“No,” he said, and his voice softened. “That’s why this is dangerous.”
That shut my mouth, which I resented.
Bjorn stepped to my left. Anders drifted half a pace behind my right shoulder. Soren took the rear. Not an escort. Publicly, they were the senior diplomatic party moving toward dinner.
Privately, they had built a box around me.
A very polite box.
I looked at Bjorn and he lifted one eyebrow.
I smiled.
It wasn’t my best work.
* * *
The dining room was full.
A hundred and twenty seats. Multiple clans and human governments. The ambassadors. The councils. The deputies. The press secretaries. The senior trade representatives. The chief of staff to the U.S. president’s special envoy on supernatural relations, who wasn’t supposed to be on the guest list and was very much on the guest list.
I saw all of it from the doorway.
Then I saw her.
Catalina Cordero sat at the third table from the dais, in thetranslator’s seat behind the U.S. ambassador’s principal. She wore a dark green dress, professional and clean and fitted without competing for attention. Her hair was pulled back. Her notebook lay beside her plate. Her water glass was untouched. She was speaking to the ambassador’s principal, her head at a polite angle, making herself useful while learning everything.
She didn’t look up. There was no need.
I had located her at the doorway and then refused to look at anything else for the next thirty seconds, which the diplomatic side of me handled by performing a series of formal greetings to people whose names I knew and whose faces I didn’t currently care about.
Bjorn touched my elbow once.Walk.
I walked.
Anders moved with me. Soren moved behind.
No one in the room would’ve noticed unless they knew exactly what to look for.
Every dragon in the room knew exactly what to look for.
I sat at the Norwegian delegation’s table. Bjorn took his seat at my left. Anders positioned himself two seats down, technically near the deputy minister, functionally placed to catch my arm if I forgot I owned one. Soren remained standing behind the delegation table with the other security staff.
The Ashenmere delegation sat at the long table along the inside wall. Yuki was at the head. Two elders to her right.
Graves stood three paces behind Yuki, against the wall.
He wasn’t looking at the room, monitoring threats. He was looking at Catalina. Protecting her above all else. I was, technically, supposed to be reassured by his presence.
By any professional measure, he was the most disciplined dragon in the building.
That was the part that worried me.
Disciplined men didn’t break often.
When they did, it tended to be remarkable.
* **
