My throat is dry, but I force the words out. "The drownings. You're behind them."
"Among other things." He settles onto a rocky outcrop with casual ease, crossing his legs like we're having tea instead of a kidnapping. "But the drownings are merely a means to an end. Building power. Accumulating the resources necessary for larger workings."
"Who are you?"
"Mikhail." He says it like he's offering his hand at a dinner party. "And you're Dr. Lila Mercer, marine biologist, brilliant mind, inconvenient investigator."
Larger workings. The phrase sends ice down my spine. If ritual murder is just the preparation, what comes next?
The analytical framework that's kept me functional through every impossible thing I've witnessed since arriving on Skara takes over. "What are you?"
"A phoenix." He says it like he's commenting on the weather. "Immortal, reborn from fire and ash, older than the stones beneath your feet."
"That's biologically impossible." The words come automatically, years of training asserting itself despite everything I've seen.
"So are dragons. Yet you saw one transform to save you." His smile carries genuine amusement. "Tell me, Dr. Mercer, how does your scientific mind reconcile what you've witnessed?"
The question is bait, but answering might buy time. Might give me information I can use. "I don't know. The transformation violated every principle of conservation of massI understand. The energy required would be astronomical. The cellular restructuring alone should take months, not seconds."
"And yet it happens." He leans forward with interest sharpening his features. "What else troubles your scientific sensibilities?"
I grab onto the lifeline of familiar ground. Questions. Observation. Data collection. The tools that have kept me sane through grant applications and peer review and now apparently supernatural kidnapping.
"When you transform into fire, where does your consciousness reside? Fire is just rapid oxidation, a chemical reaction. There's no biological substrate for thought, for memory, for identity. How do you maintain continuity of self when your physical form becomes plasma?"
Mikhail's laugh sounds genuinely delighted. "You're a scientist even now, trying to fit impossibilities into frameworks built on empirical observation. Finn certainly has a type."
Finn. The dragon who saved my life. The man who tried to scare me away for reasons I'm starting to understand.
The pieces begin to fall into place. "You knew his mate."
"Saoirse." The name carries weight, something that might be genuine emotion beneath casual cruelty. "Brilliant woman, fierce and stubborn, determined to understand a world that should have terrified her. She asked questions too, tried to catalogue the supernatural like specimens in a collection. Wanted to know if shapeshifting followed natural law, whether immortal blood differed from mortal, if magic could be measured and predicted like the tides."
She sounds like someone I would have liked—would have collaborated with, shared data, argued over methodologies while drinking too much coffee in a lab that smelled like preservatives and possibility.
"What happened to her?"
"I killed her." No hesitation. No remorse. Like he's describing a simple action with inevitable consequences. "To free Finn from a weakness that would have destroyed him. He would have claimed her, bound her to dragon form, made her immortal like us. But that wouldn't have changed what she was—a vulnerability enemies could exploit. Love makes immortals weak, Dr. Mercer. It gives them something to lose. I simply removed that weakness before it could be used against him."
The casual justification, the complete certainty in his voice, makes my stomach turn. This isn't rationalization. He genuinely believes every word. Believes he did Finn a favor by murdering the woman he loved.
"You murdered someone and called it mercy."
"I gave him a gift. Freedom from attachment. Liberation from the weakness that makes immortals fall. Mortals are temporary, but our friendship was eternal. Or it would have been, if he could have seen past his grief."
I understand now. This isn't just about power or revenge. This is obsession. Centuries of twisted justification. A friendship warped into something monstrous by time and delusion. Mikhail has convinced himself that murdering Saoirse was an act of love, that Finn should be grateful for the gift of isolation and grief.
Finn isn't just grieving a lost love. He's carrying the weight of a friend's betrayal, the knowledge that someone he trusted murdered the woman he loved and called it a favor. That's why he tried to drive me away. Why he showed me his dragon form and expected me to run. Why every interaction has been threaded through with desperate denial.
He's terrified of caring about someone who could be used as leverage. Who could be killed by the same twisted logic that took Saoirse.
I'm walking the same path she did. Asking the same questions. Refusing to be frightened away from impossible data. And Mikhail is watching history repeat itself with the satisfied patience of someone who's lived long enough to see patterns emerge across centuries.
"You're insane." The words come out steady despite the fear. "You didn't want to free him. You wanted to break him."
Mikhail alters his expression. The casual amusement bleeds away, replaced by something colder, sharper, more dangerous. His eyes flash with inner fire that makes the flames in the ritual circle look dim by comparison.
"Then I'll break him again. Properly this time."
