Page 45 of Saving Her Dragon

Garrett suddenly gripped the edge of the granite counter so hard his knuckles popped. His whole body went rigid.

Sydney was instantly beside him. “Garrett?”

“Three lights,” he gasped.

Ginnie stepped closer. “What?”

“Han says there are three lights now. Blue. Red-gold. Black-and-silver.”

Ginnie held perfectly still. “What else?”

Garrett swallowed. “He says the circle feels like what you're talking about. Not a ritual ground. Not a summoning circle. A road. A junction. Something meant to connect... somewhere.”

Ginnie's expression turned incredibly grave. She understood the mechanics of transitions and thresholds better than anyone. It was all part of being a Necromancer, especially one with the Heatherton Magic. A junction in the Spiritual Plane was a dangerous, highly sophisticated piece of architecture.

"Then it's a residual pathway," Ginnie theorized, her mind rapidly organizing the data into a working hypothesis.

Looking at the tense faces of her friends and family, she shifted her tone to that of a seasoned academic mapping a Curse. "Someone, likely a highly skilled practitioner of Sorcery, must have heavily tampered with Garrett's psyche during his years in captivity. They embedded a complex, dormant Magical pathway directly into his subconscious mapping."

Sydney’s hand tightened on Garrett's shoulder. "A pathway for what?"

"They were experimenting on him, Syd," Ginnie reasoned, the theory flowing with flawless, terrifying logic. "Think about it. Garrett's Man-Dragon King bond is healing at an accelerated rate right now. What if his expanding energy is accidentally activating an old, dormant piece of enemy spell work? Like physical scar tissue pulling tight as the muscle grows back. The damaged Magic inside his head is running an automatic script, seeking out highly personal, familiar anchors to stabilize itself. Garrett isn't consciously stealing. His subconscious is trying to build a structural filing cabinet to organize the residual energy."

It was a brilliant, comforting theory—and disturbingly compatible with almost everything they had seen. It explained the timing, the missing time, and the lack of external malicious energy. Maybe Garrett was simply triggering an old booby trap left behind by his captors.

Ginnie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Dr. Darcy Thorntree let out a loud, dry snort and tapped her pen against her tablet in a staccato rhythm. "You're telling me his subconscious mind may have built a Magical filing cabinet out of household jewelry and hair accessories?"

Ginnie leveled a flat stare at the young physician. "That is an offensively simplistic description, Doctor."

"Is it inaccurate?" Darcy countered, raising an eyebrow.

A long, heavy pause stretched across the kitchen. "Not entirely," Ginnie admitted reluctantly.

"If my mind is collecting these connections…” Garrett interrupted. “…why am I doing it? What is the function of the road?"

"That," Ginnie whispered, her eyes tracking the sunlight on the floorboards, "is what frightens me. Magic of this caliber doesn't organize itself without an objective. A pathway goes somewhere. A circle does something. A collection always serves a purpose."

"We need to run a full inventory," Garrett commanded, his tactical training taking control. He stood up, his voice turning clipped and authoritative. "If this thing is collecting personal anchors, we need to know exactly what else is missing from this property. We don't panic. We sweep the sectors systematically."

The Heatherton Homestead transformed into an active search grid within fifteen minutes. There was no chaotic shouting, just the quiet, methodical focus of an elite Guard unit.

Sydney spent an hour systematically checking her vanity, her closets, and her personal storage boxes.

Ginnie went with Carrick, and they ran a high-security sweep of the main house's safes, desk drawers, and ceremonial wardrobes.

Grey and Star coordinated an inventory of every single item they had touched, unpacked, or moved over the last week.

Garrett had been around almost everyone in the family during his good days. If his subconscious was hunting unique signatures, the potential target list was massive, but Ginnie knew they could find whatever had been taken… If anything had been taken.

By midday, the family reconvened in the kitchen of the main house. The results were negative across the board – until Ginnie walked up to the island, her brow furrowed as she looked at her daily planner.

"My fountain pen is gone," she said, her voice dropping into a tight, quiet register.

Sydney looked up. "The heavy silver one?"

"Yes," Ginnie nodded, her chest tightening. "The one Carrick gave me after we got home from our honeymoon. It’s solid silver, engraved with my initials, and I use it every single day to log my work. It’s completely caked in my personal resonance."

The reality of the collection hit the room with a cold, terrifying precision.