Page 58 of Mating Her Dragon

Then Garrett understood the rest of it, slowly, and with a growing sense of dread that had nothing to do with fear for himself. "But you could go the other direction."

Sydney looked at him and didn't answer immediately. She didn't need to.

Garrett closed his eyes. "Of course you could."

Because roads ran both ways. Thresholds remembered both shores. Sydney controlled her own door, and Garrett, apparently, was the one fixed point that told her which direction was home, no matter where the road actually led.

Inbound: locked, unless invited.

Outbound: Sydney's to choose.

His first thought was not no. He noted that himself, with a kind of grim pride in his own restraint. He had questions.

"What happens if the rule doesn't hold?"

Sydney was honest with him, which he appreciated even as he hated the answer. She didn't know. Nobody knew, not with certainty. This had never been attempted, as far as either of them could tell, not in the specific way she was proposing.

But she believed, and the more she explained it, the more Garrett found himself believing it too, that Leviathan hadn't been waiting for the Mating because it would weaken them. He'd been waiting because it would strengthen the bridge enough for him to finally reach Sydney.

He'd mistaken their strength for vulnerability.

"He thinks opening the Mating Bond opens the door," Sydney said.

"Doesn't it?"

"Yeah." She met his eyes, steady. "Our door."

The split-second silence was heavy.

"Not his."

That lifted the weight… At least, a little bit.

Carrick called not long after, and Garrett was grateful, for once, that the man kept Keevandrie herself entirely out of the conversation. She'd had her confrontation. Nobody needed another.

*****

While Garrett was on the phone with Carrick, Sydney took the opportunity to check on Keevandrie. Closing her eyes, she tapped into the Magic she and Kara shared and took a little mental trip.

She found Keevandrie exactly where the Council had left her– contained, unbowed, sitting in a cell built to hold considerably more dangerous things than one furious Elven Sorceress.

"Come to gloat?" Keevandrie asked, without opening her eyes.

"Came to ask you something."

That got her eyes open. "Ask."

Sydney could feel it, standing there– how simple it would be. She'd learned enough now, seen enough of how Magic bent and yielded to her, to know she could reach past whatever walls Keevandrie had built around her own mind and simply take the answer. Every plan. Every fail-safe. Every piece of the centuries-long architecture still hidden somewhere Sydney hadn't found yet. She wouldn't even have to be cruel about it. Just quiet. Just certain. Keevandrie would never even feel it happen until it was already done.

She thought about it for exactly as long as it took to recognize the thought and then set it aside.

"What did you build the Living Threshold to survive?" Sydney asked instead, out loud, like a person asking another person a question.

Keevandrie studied her for a long moment. She was clearly waiting for the trick, the compulsion, the moment Sydney stopped playing fair. When it didn't come, something in her face shifted, very slightly.

"You're actually asking?"

"I'm actually asking."