"Please don't alert the press about anything, ever again."
He laughed—that real laugh, the one I'd started collecting like rare coins—and the sound of it loosened something behind my sternum that had been wound tight since I woke up.
I wanted to tell him. Right there, in my small kitchen, with the rain on the windows and coffee steam between us and his body still warm from my shower. I wanted to sayI love youthe way he deserved to hear it—not in crisis, not in the aftermath of a shift or a chase or a breakdown, but in the ordinary quiet of a morning that belonged to us.
But the words tangled in my throat, caught on years of silence, of secrets, and the bone-deep fear that speaking them would make them fragile. That naming the thing would give the universe permission to take it away. So I didn't say it. I finished my coffee, washed both mugs, and drove us across the city in a rental I'd arranged that morning because my truck was currently with no windows and frost damage that would make any mechanic question their career choices.
Cinder sat in the passenger seat with his hand on my thigh again—that quiet, grounding contact that was becoming as essential to my functioning as oxygen. He didn't push. Didn't fill the silence with chatter or probe for the words I was choking on. He just sat there, warm and present, his thumb tracing absent circles against the seam of my jeans while the rain streaked the windshield.
Ignatius's house announced itself the way it always did—stone and iron and the quiet authority of old money that had learned to be discreet. The gate was open, which meant he'd been watching for us. Of course he had. Ignatius watched everything.
I parked behind Doryu's sleek black sedan and killed the engine. Neither of us moved for a moment.
"How much does he know?" Cinder asked. "About us specifically."
"He knows I shifted in front of you. You heard. He knows about Gavin. Beyond that—" I shrugged. "He'll know the rest the moment he looks at us. Ignatius reads people the way you read vital signs."
"That's reassuring."
"It's terrifying. But he's on our side."
Cinder studied the house through the rain-blurred windshield—the dark stone, the sharp lines, the porch light still glowing faintly even in the gray morning light. "He's a dragon too."
It wasn't a question. I glanced at him.
"Yeah," I said. "He's a dragon. Old. Powerful. And very protective of the people he considers his."
"Am I one of those people?"
"Yes. Whether you want to be or not."
The corner of his mouth curved. "I suppose there are worse fates than being protected by ancient dragons."
"Wait until you meet Doryu. He’s normal. Well,” I clarified, “human anyway." He actually laughed at that, and the sound carried us out of the car and up the stone steps to the front door, which opened before I could knock.
Doryu stood in the entryway, casually in jeans. His gaze swept over both of us with the ease of a man accustomed to assessing situations in seconds.
"You look terrible," he told me, not unkindly. Then his eyes shifted to Cinder, and something in his expression softened. "You must be the one who didn't run."
Cinder blinked. "Word travels fast."
"In this house, word doesn'ttravel. It's already arrived before you have." He rolled his eyes, and I felt Cinder relax. He stepped aside, gesturing us in. "Ignatius is in the study. He's been on the phone since seven, which means he's either deeply concerned or deeply irritated. Possibly both."
The house smelled like cedar and old paper and something faintly herbal that I'd never been able to identify—some tea Doryu brewed for Ignatius that probably predated the industrial revolution. Our footsteps were muffled by thick rugs as Doryuled us down the hallway, past bookshelves that lined the walls floor to ceiling, past framed photographs I didn’t examine.
The study door was open.
Ignatius stood by the window, silhouetted against the rain-gray light, his hands clasped behind his back, phone silent on his desk. He was in one of his tailored suits—dark navy, silver tie, the kind of clothing that suggested he'd been dressed for battle since dawn. When he turned, his eyes—gray, sharp, flickering with something almost metallic—landed on me first, then moved to Cinder with an intensity that made the air in the room feel heavier.
"Please sit," he said. Not a suggestion.
We sat. The leather chairs were deep and old and probably worth more than my annual salary. Cinder perched on the edge of his, spine straight, hands folded in his lap—his professional posture, the one he used when he was determined to be taken seriously. I wanted to reach for him but didn't, unsure of the protocol in Ignatius's study, where everything felt formal and weighted with centuries of significance.
Doryu closed the door behind us and settled into the chair beside Ignatius's desk. Ignatius didn't sit. He studied us for a long, measured moment—the kind of silence that would have made most people squirm. Cinder held it without flinching, and I watched Ignatius register that with the faintest shift of his brow.
"Tell me everything," Ignatius said. "From the beginning."
So I told him. All of it, starting further back than last night—starting with the first temperature drop Cinder had caught, the way his hands hadn't recoiled. I left out the growing certainty in my dragon that something was happening between us that I couldn't control or explain, but I was talking to an ancient dragon. I didn't need to spell it out. I told him about the apartment break-in, about the police dismissal, about thedecision to take Cinder to the mountains so I could show him what I was.
