"Her blood."
Hyran didn't bother hiding his irritation.
"Her blood heals flesh wounds. This is dark magic." He spoke slowly, as if he were explaining Aether Fabrication to a chimpanzee.
"I am aware," Gav said, rolling his eyes. "She saved my life when I was dying from dark magic."
"Explain."
Gav remembered almost dying next to his dragon when Drakenfell was invaded. Dark magic ate through his chest cavity but he'd survived because a girl half his size had sliced her own palm open and shoved it into his mouth.
He hadn't told anyone. So much had happened since that night. He assumed Serena and Elara had already forgotten.
But Gav remembered.
That had been two hours ago.
Now they stood in the corridor outside Dexmon's chambers.
"Doubtful Dexmon is aware of you sucking her hand," Hyran commented, as he studied a vial's luminescence against the torchlight.
"You are just a ball of sunshine, aren't you?" Gav's voice was as dry as sand.
Hyran ignored him. "The question is whether we tell Serena. She's unaware of Dexmon's state. She has a right to know her blood is being administered to someone."
"She would give it willingly," Gav answered. "You know she would." He looked at one of the vials. "But we just found out about what happened to him. We don't even know if this is going to do anything. She was upset today already after Nightspire ..."
His voice trailed off.
"Elara agrees." Hale stepped into the corridor. "Serena has had a rough two days. Let's see if this works, and we will loop her in. It's also in the middle of the night."
"Shadowclaw does not want her disturbed," Aeron added. "She is getting much needed rest."
"Then we're in agreement," Gavriel said.
The door to Dex's chambers opened.
Tiberon stood in the frame, Bellatrix one step behind him. The King of Drakenfell's gaze swept the corridor, registered the two vials in Alaric's hand, registered their faces, and drew his conclusion in the time it took most men to blink.
"Will it cure him?"
"That's what we're about to find out."
"Then stop standing in my corridor." Tiberon turned and walked back into the chambers. It was not a suggestion.
They followed.
Dexmon was propped against the headboard where they'd left him, skin carrying a grayish pallor.
The sharpness that usually defined him, the cocky tilt of his jaw, the razor-edged intelligence behind his eyes, was buried under whatever chemical fog Viper's Kiss had wrapped around his brain.
"I don't understand," he said, voice rough. "Where's Agnes?"
Nobody answered that.
Tiberon crossed the room in four strides and stopped at the edge of the bed. He looked down at his son with an expression that would have read as cold detachment to anyone who didn't know him.
But Gav had studied Tiberon Drakenfell long enough to see what lived beneath the mask. The tightness at the corners of his mouth. The hands clasped behind his back. The King of Drakenfell was terrified for his son, and he was containing it the only way he knew how: by refusing to let it breathe.
"Dex." Tiberon's voice left no room for confusion. "Drink this. When we open it, you need to do it quickly. Do not hesitate."
Dex's foggy eyes drifted to the two vials in Alaric's hand. "What is it?"
"Something we hope will cure you."
Dex looked at his father. Then at Alaric. Then at the vials again, and something in his expression shifted, some buried instinct that even Viper's Kiss couldn't fully smother. He trusted his father and didn't need to be told twice. He knew something was wrong with him.
Alaric uncapped a vial in one clean motion, handing it to Dex.
Dex brought it to his lips, and drank.
His eyes widened instantly, grey fog fracturing like ice under a hammer. The color rushed back into his face so fast it looked like someone had turned a dial from zero to ten in a single click.
He pressed one hand to the side of his head, fingers digging into his temple, and his mouth opened but no sound came out for a long moment. His jaw worked. His eyes watered.
Then he shook his head hard, once, twice, like a man who'd been underwater for too long and had just broken the surface, and Gav could almost see it happening: the pressure behind his eardrums releasing, the muffled silence that had packed itself into his skull cracking open and draining away.
"Fuck." Dex's voice was different. Clearer. The gravelly fog that had blurred every syllable was gone. "I feel better."
