Later, when they asked her how she set a man on fire without meaning to, she wouldn't have an answer. But the screaming would still be in her ears.
The guard on the left smiled, and that was how Guinevere knew the evening had just been downgraded from dangerous to catastrophic. Guards who smiled at half-dead women in hallways were never delivering good news.
Guinevere reached for Maddox's flame, pulling at something she had no technique for pulling, grabbing at a door she had never opened with hands that did not know the handle.
Nothing happened. Her stomach dropped. Noted. Wonderful. She had taken a king's flame, survived a fever coma to keep it, and the thing wouldn't even flicker when she needed it. Ten out of ten, would accept mystical dragon fire again.
The guard on the right moved first.
