The standoff lasted three seconds. Three seconds where Blair Drakencrest and Sterling Emberfell locked eyes across a door handle and neither of them blinked and the dungeon corridor was so quiet you could hear Griffin's hands sweating.
Damon cleared his throat.
Both heads turned.
This was not Damon's kingdom. He was a guest. A Beta from Shadowfell standing in a Drakencrest dungeon at three in the morning because a princess had pulled him into an alcove and he had followed her here on instinct and judgment and something else he was choosing to examine later.
But Nicholas's name had been thrown around in that corridor conversation. Whatever Marek Navarre was doing inside this Keep, it involved Shadowfell's Alpha, and that made it Damon's jurisdiction whether the dragons liked it or not.
