The space beyond was enormous. Maybe forty feet across and twice as deep, with the same glass walls that characterized theentire citadel. Natural light flooded in from three sides, making everything glow.
But what made my breath catch was the division.
The room was split down the middle—not with walls, but with purpose. The left half was a workshop that would have made any scholar weep. Long tables crafted from polished wood stretched along the wall, their surfaces covered with tools I'd only seen in illustrations. Precision instruments—calipers, micrometers, small magnifying lenses on articulated arms. Clockwork mechanisms in various states of assembly, their brass gears catching the light. Electrical components I couldn't name, wires and crystals and metal housings.
Blueprints covered one entire wall, pinned up in overlapping layers. I could see technical drawings of storm-powered generators, communication relay designs, weapon systems, architectural plans. The detail was exquisite—perfect lines, precise measurements, notation in elegant handwriting that labeled every component.
Three massive bookshelves stood against the back wall, packed with volumes. Not religious texts. Engineering manuals. Magical theory. Mathematics. Natural philosophy. The collected knowledge of centuries, organized by subject and easily accessible.
A smaller desk sat in the corner, positioned to catch the morning light. It held blank paper, drawing supplies, and what looked like a journal already opened to the first page.
The right half of the room was something else entirely.
Soft carpet in storm-cloud gray covered the floor, thick enough that my toes sank into it. The walls were painted in gentle gradients—silver fading to lavender fading to the palest blue. Oversized pillows were scattered across the floor in clusters, each one looking soft enough to disappear into.
A massive bed dominated the far corner, easily big enough for three adults. It was covered in blankets—not the thin ritual cloth of temple cots, but actual quilts in blues and silvers and purples, layered so thick they looked like clouds. Pillows were piled at the headboard, different sizes and shapes, some with embroidered stars.
Shelves lined the walls at sitting height, packed with objects that made my throat tight. Plush toys—dragons and storm clouds with friendly faces, soft enough to hug. Art supplies in neat bins—colored pencils, paints, blank canvases. Books with illustrated covers showing fantasy scenes and adventure stories. Puzzle boxes. Building blocks. A rag doll with button eyes sitting on one shelf, similar to the one I'd seen the pickpocket girl clutching in the plaza.
A wardrobe stood open, revealing clothes in soft fabrics. Oversized shirts. Comfortable pants. Dresses in playful patterns. Everything looked like it would be too big—designed to envelop rather than constrain.
In one corner sat what looked like an art station. An easel with paints already set out. A pottery wheel, currently covered with a cloth. Clay tools arranged in neat rows.
The entire space radiated safety. Comfort. Permission to be small.
I stood in the doorway, unable to move. Unable to process what I was seeing.
"The workshop is for your brilliant mind," Zephyron said quietly behind me. "I read the intelligence carved into your back while I was extracting the shards. The mathematical precision of those ritual formulas. The way you documented observation and drew conclusions. That's extraordinary analytical capability, Thalia." His hand rested lightly on my shoulder. "The cult tried to use that only for their purposes. I want you to use it for yours."
I stared at the blueprints. At the tools. At the books that represented knowledge the cult had forbidden—too secular, too focused on the material world, too dangerous to minds meant for spiritual purity.
"The nursery is for the child you should have been." His voice carried that electric undertone, gentle now. Soothing. "The cult stole your adolescence. Took a fourteen-year-old girl and tried to make her into a weapon. They starved you, controlled you, suppressed every natural impulse toward joy or play or curiosity. They taught you that wanting comfort was weakness."
His hand squeezed gently.
"I don't believe those two parts of you are separate. You can be brilliant AND small. You can build clockwork mechanisms AND color with paints. You can solve complex magical equations AND curl up with stuffed toys." Through the bond, I felt his absolute conviction. "The cult said you had to choose. I'm telling you that you don't."
I took a step into the room. Then another. My feet sank into the soft carpet and something in my chest cracked.
I walked to the workshop side first. Ran my fingers over the tools—cool metal, precision engineering, each one crafted for a specific purpose. Picked up a magnifying lens and watched how it caught the light, bending it according to physical laws I'd studied in stolen books.
The blueprints drew me like gravity. I moved closer, studying the storm-powered generator design. The mathematics were elegant. Beautiful. The kind of applied magical theory that made my brain light up with possibilities. With questions. With the urge to understand how it worked and maybe how to improve it.
I'd forgotten what curiosity felt like.
The books called to me next. I pulled one at random—Advanced Electrical Theory and Practical Application. Opened it. The pages were crisp and new, unread, waiting. Thefirst chapter started with fundamentals before building toward complex concepts. Designed to teach. To illuminate. To share knowledge rather than hoard it.
Then I turned to the nursery half.
The contrast was too much. Too extreme. The clinical workshop and then this—softness and comfort and permission to regress into something the cult had beaten out of me years ago.
I walked to the shelves, touching a plush storm cloud. The fabric was impossibly soft under my scarified palm. Pale gray with a friendly embroidered face and little lightning bolt arms. Cute. Playful. The kind of thing a child would love.
I'd never had toys as a child. My family had been merchants, practical people who believed in useful objects rather than frivolous ones. And then the cult had taken me and toys had been forbidden entirely—childish attachments that prevented spiritual growth.
My hand trembled as I picked up the cloud. It was lightweight. Perfectly weighted to hug. The stitching was meticulous, every seam reinforced so it wouldn't tear.
"Every Dragon Master's bond eventually activates. And every bond is founded on the same dynamic. The Daddy and the Little. This means that you, deep down,needto be small. And I, deep down, have to be big for you."
