Dexmon opened his eyes.
The ceiling swam.
It was familiar. He knew this ceiling. The same that had watched him sleep since he was six years old, carved with the sigils of every Drakenfell king who came before him. He'd stared at it after his first kill and after his first shift.
His mouth tasted like something chemical and sweet. He tried to swallow and his throat locked, muscles spasming around nothing.
He turned his head and the room tilted sideways, hard, and his stomach rolled with it.
"You've been unconscious for a few hours," Alaric said, voice calm.
Dex squinted. Alaric sat in the chair beside his bed, legs crossed, a book open on one knee.
The doors of Dexmon's chambers opened, and King Tiberon entered.
He hadn't slept. Dex could tell by the way his father moved, controlled but heavy, a machine running on discipline and nothing else.
Tiberon looked at Alaric first.
"Status."
"He just woke," Alaric said.
"What happened?" Dex asked, sitting up.
"That," Alaric said, "is a question I'd very much like to hear you answer."
"Where's Agnes?" It came out before he could think. Automatic.
Alaric's hand stopped mid-page.
"Interesting," Alaric said. He closed the book and removed his spectacles.
Then he looked at Dex with clinical curiosity.
"Say that name again."
Dex opened his mouth. Closed it. Something moved behind his eyes, a pressure that built and then receded like a tide pulling back from shore. Agnes. He'd asked for Agnes. Why had he asked for Agnes?
"I don't..." He shook his head. "I don't know why I said that."
"Mm."
"I don't know, Alaric."
"I heard you the first time." Alaric stood and poured water into a glass. "Drink. Your kidneys have been processing something we haven't identified yet."
Dex took the glass, drinking greedily. He was parched.
"Agnes is in custody," Tiberon said, not gently. "She was arrested yesterday. Every mage-librarian in the castle is working on your blood as we speak. Whatever she did to you, it involved dark magic. Beyond that, we're still identifying the compound."
Dex stared at him. "She was arrested?"
"For what she did to you, yes. Among other things." Alaric handed him a second glass of water. "Keep drinking."
"What other things?"
"That is an evolving list."
Something behind Tiberon's eyes went cold and still in a way Dex didn't understand.
"What do you remember?" Tiberon asked.
"About what?" Dex was having a hard time remembering anything. "I had lunch with Agnes.... What day is it?"
Tiberon didn't answer.
"Do you remember last night?"
Dex blinked, thinking hard. But nothing was surfacing. "What the hell... No."
Dexmon rubbed his face. Why was all of this sounding familiar?
He reached for his wolf on instinct.
Aegon was silent.
Dex shook his head, brows furrowed, then glanced up at his father who was watching him.
"How many times have we had this conversation?"
"More than once. You didn't get upset about Agnes this time," Tiberon answered, not bothering to cushion it.
"We'll know more when the librarians finish their analysis," he added.
He was stalling. Dex knew the cadence of his father's evasions the way a sailor knows the shape of familiar currents. Tiberon wasn't lying. He was choosing what to reveal, and when, and in what order. Strategic even now. Even sitting at his son's bedside.
"I'm going to say a name," Tiberon said. "Tell me if you recognize it."
Dex exhaled. "Okay."
"Serena."
Nothing.
He waited. Turned the name over in his mind like a coin, checking both sides. Tested it against every face and voice and scrap of memory he could find.
"Who is Serena?"
His father's face changed.
It was small. Tiberon Drakenfell did not break. He did not crack, did not flinch, did not give. He had received news of border invasions, assassination attempts, and the death of his own brother with the same granite composure. Dex had never once seen it slip.
It slipped now.
It was grief, aimed directly at Dex.
"Dad?" Dex's voice dropped. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Tiberon said nothing.
"I asked you a question. Who is Serena?"
"Someone you should know."
The words landed heavy. Dex stared at his father, waiting for more. More didn't come.
"That's it? Someone I should know? What does that mean?"
"It means," Tiberon said, voice measured but stripped of its usual iron, "that whatever Agnes put in your blood took more from you than time."
Dex's stomach dropped.
"I don't understand."
"No. You don't." Tiberon leaned forward. His hand covered Dex's on the blanket. Firm. Brief. The gesture was so foreign, so completely outside the vocabulary of their relationship, that Dex forgot to breathe. "And I can't explain it to you."
"If I mention her name too many times or explain it to you again, you won't remember this conversation." Tiberon pulled his hand back. The mask returned.
Dex blinked. "Whose name?"