Chapter 409: Those Are Gangs, Sweetheart

"Hey." Kael’s voice dropped. The sharp edges that he wore like armor retracted and what was left was the version of him that only she got to see. The one that sat underneath the sarcasm and the genius and the reputation for breaking things. "Look at me."

She turned her head.

"Solveil already bonded with your light. On Diplomat Row. Before any of this happened. Maddox was there. Half the leadership of two continents watched Landon Solveil heal you on the goddamn cobblestones and bond with you. That connection existed before you ever set foot in his kingdom."

Her brows pulled together. "I don’t understand."

"The mark on your neck." He tilted his chin toward the trinity pattern glowing faintly on the left side of her throat. "That mark has been updating itself since the beginning. Every matebond adds a layer. Gold for Maddox. Silver for Nicholas. White for Solveil."

"White," she repeated.

"His light. Your light. They’re the same frequency. Octavian confirmed it in the interrogation room. The Luminari Master Mage said you bonded with Solveil’s light and you needed him to stabilize it. Those were his exact words. This isn’t something that happened because you bit a stranger. This is something that’s been building since before you lost your memories."

Guinevere’s fingers were still on the mark. The three colors pulsed beneath her touch, each one responding to the pressure like a heartbeat being checked by a hand that didn’t know whose pulse it was reading.

"Then why don’t I remember him?"

"Because whatever took your memories didn’t leave you a directory. It took Maddox. It took me. It took everything. And Solveil got caught in the same blackout." He leaned his elbows on his knees. "If he had found you before me, you would be talking with him right now. I just happen to be very good at saving your life."

"Why were you all living in the same room in the same bed?" Guinevere asked.

"Because after Solveil bonded with your light. Yours started surging. I could absorb a little. Solveil could absorb more. Maddox didn’t want you on Solveil’s lap while you slept so he had me hold you because he had to deal with Solandris and your father."

"Who is Solandris?"

"Two very grumpy men. Edward and Uncle Eron. They are intertwined with the Luminari here and abducted you."

"Oh," she replied. "It’s going to hurt Maddox when I tell him."

"Yes, probably," Kael said.

Guinevere put her face in her hands and started to cry full body.

Kael went rigid. His hands hovered in the air. "Okay. Okay okay okay. Do you need... should I... is there a... fuck."

He pulled her against his chest. She collapsed against him while he sat there like a man who had been handed a baby and told to run. "I feel the crying, Guinevere. I feel it. I’m not joking. My eyes might do things."

A vine on the garden wall bent towards her. Then another. Then the entire row leaned in her direction like a congregation turning to face the sermon.

Guinevere sniffed once. Wiped her eyes with the back of her cuffed hand and the chain jingled and the sound was the saddest jingle Kael had ever heard.

"Fuck. Don’t cry anymore. Maddox is a delicate flower. Sweetheart. I grew up with him. He once got offended by a door," Kael said.

Something between a laugh and a hiccup escaped her chest.

"I am telling him that you said that."

???

2 HOURS LATER

"Kael, there are distinct social clusters in this yard. Did you notice?"

"I noticed."

"Each cluster occupies a designated territory. The group near the eastern wall maintains a perimeter of approximately four feet from the group near the water station. They share the pull-up bar on a rotating basis but never overlap. The cluster by the south gate has matching tattoos on their left hands, which suggests a shared cultural practice or ceremonial bonding ritual. And the men near the garden have developed a system of nonverbal communication using head movements."

She delivered the assessment wide-eyed, like a naturalist who’d stumbled on a rare herd and started documenting grazing patterns.

"Those are gangs, honey."

She blinked. Processed. Her brow furrowed in the specific way it furrowed when she was rejecting information that contradicted her thesis.

"Well, they really have more in common than they think. The eastern wall group and the water station group both have members from agricultural communities."

"Because they’re gangs, Guinevere. The perimeter exists on purpose."

"But it doesn’t HAVE to."

The sentence was a lit match. Kael could see it burning. He could see exactly where she was going to throw it and he could see the gasoline already on the floor and he did not stop her because stopping Guinevere Lunaris from befriending people was like stopping water from going downhill. You could build a dam but she would find the crack and the crack would become a river and the river would become a problem you pretended you’d planned for.

She stood up. Brushed off her knees. Walked toward the eastern wall group with her cuffs jingling and her posture carrying the specific openness of a woman approaching a lion’s den with a casserole and zero survival instincts.

"Hello again. Larry, was it? This is going to sound unusual, but would you be willing to meet someone? I think you two would get along."

The man she was addressing had arms the circumference of Kael’s thigh and a scar across his jaw that told a story nobody had asked to hear. He looked at her. Looked at the cuffs.

"Who?"

"His name is Oren. He’s from the garden group." She gestured toward the south side of the yard. "He’s from Miravel."

The man’s face changed. The change was small and fast and would have been invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. His jaw loosened by a fraction. His shoulders dropped by a degree.

"Miravel."

"He mentioned it when I asked where he was from. You mentioned Miravel too. You said you grew up near the orchards on the west side."

"Yeah. West side. My mother’s house was by the creek."

"Oren said his family ran the mill near the creek."

She walked him across the yard. The four-foot perimeter parted because neither group had a protocol for a glowing woman in handcuffs escorting a member of the opposition across no-man’s-land.

"Oren, this is Larry. Larry, Oren. You’re both from Miravel."

Larry’s face did something that strong men don’t usually let happen in a prison yard. His chin dropped. His eyes filled. The tears didn’t fall because he caught them, but they had been there, right at the surface, summoned by a creek and a kitchen and a woman who bought flour on Thursdays from a family whose son was now sitting in the same prison yard, three feet apart.

Guinevere was already clapping. The chain jingled. The sound cut through the yard with a brightness that shouldn’t have worked but did because everything about this woman shouldn’t have worked and did.

"How wonderful," she beamed. "You should have lunch together. I believe the communal meal begins in forty minutes. Would both of you be comfortable with that?"

Two grown men from rival factions in a Luminari correctional facility agreed to a lunch date organized by a woman who had been a prisoner for four hours and was somehow running the social calendar.

She introduced four more people in the next thirty minutes. Each introduction followed the same formula: find the common ground nobody knew existed, walk across the perimeter that everyone respected, make the connection, clap in the cuffs. By the fourth pairing, members of the eastern wall group and the garden group were having an actual conversation near the pull-up bar and the four-foot perimeter had shrunk to two.

Kael watched from his wall. The woman in the yard had just dissolved a gang rivalry using friendship and handshakes and her weapon of choice was a jingly chain.