“You may take your time, Catalina.” She rose and took the phone. “The folder is for you.”
I looked at it.
“Read it when I leave.”
“And the phone?”
“The phone is for after you decide what you want Davis to believe.”
She crossed to the door then paused with her hand on the handle.
“Dominic didn’t consult me before the dining hall.”
I looked up. “I assumed.”
“In seventy years of service, Dominic Graves hasn’t taken a non-operational action without consulting me.” She didn’t turn around. “Last night was the first.”
The line beneath my sternum gave one small, hard pull. I worked to ignore it.
Yuki’s voice stayed level. “I’m telling you this because I want you to understand the discipline you’re reading in him is real. He isn’t a man who breaks easily.” A pause. “He broke for you.”
I didn’t answer.
She left and the locks re-engaged.
The folder contained a black and white photograph. A youngwoman in a tailored coat stood in front of a fjord beside a man in a leather one. On the back, in pencil:Martin Solberg and Margot Lunde. Tromsø, 1958.
* * *
Confinement had a schedule.
The deputy had walked me through it before Yuki arrived, with brisk neutrality, as if explaining meal service instead of captivity.
Breakfast came at seven in my quarters. The lock disengaged, an aide brought in a tray, and the lock re-engaged before the coffee had time to cool. From nine to ten, I had escorted access to the public-zone library: one enforcer, one approved route, no seaward grounds, no unscheduled corridors, and no pretending anyone believed this was freedom.
At eleven, I was allowed into a conference suite with approved books, monitored notes, and a deputy stationed inside the door. Lunch arrived at one, back in my quarters, followed by a second library window at three. At five, a deputy escorted me to a small conference room and read one paragraph about the joint custody deliberations, then answered none of my questions.
Dinner came at six. Final council update at nine. Then quarters again, lock engaged, nothing until breakfast.
The bond spent that first day adjusting and the second day stabilizing. By the third, it had stopped feeling like an event. It was simply a line drawn taut to wherever Dominic was in the compound, a steady channel of emotion, usually quiet, sometimes hot, once or twice sharp enough that I looked up from a book before remembering I didn’t actually want to know what had caused it.
He was holding the signal down. I could tell that much. Controlled.
Careful.
Almost polite.
Which was annoying, because I preferred him easier to hate.
* **
The next day, I followed the breadcrumbs Yuki had left for me in the photograph.
The library I had access to produced a dissertation from the 1950s on the intersection of bonded mates and dragon politics. Margot Lunde appeared once. One paragraph, buried between two more flattering case studies, stated that she had died of bond strain four months after entering a rival-clan bond.
Oh, goody. My future had citations.
The author moved quickly past her death into the diplomatic resolution that followed, which was described as quiet, successful, and commercially stabilizing. Naturally, he had been more interested in the trade implications than in the woman.