“Always,” I said, and meant it in ways I absolutely could not examine right now.
The families started filtering out, Anthony extracting promises of autographed pictures from at least four different players that I filed away to get the front office to sort out. Mrs. Russo hugged Dante. Marco clapped him on the shoulder, and I saw him try to hide the wince. Nicky said something I couldn’t hear that made Dante laugh, and the sound of it did something inside me that I refused to name.
And Odin Clark gave me one last look as he left—assessing, knowing, the look of a man who’d confirmed something he’d suspected.
The corridor emptied. The team headed back into the locker room to finish changing. And I stood there with my dragon prowling restlessly beneath my skin, trying to figure out how to protect Dante Russo from a threat he didn’t even know existed.
I knocked on the door of Ignatius Steel’s hotel suite at eleven-thirty that night, after the team had dispersed and the building had gone quiet and I’d spent two hours trying to convince myself I was overreacting.
I wasn’t overreacting.
The door opened after a moment, and Ignatius stood there in shirtsleeves, his silver-streaked hair slightly disheveled in a way that suggested he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes—gray like mine, but with that metallic shine that all born dragons had when their emotions were close to the surface—assessed me in the span of a breath.
“Theron,” he said. Not surprised. Not welcoming, exactly, but not unwelcoming either. The tone of a man who’d been expecting this conversation eventually and was resigned to having it now. “Come in. Doryu has retired, so we won’t be disturbed.”
The suite was larger than mine, because Ignatius traveled with the assumption that space was a resource he was entitled to. The sitting area had a view of the Chicago skyline, all glass and steel and amber light against the night sky. There was a bottle of scotch on the side table, two glasses already poured, which confirmed he’d known I was coming before I’d knocked.
“You always did have excellent timing,” I said, moving into the room and letting the door close behind me.
“I felt you in the corridor five minutes ago,” he said dryly. “Your dragon’s been broadcasting discomfort since the game ended, and I didn’t think it was anything to do with the score. Sit down before you wear a hole in the carpet.”
I sat in one of the leather chairs near the window and accepted the glass he handed me. The scotch was good—older than most countries, probably worth more than my car. Ignatius had always had expensive tastes, a remnant of the centuries whenhe’d accumulated wealth with the patient efficiency of someone who knew he had time to let investments mature.
He took the chair across from me, settled into it with dragon grace that never entirely left us, and waited.
I’d forgotten how much I disliked his waiting. It was like a test, like he was measuring how long it would take me to break the silence and what that said about my state of mind.
“There’s a human-born dragon in Chicago, with enough metal in his blood I felt him,” I said, because I’d never been good at games and wasn’t about to start now. “His name is Odin Clark. He’s employed Dante Russo’s brother Nicky, and tonight he was at the game with Dante’s family.”
Ignatius’s expression didn’t change, but something in the air shifted. “Describe him.”
I did—the unremarkable appearance, the easy smile, the way he’d looked at me in that corridor like he knew things he shouldn’t know. The metallic tang in his blood that had responded to mine in a way that confirmed what he was, even if he couldn’t shift.
When I finished, Ignatius was quiet for a long moment. He swirled the scotch in his glass, watching the amber liquid catch the light, and I knew that stillness. It was the stillness of a dragon making calculations about threats and resources and acceptable losses.
“Did he recognize you?”
“No. I withdrew before he was born, but if his blood is sensitive enough, he may have felt me.”
“Odin Clark,” he said finally. “I know the name. He’s been on the Council’s periphery for about thirty years. “His parents were both dragons,” Ignatius said, setting his glass down with deliberate care. “Grandfather was a forge dragon—strong lineage, old blood, the kind that produces smiths and craftsmen who can work metal in ways humans never could. Father a firedragon, mother was ice, which should have given him options if one gift didn’t manifest.” He paused, and something in his face hardened. “He never shifted. Not at puberty, not in his twenties, not ever. The gifts simply didn’t take.”
I watched him over the rim of my glass, waiting.
“His parents tried everything,” Ignatius continued. “Brought in specialists, consulted the Archives, spent a fortune on diagnostics. Nothing worked. By the time he was twenty-five, they’d given up. Told him he was too human to be dragon, too dragon to be fully human, and essentially washed their hands of him.”
My dragon stirred with something that might have been sympathy if I let it be. I didn’t. “And he took that well, I’m sure.”
“About as well as you’d expect.” Ignatius picked up his glass again, studied the amber liquid like it held answers. “He disappeared from Council records for about a decade. When he resurfaced, he’d gotten degrees—engineering, metallurgy, materials science. Started developing patents related to advanced metalworking techniques. Some of them were brilliant. Some of them were concerning.”
“Concerning how?”
“Concerning in that they utilized principles that shouldn’t have been accessible to someone without dragon gifts but somehow were. The Council investigated quietly—couldn’t prove anything, but the consensus was that he’d found ways to reverse-engineer dragon metallurgy through purely mechanical means based on what he knew from his father.” Ignatius met my eyes. “Ten years ago, he bought his father’s company out from under him. Paid cash. The father tried to fight it, claimed Odin had stolen proprietary techniques. Couldn’t prove it. The business had been failing for years under his management, and Odin turned it profitable within eighteen months.”
I absorbed that. A human-born dragon with enough bitterness to spend years learning to replicate what had been denied him, then using that knowledge to humiliate the father who’d abandoned him. It painted a picture I didn’t like.
“What’s the company do now?” I asked.
“Officially? High-end custom fabrication. Specialty metals, precision engineering, government contracts. All above board.” Ignatius’s tone suggested the unofficially was coming. “Unofficially, the Council’s had concerns for years that he’s been collecting dragon lore. Hiring consultants who might not know what they’re really consulting on. Developing techniques that edge too close to things that should remain within the community.”
