“He believes the bond is a form of war. A thing dragons survive, not a thing dragons live inside. He has built our clan’s politics on that belief for years.”
“And you?”
“I believe he’s wrong,” he said simply.
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because my father wants me to use the bond for his gain,” he said. “I won’t. But I would rather you see all the moving parts.”
A nice sentence.
“And the part you care about?”
His gaze held mine. “The council granting me more than threehours with you.”
“You expect them to grant more.”
“I expect to make them.”
There he was. Polished. Certain.
He let the silence stretch for three steps, then changed the ground beneath us with one softer question. “Would you tell me about your boyfriend?”
I stopped walking.
Rhain stopped one step later. He had caught the temperature change.
“My boyfriend,” I said carefully.
“Yes.” His hands stayed in his coat pockets. “It was in the Ashenmere file.”
My life, apparently, had become light reading for ancient political households.
“You read the file on me,” I said.
Rhain inclined his head once. “What Ashenmere had assembled.”
Neat answer. Careful answer. Not a denial.
I looked at him a second longer than was comfortable, and he let me see that he understood the problem. He had walked into this conversation with my life already summarized for him.
“I’m not asking because I think the bond erases him,” he said. “I’m asking because if he matters to you, then he matters to the situation.”
That was better than it had any right to be.
Still.
“Not my ex,” I said.
Rhain’s answer came immediately. “No.”
“Not the man Ihad.”
“No,” he said, steady now. “Your boyfriend.”
I gave that a beat. Long enough to decide he meant it, and to make sure he knew I was deciding.
“Good. Because if you had used that tense, we were about to have a very short discussion.”
