“It wasn’t always like this,” he admitted. “But recently, I’ve softened a little. Ever since my brothers started to bond . . . humans have changed in my eyes.”
As he spoke, I could sense the truth in his words through the bond. Memories of cruelty and feelings of superiority bubbled up in him. But it had all changed when one of his servants, Mira, had bonded to another dragon Lord, Sereis. When she’d left,there had been a great change in him, and unfolding of empathy and understanding.
It was humbling to feel.
"So,” I said, overwhelmed by the depth of his emotion, “they're planning gardens for someone they just met?"
"You're my mate." He said it simply, like that explained everything. Through the bond, I felt the fierce possessive pride that came with those words. "To them, that makes you family. They've been waiting for you as long as I have."
The tour started in the kitchens, a massive space carved from white stone with windows that caught morning light and threw it across copper pots and marble counters. Tam, the head cook, was a young man with flour in his dark beard and laugh lines carved deep around his eyes.
"Finally!" He clapped Caelus on the shoulder hard enough that a normal person would have staggered. "Do you know how impossible he is to cook for? Never eats enough at formal dinners, forgets meals entirely when he's working, lives on air and stubbornness."
"Tam—"
"Don't you 'Tam' me, my lord." He turned to me with conspiratorial warmth. "You'll help me, won't you? Make sure he actually eats what I send up?"
Caelus's ears went pink. Through the bond, I felt his embarrassment mixing with deep affection for this man who worried about him like a mother hen.
There was also shame. There had been a time when he’d treated Tam badly. I felt wonder at the way this eternal dragon had changed, improved himself.
The gardens were next, a series of terraced spaces that shouldn't have been possible at this altitude. Plants that belonged in tropical jungles grew next to arctic flowers, desert cacti flourished beside water lilies. Lyssa, the head gardener,was explaining the magical microenvironments when she let slip, "Lord Caelus spends hours out here when he can't sleep. Talks to them like they're children, tells them about wind patterns and storm formations."
"Lyssa," Caelus protested, but she just smiled.
"They grow better when you do. The moonflowers especially—they've been blooming non-stop since yesterday."
The libraries took up three full floors, connected by floating platforms that moved at a gesture. Ancient texts in languages I didn't recognize, scroll cases that hummed with preserved magic, books so new the ink still smelled fresh.
"My teacher wrote this," Caelus said, pulling out a volume that looked older than the mountain. "Three thousand years ago, she taught me that freedom and responsibility aren't opposites—they're partners. You can't have one without the other."
Throughout the tour, servants approached us constantly, with genuine warmth. An older woman scolded Caelus for working too late—"Those crystals were singing until dawn, my lord. You need rest too." A pair of young men asked his opinion on their debate about wind patterns. A little girl with ribbons in her hair ran up and tugged on his sleeve.
"Lord Caelus, can you make it rain? Just a little? Please?"
Without hesitation, he knelt to her level and cupped his hands. A tiny cloud formed between his palms, perfect and impossible, dropping miniature raindrops that made her squeal with delight. She ran off to show her friends, and through the bond I felt his simple joy at her happiness.
We ended up on a covered bridge connecting two towers, open on both sides to show the sea of clouds below. The afternoon sun painted everything gold, and for a moment we just stood there, aware of each other in a way that had nothing to do with words.
"I have a reputation," he said suddenly. "For being cruel. There's truth in that, especially in the past. I used to keep wallsbetween myself and others. I've been called cold, calculating, indifferent to human suffering."
"But not here."
"No. Not here." He leaned against the railing, wind playing with his hair. "Here, with those who depend on me, I can be what I'm supposed to be. Guardian. Protector. Caretaker." A bitter smile touched his lips. "It's easier with them. They need me to be strong, stable, safe. It's a role I understand."
"And with others?"
"With others, I'm terrified they'll see the emptiness I've carried so long. I've waited millennia, Wren. And recently, I watched other Dragon Lords find their mates, convinced myself I was unworthy, built a life that didn't need completion." He turned to look at me fully. "I don't know how to be someone's mate. I know how to be a lord, a protector, a provider. But a partner? An equal? Someone worth binding your life to?"
The vulnerability in his voice made my chest ache. Through the bond, I felt the depth of his uncertainty—this ancient, powerful being genuinely didn't know if he was enough.
"You caught me," I said softly. "When I was falling, when I'd chosen to die rather than be used, you caught me."
"Anyone would have—"
"No." I moved closer, close enough to see the storm-patterns in his gray eyes. "You said it yourself. You couldn't not catch me. That's not cruelty, Caelus. That's the opposite."
He was quiet for a long moment, processing this. Through the bond, I felt him turning the idea over like examining a foreign object, trying to reconcile it with his self-perception.
