I had a handler who couldn’t reach me unless Yuki allowed it. I had no extraction team, no phone of my own, no door I could open from the inside.
I had a bond under my ribs and a dead woman’s name on the table between us.
I looked at the book.
The woman in the photograph had been officially dead for eleven years when someone took the picture.
“Your friend,” I said.
“Yes.”
I waited.
Morag’s expression didn’t change, but the air around her did. Older grief had weight. It didn’t announce itself. It simply sat down and expected the room to make space.
“She was human,” Morag said. “Very clever. Too clever for men who thought cleverness was charming until it became inconvenient. She spoke six languages, laughed at inappropriate times, had a terrible singing voice but sang anyway.”
Nobody remembered a singing voice for political reasons.
“She was claimed by one dragon and then again by an influential political rival,” Morag said. “Two clans decided that made her a legal question. Then a diplomatic question. Then a territorial question. By the time anyone remembered she was a woman, she had become precedent.”
My chest pulled tight.
For one second, I thought it was Dominic.
Then I realized it was me.
“She was torn apart by the bond?” I asked.
Morag looked directly at me. “She was torn apart by everyone who found the bond useful.”
She leaned in enough to make sure I understood that this was the part she had come to say. “She listened to the politics,” she said. “We all told her she had to. We told her to be careful. Patient. Strategic. We told her peace depended on her restraint. We told her the wrong choice would start a war.”
Her hand stilled on the cane. “We weren’t entirely wrong.”
I said nothing.
“Politics will always make itself sound like survival,” Morag continued. “It’ll tell you to wait. To endure. To use him. To refuse him. To choose the option that gives one side leverage and the other side enough dignity not to retaliate. It’ll give every cage a necessary name.” Her gaze dropped once to the mark at the left of my throat. “Protective confinement. Joint custody. Bond consultation. Claimed party.”
I felt each term land.
One by one.
Small locks clicking shut.
“You’re here to tell me not to make Dominic useful,” I said.
“No.I’m here to tell you not to mistake usefulness for peace.”
I leaned back.
Morag’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “Dominic Graves will make himself useful to you. So will Rhain Solberg. So will Yuki. So will your handler. So will every person who wants a piece of what you have become. Some of them may even love you. That won’t make them harmless.”
“You think I should run,” I said.
“I think you should know what freedom feels like before everyone teaches you to call a negotiated cage a home.”
I looked toward the sealed door. “Freedom is currently behind three checkpoints and a dragon enforcer.”