"The door is always unlocked." He closes his fist and the flame dies. "Doesn't mean it's an invitation."
"I'm taking it as one anyway."
The rookery is enormous, stone-vaulted and open at the top to let the larger dragons land and depart. Empty except for us, the faint smell of sulfur, and the warmth that radiates from the walls themselves, soaked in centuries of dragon fire. Nothing like the cold, controlled atmosphere of the reaper wing. Almost comfortable, which I don't let myself admit out loud.
I find a spot on the ledge across from him and sit. The stone is warm against the backs of my thighs.
"Eveline's people made another pass at the east corridor this morning," I say. "Before breakfast. Someone deflected it before I even registered the signature."
"You're welcome."
"I didn't say thank you yet."
"No. You said I'm welcome, which is worse, because now I have to be gracious about it." He picks up a small piece of charred wood from beside him and turns it over in his fingers, not looking at me. "You're following me to say thank you. That's new."
"I'm following you because Professor Darent's advanced control seminar was cancelled and I had nowhere else to be." I pause. "Also to say thank you."
He almost smiles. Doesn't quite get there.
He sets the charred wood down and stands, moving toward the center of the rookery floor. The space gives him room to move, and he takes it, rolling his shoulders once before spreading his stance.
"Watch," he says.
I watch.
He raises one hand, and fire comes. Not the small controlled sphere from before. This is different, a long, low current that moves from his palm outward, and it changes color as it travels, gold at the source shifting to deep amber at the furthest point. Precise. No waste in it. He shapes it, draws it back, and it follows like a living thing that knows who it belongs to.
"Show-off," I say.
"Control demonstration." He drops his hand and the fire vanishes. "There's a difference." He turns. "You can't absorb dragon fire the way you absorb other magic. It doesn't work that way. Fire signature is tied to the source. Try to pull it in and it burns from the inside."
"Good to know."
"It's not general knowledge. I'm telling you because Eveline's people have been running fire-adjacent hexes alongside the locator work. Malik's charm disrupts the locator frequency, but if one of them decides to escalate to something direct, you need to know not to pull it."
I consider that. "You've been watching their signature patterns."
"I've been watching them watch you." He picks up the charred wood again, turns it once, puts it down. "Different thing."
"Thane."
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything complicated."
"You were going to ask why again. You have that look."
"I have a look now."
"Yes." He crosses his arms. "It's the look you use right before you say something that makes a situation worse."
"That's incredibly specific for someone who claims not to pay attention to me."
He doesn't answer that. He goes back to the ledge and sits, and the silence stretches between us, easier than the ones in corridors.
Then something on the far side of the rookery cracks.
It's not a sound I have time to identify before Thane is moving, and before I understand what's happening, his arm is across my chest and his body is between me and the upper arch, where a section of the drainage channel above the second-tier landing has given way. The stone comes down carrying with it a burst of residual fire from the heating channels inside the wall, a contained explosion that throws heat and light and debris across the rookery floor in a single fast wave.
