CHAPTER FIVE #3
The guards dragged Malric away, still smiling through split lips, and Briar felt a fresh chill settle into her chest that had nothing to do with the fight itself — the sense that whatever this man had just threatened wasn't finished, merely postponed.
They hadn't gone twenty steps down the corridor before a sharp, imperious voice rang out behind them.
"Release my cousin at once." A striking dragon woman swept into the archive doorway, robes immaculate despite the early hour, eyes cold and assessing in a way that reminded Briar uncomfortably of Malric himself.
"I don't know what story you've all agreed to tell, but I assure you, whatever nonsense my cousin is being accused of will not survive scrutiny once my house involves itself properly. "
"Ilsbeth." Kade's voice had gone carefully flat. "This isn't the time."
"On the contrary, Kade Ashgrove, I suspect the timing is precisely the point.
" Ilsbeth Voss's gaze moved over Briar with the same cold, cataloguing interest her cousin had worn, though considerably more controlled, considerably more dangerous for its patience.
"I'll be speaking with Lord Ashgrove myself, about all of it. You may be certain of that."
She swept off after the guards without waiting for a response, and Briar felt the fragile relief of the last few minutes curdle fast into something far warier. Whatever consequences Malric faced tonight, it was clear his house had no intention of simply accepting them quietly.
It wasn't over. She knew that even as it happened — knew there would be denials, accusations, an ugly fight over whose word carried more weight in this hall.
But for the first time since she'd fallen through the veil-gate weeks ago, Briar had made absolutely certain there would be witnesses to the truth, whatever the court eventually decided to do with it.
Kade stayed with her through the walk to the infirmary wing, and a healer finished wrapping a shallow cut along her forearm where she'd caught a piece of falling shelf debris.
Now that the danger had passed, the full weight of what had happened seemed to catch up with both of them at once — Briar's hands wouldn't quite stop trembling, and Kade hadn't once let go of her since the archive.
"I should have been there," he said, low and rough, kneeling in front of her chair, thumb tracing gently over her bruised jaw. "I should never have let you go to that archive alone, not with him still loose in this hall."
"You couldn't have known." Briar caught his hand, steadying them both. "And I handled it, Kade. I actually handled it, this time. There were witnesses. Guards saw him pinned, saw my shirt torn, saw exactly what he was trying to do before I stopped him."
Something fierce and furious moved behind Kade's eyes, banked fire barely restrained. "He's not getting out of this. Whatever it costs, whatever my father decides about the timing — Malric Voss is going to answer for what he did to you."
"Your father didn't believe me last time."
"My father," Kade said, voice hard, "is going to have considerably more trouble dismissing an entire squad of witnesses and a shirt torn by another man's hands.
" He drew her carefully into his arms, gentle despite the fury still simmering beneath his composure, and Briar let herself lean into him, finally allowing the adrenaline to drain fully out of her body now that it was safe to.
"You are not facing this court alone anymore, Briar. Whatever it takes. I promise you that."
She tipped her face up to his, and the kiss he pressed to her lips was slow and achingly careful, like he was afraid of hurting her further, like he needed the contact as much to reassure himself as to comfort her.
His hand cradled the uninjured side of her jaw, thumb tracing gentle, absent patterns against her cheekbone, and for a long moment neither of them spoke, simply breathing each other in, grateful in the quiet, unglamorous way that only follows genuine fear.
"I thought," Kade murmured finally, forehead resting against hers, "for one terrible moment, running to that archive, that I might lose you before I'd even had the chance to properly fight for you."
"You didn't." Briar's hand found his, lacing their fingers together, steadying them both. "I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere."
He kissed her again, slower this time, more deliberate, and though neither of them let it go further than that in the infirmary's narrow bed, the tenderness of it settled something in Briar's chest that the fear of the last hour had shaken loose — a quiet, unshakable certainty that whatever the court decided, whatever Malric or his cousin tried to weaponize against them, this, at least, was real.
Outside the infirmary window, the fire-globes of Pyrhollow burned on into the gathering evening, and somewhere in the hall above them, word of what had happened in the archives was already beginning to spread — and this time, Briar thought, holding tight to the one steady thing she had left, the truth might actually have a chance of being believed.