Chapter 163: Bit His Wife Again Like A Chew Toy

"She’s fine."

"She’s UNCONSCIOUS, Maddox."

"Peacefully. There’s a spectrum."

He moved past her into the guest chambers, Guinevere limp in his arms, her wet hair leaving a trail of water across the stone like a slug made of silk.

He crossed to the bed and laid her on the bare mattress. The bedding was on the floor in a damning pile that told a very detailed story about round one four hours ago.

Neither the old Luminari healer nor Aldric commented on the lack of bedding. The absence of comment was louder than any comment would have been.

Without saying a word, Blair marched to the trunk, pulled out fur-lined slippers, and knelt to put them on Guinevere.

She caught Maddox watching.

"She hates cold floors," she said flatly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Unlike you, I pay attention to things that aren’t my own reflection."

Aldric approached the bed like a man who had accepted his fate. Sleeves up, magic humming, he swept his hands over her sternum. The resulting light made him sigh so deeply it sounded like it came from his ancestors.

"Why is she unconscious, Maddox?" Aldric asked, voice carrying the specific patience of a healer who already suspected the answer and was giving his king one chance to say it out loud.

"I may have shared dragon venom with her again."

The words left his mouth the way a confession leaves a man in a temple: quietly, quickly, and aimed at the floor.

Aldric’s hand stopped mid-sweep. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and held that position for three full seconds.

"How many."

"...We’re not doing the number right now."

"HOW MANY, MADDOX."

"Three."

"THREE?"

"It felt medically necessary at the time."

"NONE of those times were medically necessary. I would KNOW. I’m the medic. THREE TIMES in THIRTY-SIX HOURS, Maddox."

"I’m aware of the timeline, Aldric."

"Dragon venom in a marking bite is designed to be administered once. In the entire span of a mated pair’s life. You’ve tripled the dosage in a day and a half. On a woman who weighs as much as your armor."

"She seems fine."

"She’s UNCONSCIOUS."

"Peacefully unconscious."

Aldric opened his eyes and stared at Maddox with the quiet, burning disappointment of a healer who had been awake for nineteen hours saving one Drakencrest brother and was now discovering that the other one had bitten his wife again like a chew toy.

"If by peaceful you mean sedated, then yes."

The door opened behind them. Sterling entered, then froze mid-stride, his eyes landing on Guinevere’s neck.

His jaw did something it had never done in the recorded history of their friendship. It dropped. Fully. Without permission. His eyes darted: neck → Maddox → neck → destroyed sheets → neck again.

"Sterling," Maddox said. "Don’t."

Sterling closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. Then, with a herculean effort, he put a lid on the comment fighting to escape: "I have no observations."

"Good. No opinions. Swallow them."

"Already swallowed, Commander. It’s coming back up."

"Swallow harder."

"I will say that yesterday I assumed the bruising was from a single, responsible marking after the ball, which I considered within the normal range because you didn’t remember the first time. I see now that I was operating on incomplete information."

"Are you finished?"

"I will be carrying this incomplete information with me for the rest of my life, but yes, I am finished."

The old Luminari healer shuffled past all of them with the unbothered calm of a healer who had been healing young idiots for almost a century and had stopped being surprised by their choices.

He placed one ancient hand on Guinevere’s sternum, closed his cloudy eyes, and white light sank into her. Slow. Patient. As if he had done this ten thousand times.

"Lavender," the old healer said without opening his eyes. "Sylvan pine. And a third I can’t quite place, but it’s aggressive." He paused. "Ember root."

Maddox blinked. "What?"

"Your bath salts." His eyes stayed closed, his magic still working. "Lavender for the nerves, sylvan pine for the lungs, and ember root, which is an excellent circulatory stimulant and also turns water green. That third bottle you emptied was doing the heavy lifting. The other two were decorative at best." His hand shifted on her sternum. "I’m a tremendous fan of bath salts, personally. I keep a rotation of seven. One for each day of the week. Today is eucalyptus. I see you’re more of an ’all of them at once’ kind of man. I respect it."

Sterling looked at Maddox. Maddox looked at the ceiling.

The white light pulsed twice, then settled into a steady glow. The old man’s brow furrowed, lips moving silently.

"The Mirrorlock has been temporarily dissolved." He opened one eye and aimed it at Maddox. "You feel her now. Yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. The urge to mark should diminish considerably now that the matebond is fully open. The venom was compensating for a blocked connection by attempting to re-establish it through repetition. Essentially, your body was trying to fix a problem that dark magic created, and it fixed it the way a dragon fixes most things. Excessively."

"I’ll let my dragon know."

"You’ll let your dragon know," Aldric repeated. "About what? Impulse control?"

"Yes."

"She will be fine," the old Luminari healer commented. "Her body is processing it remarkably well for her size, I must say."

His hand lifted off her sternum, and the light faded.

"Internal bleeding remains. Minor, consistent with what the dark magic left behind, and it will heal on its own if she rests. Today she stays in this bed. No activity." His cloudy gaze drifted from Maddox to the bare mattress to the sheets on the floor and back to Maddox. "That includes baths. No exertion. No creative interpretations of the word ’rest.’ I will return in a few days to check on her progress."

Maddox nodded once. "Understood."

"Wonderful." The old healer turned from the bed and pointed one gnarled finger at a chair. "Sit."

"I’m fine."

"You are bleeding from your nose, your pupils are uneven, and you have a concussion."

"I have a kingdom to run."

"You have a concussion to sit down about. Sit."

Maddox sat. Arguing with an old man before breakfast was a war he did not have the resources for.

The healer’s palm landed on Maddox’s forehead and white light hummed through his skull. The old man’s brow climbed, stayed climbed, and kept climbing.

"Two concussions," he announced. "The first is from the blast on Diplomat Row, which I expected. The second is fresh." His milky eyes opened and stared directly into Maddox’s soul. "Did you hit your head in the last thirty minutes?"

Silence.

"Your Majesty."

"Define recently."

"In the last HOUR."

"Possibly."

"Possibly," the old man repeated. He looked at Blair, who was standing against the wall with her arms crossed and the expression of a woman who had been waiting for this exact moment with the patience of a predator.

"He fell," Blair cut in. "On a wet floor while naked, actually."

"I see." The healer turned back to Maddox. "That tracks. You have two concussions. One from last night, and one from the bathing chamber floor."

Sterling produced a sound he tried to turn into a cough. Everyone else heard it for what it was: a laugh. His decades-long mastery of emotional constipation suffered a wound from which it would never recover.

"No sudden movements for today," the old healer continued. "No physical activity, Your Majesty, because a third concussion in thirty-six hours would put you in the same bed as your wife, and based on the state of this room, that is precisely where the problem started."

He eyed the mattress, then turned to Blair. "He could do with a decorator."