Chapter 408: Yard Time With A Side Of Existential Crisis

SOLVEIL - PRISON

The guards escorted them back to their cell with the weary professionalism of men who had been on shift for too long and had processed too many feelings about a prisoner who treated incarceration like a study abroad program.

Veyron hadn’t given them a verdict. He had given them a wall.

"We are verifying King Solveil’s condition. You remain in custody until we do. That is final."

Octavian had looked like he wanted to say more. His mouth had opened twice during that sentence and closed both times because the Commander’s face had communicated that additional commentary from the Master Mage would result in the Master Mage joining the accused in a cell, and Octavian liked his freedom too much to risk it on an opinion.

So they were back. Same cell. Same window. Same cot that Guinevere had repositioned for optimal sunrise viewing.

The flash came without warning.

White light detonated from Guinevere’s body so hard the cell walls lit up like noon. The runes spiraled across her skin in real time, white threading through her forearms, her collarbones, her throat, pulsing with a rhythm that was getting faster.

Kael was already moving.

His hands found her shoulders and the light surged into him on contact. His teeth clenched. His spine bowed. The runes on his own skin flared to life, absorbing, pulling, dragging the flood out of her and into himself because that was the job and the job didn’t care that he was cuffed and the cuffs were making it worse.

Blood hit Guinevere’s upper lip. A thin red line from her left nostril that ran down to her chin and dripped onto the stone between them.

Kael’s eyes locked onto it.

"Take the cuffs off me," he ordered.

The guard hesitated.

"Her nose is bleeding. The light has nowhere to go because your wards are bottlenecking me. Take my cuffs off so I can absorb it. I am a volunteer. She is an innocent woman and you all know it. Landon Solveil is going to be absolutely pissed if she was mistreated. I am not even asking you to take hers off. Take MINE off so I can help her. If you do not, her cuffs will crack, and she takes the damage. And if she takes the damage, I am going to be very upset." He paused. "You have not seen me upset. You do not want to. Keys. Now."

???

"Yard time."

Kael looked at the guard. Looked at Guinevere. Looked back at the guard.

"You’re sending us outside."

"Morning rotation. Every inmate gets it."

Guinevere’s face lit up with the specific brightness of a woman who had just been told the thing she was most excited about was happening and was going to act like she hadn’t been counting the minutes since they mentioned it during intake.

"The yard, Kael."

"I heard."

"With the garden."

"I heard that too."

"And the natural light exposure."

"Guinevere, I was sitting next to you when the guard explained the schedule. My ears work. Let’s go before you adopt a plant."

She looked at the guard. "Would I be allowed to take my cuffs off for yard time?"

The guard looked at her like she’d asked to borrow his sword. "No. You’re a Category One detainee charged with regicide. You’re lucky you’re getting sunlight. The cuffs stay on during yard time, meal time, and every other time until someone with more authority than me says otherwise, and that person does not exist in this building."

Guinevere gave a solemn nod. "I understand. Thank you for trying."

"I didn’t try."

Kael stepped in between them.

"You couldn’t even accept a thank you without being a prick about it. Yeah. Definitely adding you to the list of people for Landon Solveil."

The guard smirked like that was the dumbest thing he had heard all day. Kael shot him a smirk right back that communicated exactly how much he was going to fuck this guy over.

???

The yard was beautiful.

Stone walkways cut through a garden that glowed. The air smelled like rain that hadn’t fallen yet.

Inmates occupied corners of the yard in small groups. Some sat. Some walked. One man was doing pull-ups on a bar.

Guinevere found a bench near the garden wall and sat. The stone beneath her lit up the way every surface in this kingdom did when she made contact, and Kael watched three inmates across the yard notice it.

He sat beside her. His cuffs clinked against the bench. Hers answered.

For a full minute, neither of them spoke. The yard was quiet except for the hum of the trellises and the soft crunch of gravel under the boots of inmates who were walking laps with the methodical focus of people who had run out of things to do and had decided cardio was the answer.

She was upset.

He could feel it through their connection before he saw it on her face. The matebond was delivering something heavy and slow and pointed inward, the kind of ache that comes from a woman who is angry at herself and has decided the anger is justified and is sitting in it like a bath she thinks she deserves.

She wasn’t upset about the bars. She wasn’t upset about the cuffs or the cell or the charges or the fact that her legal fate was currently being decided by a man whose interrogation table she had emotionally destroyed.

"Kael."

Her voice was small. Smaller than the woman producing it. The voice of a person who was about to say something they had been circling for the last hour and had finally run out of runway.

"I’m here."

"I marked another king. The second one this week."

She rubbed her temples.

The sentence landed between them on the bench. Kael received it the way he received most of her confessions: without flinching, without judgment, and with the internal acknowledgment that this woman collected matebonds the way Griffin collected concussions. Frequently, accidentally, and with zero learning curve.

"I marked King Solveil and I have absolutely zero memory of doing it." Her hands were folded in her lap, the cuffs resting on her jumpsuit. Her thumbs were pressing against each other, the small repetitive motion of a woman soothing herself. "I don’t remember meeting him. I don’t remember any of it, Kael. And now he has runes. Because of me."

"We don’t know if he has the runes."

"Yes we do."

Kael looked at her. The green eyes staring at the garden were wet but holding. She was fighting tears with the stubborn, clenched determination of a woman who had cried enough this week and had decided that her quota was full and further tears would require written authorization from a governing body she hadn’t established yet.

"And now I have to tell Maddox."

There it was. The actual wound underneath the confession. She had just told Maddox about Nicholas. The conversation had cost her something she couldn’t quantify and the receipt was still fresh and now the universe was handing her another one. Same format. Same pain. Different king.

"Maddox, I marked another man. Maddox, I have another matebond. Maddox, I did it again but I don’t remember this one." She let out a breath that fogged in front of her even though the air wasn’t cold. "I wouldn’t want me as a queen if I were him. If he were smart, he would leave me in here."