I made my own circuit. I greeted the Ashenmere elders. I made small talk with the Japanese observer, whose presence in the room I would be discussing with Bjorn at length later. I performed the diplomatic theater of being unconcerned about the U.S. presence at the dinner.
I walked toward Catalina at a pace that would put me near her at exactly the moment she finished her conversation with the Sichuanese deputy.
Anders’s shadow stayed at my back, three paces behind and to the left. Soren had relocated near the eastern wall. The entire Norwegian delegation had become a net with tailoring.
She finished and turned. I was three steps away.
A European diplomat reached her first. The cultural attaché. The man with the awful cologne.
I knew him and didn’t like him. A French name and a habit of being too forward at dinners. He had been handsome long enough to confuse access with consent, and the confidence showed.
He leaned in, said something I couldn’t hear, and kissed her cheek.
A standard greeting. I knew this. The diplomatic part of my brain knew it with absolute clarity.
The dragon didn’t.
I saw another man’s mouth on Catalina’s skin, and the old jealousy moved before I had decided to.
I caught it. Barely.
The surge came hot through my chest, up my throat, into my hands. The room sharpened. Sound thinned.
Anders was at my shoulder before I took the step. Soren moved on the far side of the crowd, cutting off the direct line between me and the attaché without appearing to do anything of the sort. Bjorn remained by the Norwegian table, but his attention pinned me from twenty feet away.
The message was clear.
Don’t.
I closed the distance at a socially acceptable pace. “Catalina.”
“Lord Solberg.”
I didn’t touch her. I didn’t move within the protocol distance.
I stopped at the appropriate four feet and gave her the smile and the small warm bow, which was theater, all of it, so the cultural attaché would understand he hadn’t, in fact, just made a move on a person who was unaccompanied.
He understood, made his courtesies and moved on.
Smart man.
Catalina was looking at me.
She had put together the attaché’s mouth on her cheek. Then me, watching. Then Anders at my shoulder, Soren near the wall, and Bjorn at the table.
Her expression stayed neutral, but I could see the calculation settle behind her eyes. The entire Norwegian delegation had just quietly prevented a diplomatic incident over a kiss on the cheek.
Yes. We had. But I couldn’t let her see the reason.
Not tonight, not here, not like this.
I gave her the diplomatic smile and a small lift of one hand, palm down, the cadence Bjorn used to meanI have the room.
She read it. Her shoulders dropped. She turned her face a quarter inch toward Yuki. The translator’s signal: back at work.
A hand reached her from behind. Scarred knuckles. A palm at the back of her neck.
I felt it before the rest of the room did. I felt it because I had been tracking the enforcer across the dining hall for the last hour and a half, and I felt the moment he decided to move.
