There are moments in a dragon’s life when sitting is an act of civilization.
This was one.
“You stayed in your skin,” he said.
I looked at my hands. Human hands. No claws, no scales, no blood under the nails. “Barely.”
“That counts.” Coming from Bjorn, that was practically a parade.
“I wanted to kill him.”
“Yes.”
“I still do.”
“I know.” He poured a second glass of water from the pitcher on the desk and pushed it across to me. “What do you want to do?”
The question sat between us for longer than it should have.
I could’ve given him the diplomatic answer. There were several available. Wait. Assess. Contact my father. Demand clarification from Yuki. Open a quiet channel to the U.S. delegation before they did something enterprising and fatal.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I put my elbows on my knees. I put my face in my hands for the first time since I was twelve years old.
“I still want to walk down the corridor and kill him.”
Bjorn didn’t react. He had asked for truth. One shouldn’t flinch when it arrives wearing boots.
After a moment, he said, “And what are you going to do?”
“Wait.”
He set the empty glass back on the desk. Aligned the bottom to a seam in the wood. “For what?”
“Whatever she wants.”
Bite
Catalina
Ihad been working the room for the last twenty-eight minutes when the air changed behind me.
I knew the feel of it by now. Three times this week: the receiving hall, at lunch, on the balcony. Each time, Dominic Graves.
I was talking to the Sichuanese deputy. She rested one hand lightly on my elbow while telling me about her daughter at university in Tokyo, and I nodded at the correct intervals, holding my water glass, looking like a woman who belonged.
When the conversation ended, the European cultural attaché reached me first. He was the one who had kissed my cheek. A standard greeting, by every diplomatic measure. Still, the kiss had landed wrong on every instinct I had, and I hadn’t yet finished processing why.
Rhain started to slowly cross the room towards me. He didn’t land close enough to start a conversation. Just enough to change the shape of the space around us and make the attaché uncomfortable.
Rhain made people notice without ever asking them to. One step, one shift of weight, one polite look, and suddenly the man with the cologne remembered he had somewhere else to be.
Helpful.
Dragons did very little by accident. Touch had rules. Distance had rules. Who stood where, who moved first, who gave way in a corridor. All of it meant something, even when no one had bothered to give the human a glossary.
Rhain had been generous all week in ways I kept trying to file under manners. Coffee before I asked. Norwegian corrections before I could stumble in front of the wrong elder. Chairs, sightlines, exits.
Small, careful things that looked polite until they started arranging the room around me.
