Page 47 of Mating Her Dragon

Architecture. Asset.

Sydney watched something in Garrett's face go cold in a way she hadn't seen since New Mexico. She was instantly furious– genuinely, completely furious– in a way that felt entirely different from frightened.

She reached for his hand.

"She built the wound, Garrett."

He looked at her, something unreadable behind his eyes.

"She did not build you."

Keevandrie had modified the architecture around his soul. She had not created his strength. She had not created Han, or the man who checked the door latch three times because he loved her. She most definitely had not created the man who’d stood ankle-deep in the Pacific and laughed like he’d forgotten how, until he remembered all at once.

Keevandrie had exploited what was already extraordinary.

That was all. That was the whole of it.

The Council team arrived within the hour– quiet, efficient, functional in the way of people who had clearly done this exact job many times before. They examined the marker with a kind of careful thoroughness Sydney recognized from Garrett's own habits.

They confirmed it without much fanfare: Sydney had preserved the original containment structure completely intact while severing only the newly activated beacon and recall mechanisms Keevandrie had grafted onto it. Which meant Sydney had done something exceptionally difficult, with precision, without ever being taught a single thing about how.

Garrett looked at her like she'd hung the moon. Sydney was mostly focused on getting the Council team to stop looking at her like she'd grown a second head.

Then someone found the last piece.

Once the beacon was gone, something underneath it became visible. It was thin, faint, and easy to miss unless a person already knew exactly where to look.

It was a filament. Not a Portal, not anything Sydney could travel through. Just a thread of Magical connection, running back toward whoever had most recently woken the marker.

Keevandrie.

Sydney couldn't see an exact location. No address, no coordinates precise enough to hand anyone a map. But she could see direction– a clear, unmistakable line pointing away from where they stood, out toward whatever corner of the world Keevandrie currently occupied.

The Council could use it. Cross-reference it against other known markers, if any more of them ever activated.

For the first time since any of this had started, they might actually be able to hunt her.

"She wants us to follow," Garrett said, once the Council team had packed up and left them alone at the old station.

"Obviously."

"Then we don't."

Sydney looked at him.

Garrett caught himself half a second later. "That came out more commanding than intended."

"A little."

He tried again, and this time it came out the way she suspected he'd meant it from the beginning. "Do you want to follow her?"

Sydney turned the question over, watching the last of the sun catch the old ranger station's broken windows. She thought about the marker, patient and elegant and cruel. About Garrett, called a door twice now by the same voice, like his whole existence could be reduced to a function.

Then she thought about Keevandrie ringing a bell deliberately and waiting to see whether the Special One would answer.

"Not the way she wants us to," Sydney said finally.

"Meaning?"