholas was in the one across from them.

Her heart lifted. Nicholas said he would come and he did.

Then the voices started again.

"Mine." Maddox squeezed her ankle as he said it. His voice was so clear that she assumed he was awake. But his eyes were shut and his brow was furrowed like he was negotiating in his dreams and the other party was being unreasonable.

Kael’s arms tightened around her. "Had her first," he murmured into the top of her skull. The words were slurred and half-swallowed and delivered with the conviction of a toddler who had grabbed the last cookie and was prepared to take it to his grave.

Across from them, Nicholas’s wolf let out a growl under Nicholas’s ribs. Then, clear as day, Nicholas said: "Luna."

Guinevere blinked. Three grown men were sleep talking.

She needed to move.

Extracting herself from Kael’s lap required the tactical precision of a woman defusing a bomb built by a man who refused to let go of things in his sleep or while conscious or at any point in recorded history. She started with his left arm, lifting it inch by inch with the patience of a surgeon and the desperation of a hostage.

His fingers twitched. She froze.

"Bigger," he mumbled.

His arm curled back around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest. She was right back where she started, pressed into him, his nose burrowing into her hair like a dog reclaiming its blanket.

She lifted both arms simultaneously and slid down. The angle was catastrophic. Her knees hit the floor.

Kael’s arms closed on nothing. His hands patted the empty lap twice, three times, the slow confused searching of a man whose favorite thing had been replaced by his own thighs and he was rejecting the substitution with every unconscious fiber of his being.

Guinevere was quick, back on her slippers. She grabbed a throw pillow and slid it into Kael’s lap. She picked up a blanket that must have fallen on the floor and draped it across Kael.

Nicholas and Maddox both did not have blankets and it bothered her.

She glanced around, like she was doing something illegal. Yes, she was married to Maddox. To her knowledge, most Alphas and Lunas did not share chambers. This was Maddox’s room, which meant she would be snooping in his closet if dragons were the same way.

But they needed blankets and a tiny part of her wanted to see if the closet had any of her clothes. If it did, that meant this was her room too.

Fuck it. She went into his closet and clocked women’s clothing immediately. Relief washed over her that was foolish, but she would be lying if she said it wasn’t there.

Grabbed two more blankets. One for Nicholas. The other for Maddox. Done.