She told me about her father, the merchant who'd sold her into an arranged marriage for trade rights. About the husband-to-be who'd made her skin crawl, whose eyes had followed her with something cold and possessive. About her flight from that fate and the dragon who'd found her on the road, half-starved and desperate.
"He didn't have to help me," she said, watching Davoren's massive form wade into the lake. "A Dragon Lord doesn't owe anything to a runaway merchant's daughter. But he did. He looked at me like I mattered."
I knew the feeling. The wanting it, anyway. The wondering what it would be like.
"And now?" I asked.
Kara smiled—soft, private, the kind of smile that wasn't really meant for anyone else to see. "Now he's everything. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else."
I filed that away. Tucked it into the same drawer where I kept all the impossible things. It sat there, glowing faintly, like an ember that refused to die.
The Black-Glass Keep emerged from the horizon on the second evening, and I forgot how to breathe.
It rose from a volcanic island like a dark dream made solid—spires of obsidian reaching toward the sky, walls that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Liquid fire threaded through channels carved in the stone, and where the lava met the sea, steam rose in perpetual columns. The whole structure should have been terrifying. Inhospitable.
Instead, I felt something loosen in my chest. A recognition I couldn't explain.
We landed in a courtyard paved with black glass that reflected the sky like a dark mirror. I slid from Davoren's back on unsteady legs, grateful for solid ground even if that ground felt like standing on frozen midnight.
The dragon's form shifted.
I'd known, intellectually, that the Dragon Lords could take human shape. But watching it—watching those massive wings fold inward, watching scales ripple and reform into skin, watching something ancient and impossibly powerful compress itself into the shape of a man—that was different.
Davoren in human form was enormous. Not tall, exactly, but broad, solid, built like something carved from the volcanic stone of his own keep. His hair was smoke-gray streaked with deep copper, bound in elaborate braids. His skin gleamed like dark bronze. And his eyes...
His eyes were embers. Literal embers, glowing with inner fire that should have been terrifying but somehow wasn't.
I straightened my spine. Squared my shoulders. Prepared myself for the formal greeting due a Dragon Lord, the kind of ancient protocol I'd read about in books but never imagined using.
Kara ran to him.
Not walked. Ran. Like a child racing toward home after a long journey.
Davoren caught her easily, lifting her off her feet, pulling her against his chest with hands that looked like they could crush stone. For a moment, they just held each other.
Then Davoren spoke, and his voice was nothing like what I'd expected.
"There's my good girl." Low. Tender. Intimate. "Daddy missed you."
Kara made a sound—small, vulnerable, something between a sigh and a sob. She pressed her face into his neck. "Missed you too, Daddy. So much."
Something cracked open in my chest.
Not jealousy. That wasn't the right word. Jealousy implied I thought I deserved what they had, that I resented them for having it. This was different. This was hunger. A desperate, wordless wanting for something I'd never had and never thought to ask for.
I'd spent my whole life being needed. Useful. The one who showed up when everything had gone wrong, who took the pain no one else could bear. But no one had ever held me like that. No one had ever caught me when I ran. No one had ever called me good, or looked at me like I was something precious that needed protecting.
I looked away.
My hands were shaking. I busied them with my small pack—the few belongings I'd brought from my cottage, barely enough to fill a saddlebag. I studied the black glass beneath my feet like it held the answers to questions I couldn't name.
But I could feel Davoren's eyes on me.
When I finally looked up, he was watching me with an expression I couldn't read. Kara was still nestled against his chest, but his attention had shifted. Those ember eyes saw too much.
"The Shadow Lord is expecting you," Davoren said. His voice had shifted back to something more formal, but I caught an undertone of . . . something. Gentleness, maybe. Knowing. "We leave within the hour."
I nodded. Didn't trust my voice.