He tipped the vial back and drained the last of it, and then he licked the rim. Gavriel watched the Crown Prince of Drakenfell lick a glass vial like a stray dog with a soup bone and decided that this was one of those memories he'd be saving for later.
"I want more of that," Dex said, and there was something raw in it, something involuntary and desperate. His hand tightened around the vial until his knuckles went white. "Whatever that was. I need more of it."
His eyes surged gold. Molten wolf gold.
Alaric was already at his side, checking his pulse, his pupils, the responsiveness of his irises with the calm efficiency of a man who would celebrate after the data confirmed what his instincts suspected and not a moment before.
"Can you feel your wolf?"
"Yes." Dex swallowed hard. He pressed his fist against his sternum like he was holding something inside his chest that had been missing and had just crawled back home. "Yes, he's there. He's been gone. I don't know for how long. But he's there now."
"Good," Alaric said, releasing Dex's wrist and stepping back.
"Agnes. Do you remember what happened?"
Dex blinked a few times. He remembered flashes of her clinging to him when he was trying to tend to his duties.
He crinkled his nose, remembering her scent. It was wrong.
"No," he finally answered. "Should I know something?"
No one answered.
"Serena," Tiberon said. "What do you remember?"
Dex's brows furrowed. The gold in his eyes flickered, and Gavriel could see him reaching through what remained of the thinning fog.
"You've asked me that five times today," Dex answered.
Alaric snorted. It was short and sharp and startled out of him, which was, in Gavriel's extensive experience, the closest Alaric Kestrel had ever come to laughing in a professional setting.
Tiberon cracked a smile. It was there and gone in the space of a breath, but it was real. Relief. Pure, undiluted, bone-deep relief. The kind that only surfaces when the worst thing you've been bracing for doesn't arrive.
"That's a yes, then," Tiberon said quietly.
"That's a yes," Alaric confirmed.
Alaric handed him the second vial of blood, uncorking it. Dex took it before Alaric said anything, drinking it greedily. His wolf surged at the taste.
"What is this?" Dex asked. "It smells so ..."
"So what, buddy?" Gav gave a wicked grin. On cue, Hale whacked him.
"What? Innocent question."
"Serena?" Dex asked, brows furrowed. "She is bonded to Velkaris."
"Yes," Alaric answered.
"She's bonded to Velkaris and your fated mate," Tiberon said.
Bellatrix hadn't said a word.
Gavriel noticed it at the same time Hale did. The Queen of Drakenfell was standing two paces behind Tiberon, hands at her sides, spine rigid, chin lifted in that imperious angle she wore like castle walls.
But her eyes were red. Not regal, how-dare-you-waste-my-time red. Red the way eyes get when someone has been holding back tears.
Then she lunged.
Bellatrix Drakenfell closed the distance between herself and her son in a single stride and threw herself onto him with a force that made the bed frame groan.
Her arms locked around his neck. Her face buried itself into his shoulder. She didn't make a sound, but her shoulders shook, and Dex went absolutely rigid beneath her.
"What the hell." Dex's voice climbed half an octave. His arms hovered at his sides, paralyzed, every muscle locked in the particular kind of panic that only comes from being ambushed by something you have no tactical framework for.
His eyes darted to Tiberon, to Alaric, to Gavriel, to Hale, searching for an explanation with the frantic confusion of a man who had clearly never been seized by his mother with this kind of ferocity before in his entire life.
"There's something wrong with her."
Hale opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. "I think she's hugging you."
"I can see that she's hugging me, Hale. I'm asking why."
Tiberon looked at his son. Looked at his wife, who was currently clinging to the Crown Prince of Drakenfell like he was six years old. Something behind his eyes softened by a single, almost invisible degree.
"Because you're her son," Tiberon answered. "And she thought she'd lost you."
Dex went still.
His arms came up slowly, awkwardly, like limbs remembering a motion they'd never properly learned. And he hugged her back.
Gavriel looked at Hale. Hale looked at Gavriel. By unspoken, mutual agreement, they both looked at the ceiling.
Some things were not meant for an audience.