Toys.
That was the only word for them. Small creatures stitched from shadow-fabric, their bodies soft and yielding beneath my fingers. A dragon no bigger than my palm, its wings spread wide. A star that pulsed with gentle light when I held it. And this one—a creature I couldn't name, something between a cat and a cloud, its fur made of darkness that rippled when I touched it.
I picked it up before I could stop myself.
It was so soft. Impossibly soft. The kind of softness that made something in my chest crack open, made my throat tight with an emotion I refused to name. I'd never had toys as a child. Not really. My grandmother had been practical, focused on survival, on training me to use my gift without dying from it. There'd been no room for softness.
There'd never been room for softness.
I pressed the shadow-creature against my chest and felt something shift.
The walls rippled. The shadow-puppets woke.
They danced across the dark surfaces—silent stories unfolding in silhouette. Dragons soaring through starlit skies. Flowers blooming and dying and blooming again. Two figures meeting, reaching for each other, their hands almost touching before the scene dissolved and reformed into something new.
I watched, transfixed, the creature clutched tight against my heart.
This was it.
This was what he'd been offering.
Littlespace, some part of me whispered. The word I'd been avoiding, the concept I'd been fighting because it felt too childish, too weak, too much like admitting I needed something I'd spent twenty-seven years pretending I didn't want.
But no one was watching now.
No one would know if I let myself be small. If I curled up on the too-soft bed and pulled the weighted blanket over my shoulders and watched shadow-puppets dance while holding a toy I was far too old for. No one would judge. No one would see.
The weighted blanket settled around me like being held. The pressure was perfect—exactly what my body needed, exactly what my mind craved. I curled into a ball beneath it, the shadow-creature tucked under my chin, and let my eyes go half-lidded as the puppets told their silent stories.
Safe, something whispered. You're safe.
And I was. Impossibly, unexpectedly, I was.
Not because someone was protecting me. Not because I'd earned it through service or sacrifice or pain willingly taken. Just because I was here, in this space he'd made for me, wrapped in comfort I was finally letting myself accept.
The realization settled into my bones like warmth after a long cold.
I could do this on my own.
I could give myself permission to be small.
But beneath the sweetness, something else grew. An ache. I missed him. I missed his hands in my hair, his voice steady and certain, his presence that made everything make sense. I missed being watched, being known, being seen by someone who found me precious.
The comfort was real.
But it wasn't enough.
I lay there until the star-veins dimmed to something approaching evening, the shadow-creature pressed against my heart, and felt the hunger building beneath my ribs like a second heartbeat.
Sleeprefusedtocome.
I lay in the nursery bed, shadow-silk sheets cool against skin that burned. The weighted blanket had been kicked off sometime in the last hour—too heavy now, too much, when every nerve I possessed seemed to be firing at random. The transformation was doing something to me. Making me sensitive in ways I didn't understand. Making my body feel like a instrument strung too tight, waiting for someone to play it.
Waiting for him.
Through the bond, I could feel Morgrith.
Distance muted the connection, turned it from a river to a stream, but it was there. He was working. Doing whatever Dragon Lords did to identify souls and trace resonances and save the world.
