Chapter 413: A Beta’s Very Public Surrender

Dusk in Solveil was a handover.

When the sun clocked out, white stone clocked in, glowing bright, still radiating heat. By the time the sky went fully dark, Solveil was brighter than it was during the day.

That was when Blair stopped walking.

Damon felt the stop through their joined hands before he saw it. Her fingers tightened once as her boots planted themselves. The tactical commander in the alley who had told a pimp to fuck off was now standing in the middle of a glowing street with her hood up and her mouth open.

"Oh," she said.

Blair Drakencrest had decorated two royal chambers in under four hours. She had opinions about thread counts that could end friendships. She had also spent her entire life surrounded by obsidian and firelight and war-grade architecture. And she was now looking at a city that glowed like it had been designed for the gods above.

Damon glanced over at her. "And she’s speechless. I should write this down. First recorded instance."

"Write it down. Date it. Frame it. It won’t happen again." She tore her eyes away from the street to look at him. "We will be coming back here once we rescue the princess."

"We?" Damon’s eyebrow moved a fraction. "That sounded like a plan for two."

"It is a plan for two, you and I."

"So you’re asking me on a date, Princess?"

"You asked me first. This is the location."

Before he could respond, she was pulling him along in the direction of higher ground, which was where he had been leading them, so he allowed it. The reasoning was tactical. The enjoyment was not.

Behind them, Beta Draven’s eyes swept the street, cataloging exits, crowd density, and threat vectors. He found none of the above alarming. What he found unsettling and his wolf had opinions about was the glowing because he had spent his life in stone corridors lit by torches and the aesthetic whiplash was doing something to his depth perception.

Briggs still clutched his satchel like a flotation device but his shoulders lowered an inch.

They moved deeper into the city. The crowd thickened. Luminari citizens walked past them in clothes that caught the ambient light and threw it back in soft halos, turning the sidewalks into a runway that nobody had organized and everybody was participating in.

Blair’s head turned left. Her eyes locked onto a storefront where a woman was arranging glass containers of something liquid and luminous in a window display. The bottles pulsed in sequence, amber to gold to white, cycling through a gradient that belonged in a gallery and was sitting on a shelf next to what appeared to be bread.

Her head turned right. An old man was weaving glowing fabric on a loom.

Poof.

The hand that Damon had been holding, the one that belonged to a princess, vanished into thin air.

Damon whipped around.

Blair had moved thirty feet in one second and was now clapping at an old man who had paused his fabric weaving and was now staring at her, very confused.

"Their threads glow. Really impressive textile production here. The light is IN the weave, Damon," she narrated as if the old man couldn’t see or hear her.

He could definitely see and hear her.

"I see that," Damon replied, closing the distance.

She turned her head and flashed him a grin. "Do you understand what that means? No fumbling in the dark if you drop something. I installed mirrors opposite every light source in Maddox’s wardrobe to maximize visibility. Strategic mirror placement, Damon. These people just weave the light into the shirt. I’ve been playing checkers. They’re playing 3-D chess."

Damon’s hand closed around hers mid-sentence. She was between ’strategic mirror placement’ and ’playing checkers’ and didn’t break stride. Her fingers locked into his like a reflex she’d stopped questioning three alleys ago.

Then a flock of children ran past them playing with a ball.

"OH MY GOSH! HOW FASCINATING. THAT GLOWS TOO!"

The sentence was delivered with complete sincerity. Blair Drakencrest, the woman who had interrogated a dark mage with maple syrup and caught a spy in a lineup of hundreds, was standing in a foreign street entirely too excited because everything glowed.

Damon had stopped with her. But his eyes weren’t on the glowing city or children playing. His eyes were on Blair Drakencrest because she was making his chest do things.

From the back of the formation, Brennan’s head was on a swivel. His eyes were everywhere at once, cataloging surfaces, signatures, and the fourteen different kinds of magic he could taste in the air. He had been quiet for approximately ninety seconds, which was a personal record that was about to shatter.

"Oh, shit," Brennan said, pointing at one of the kids like he was at the zoo. "That one has two of them, Blair!"

More children followed. One of them had a yo-yo. None of them appeared to be supervised.

Blair turned and caught Damon looking at her. Damon didn’t look away.

"Damon. Their youth recreation equipment is self-illuminating," she stated.

"Do you want me to confiscate one, or are we drawing the line at stealing from children tonight?" he asked, voice completely serious.

Blair whacked him with her free hand. "You are not funny."

"Says the princess who is smiling right now."

Blair pulled him onward. The smile faded into focus. The princess was back. The woman who had been smiling at him three seconds ago filed herself away behind the gold eyes and the mission, and Damon watched the transition happen and memorized both versions because he wanted both equally and that was the part that was going to keep him up tonight.

"Blair, look at the fountain," Brennan called from behind them.

Blair stopped again. Damon stopped with her.

Her head turned. A fountain at the end of the block was spiraling upward in a helix shape, defying the laws of physics.

She let go of Damon’s hand and started clapping.

Brennan joined from three paces back with the enthusiasm of a man who had been waiting for someone else to start.

Damon looked down at his empty hand. Looked at Blair. Looked at the fountain defying gravity. Blinked a few times, in case he was hallucinating.

Alas, he was not.

He started clapping because the fountain had earned it. The applause doubled as a funeral for his dignity. Somewhere in Solveil’s prison, Kael Ashenvale sneezed and didn’t know why.

Briggs looked at the fountain, then at Damon who was clapping. His shoulders lowered by another inch.

"Well, that is interesting, isn’t it," he commented to Beta Draven.

"That’s a new one," Beta Draven agreed.