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She looked surprised by the question, but after a moment, she smiled. "Quiet. Simple. I taught kindergarten at a small school near the historic district in Charleston, South Carolina. Five-year-olds, probably the best and worst age to teach."

"Why both?"

"Because they're still innocent enough to believe in magic, but old enough to have opinions about absolutely everything." Her expression softened with something private. "They'd come in every morning with stories about their families, their pets, their imaginary friends. And they'd look at you like you had all the answers to the universe tucked somewhere in your desk drawer."

"You miss them," I said. It wasn't a question.

"Every day." She set down her bread. "I wonder what they think happened to me. Whether they're scared. Whether they think I just left." She paused, turning a piece of crust over in her fingers. "I had this one student, Adam, who had terrible separation anxiety. His mother had to sit in the back of the classroom for the first month of school. It took weeks to get him comfortable enough to let her go. And then I just... disappeared."

The quiet that followed had weight to it. "You were taken against your will," I said. The words came out rougher laced with my dragon's growl.

"Abducted while walking home one evening. One minute I was thinking about what to put on the next day's lesson board, and then I was waking up on an Alliance ship." She looked up at me, and whatever she saw in my expression made her go on. "They told me I couldn't go back. The Trogvyk had run me through a Garoot Healer, and once that happens, the Alliance won't permit re-entry to Earth. For a while I was living on Tau Ceti, which is about as exciting as it sounds. When the chance to join Asad Intelligence came up, to actually do something useful with the disaster my life had become, I took it."

I reached for the flask, mostly to have something to do with my hands. Every human on Drakhone had consented to come here. The idea of someone being ripped from their life without that choice sat badly with me, in a way I hadn't expected.

"What about you?" she asked, clearly done with her own history. "How did you end up as king? I assume your father was—"

"No." I took a drink and set the flask between us. "My father was a warrior. A good one. But not royalty."

"Then how?" she prompted.

"Drakhoni choose their leaders through combat," I said. "When a king becomes unfit, cruel, or weak, or simply wrong for his people, challengers can issue a formal claim. The fights are to the death."

She absorbed that without flinching. "You killed the previous king."

"I did." The memory had dulled over centuries but never quite disappeared, the weight of the crown, the blood cooling on stone, the sound of warriors shouting approval into the night sky. "I was barely two hundred years old. Young for a Drakhoni. Most challengers wait until they're at least five hundred."

"What made you do it so young?"

"King Thayon was a moody bastard." I saw her mouth twitch. "Brilliant in certain ways, but he governed by his temper. Warriors punished for minor offenses. Decisions made on grievance rather than strategy. The kingdom was suffering." I set down the flask. "I believed I could do better. Whether that was courage or arrogance, I was never entirely sure."

"Probably both," she said.

"Probably," I agreed.

She shook her head slowly, not in disbelief but in something closer to wonder. "I spent eleven years teaching children to share and take turns. You spent yours killing a king and inheriting an empire. Our lives are genuinely incomparable."

A laugh surprised me, not a polite one, but something that came from further down. "And yet here we are."

"And yet." She smiled, then let it fade. "Is it always this heavy? The responsibility?"

"Always." I looked out over the valley, the familiar weight resettling across my shoulders. "Every choice touches thousands of lives. After the hibernation, the problems are larger and my people are more desperate, and every faction is watching to see if I'll bend toward their demands. Both sides believe they're right. Neither will forgive being disappointed."

"That's why you can't afford to trust me," Leila said quietly. "Because if my scent is some kind of manufactured trick, if the Alliance sent me here to make you pliable, then any weakness you show around me could be used against you."

I turned to look at her. The accuracy of it was, frankly, annoying. "Yes."

"But you still brought me here." She gestured at the mountain, the spread of food between us, the sky. "You showed me your dragon form. You let me ride on your back. Why?"

It was the question I'd been turning over since before dawn, lying awake while Artis packed the basket. I still didn't have a clean answer for it.

"Because I wanted to," I said. It was insufficient and true in equal measure. "And because when you stepped off that shuttle, I caught your scent and heard something I thought I'd never hear again."

She didn't move, didn't breathe. I could see her pulse quicken at the base of her throat.

"Marion," I continued, the name rough in my mouth. "Your scent carried hers. Not exactly, but close enough that my dragon recognized it. Close enough that I heard what I believed was her blood song moving through your veins." I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated with my own inability to explain something I'd spent the last week trying to understand. "I thought the Alliance had manufactured you somehow. That they'd taken her blood, what was precious to me, and twisted it into a weapon to control me."

"But?" she prompted softly.