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But as I stood there and let the knowledge settle, something else became apparent. Something that hadn't fully registered until this exact moment, standing in the garden with the night-blooming flowers scenting the air and Leila's pulse hammering visibly at her throat.

The faint undertone of Marion's scent faded. Not diminished. Gone completely, like it had accomplished what it needed and faded away. What remained was only Leila. Her particular sweetness, her specific complexity, the song of her blood running through her veins. Rich and layered and utterly her own. Nothing like the soft, single-note melody Marion's blood had carried on that cliff above the sea.

"That's why you're attracted to me," Leila said, and the flatness in her voice was worse than anger would've been. "Because I carry her bloodline. I'm just an echo. A substitute."

"No." It came out sharper than I'd intended. I closed the distance between us before I'd weighed the decision, until I stood close enough to touch her, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off her skin like heat from a hearth fire. "You're wrong."

"How can I be wrong?" The pain in her voice was quiet and controlled and absolutely unambiguous. "The genetics don't lie, Kavan. I'm her descendant. That's why you could smell her on me."

"Let me try to explain something I should've understood seven hundred and fifty years ago." I raised my hands slowly and cupped her face. She let me, though I felt the tension humming through her, felt her deciding whether to trust what I was about to say. Her skin was warm under my palms, her pulse jumping fast beneath my fingertips. "Marion was tall. Nearly as tall as Sanyra. Dark hair, brown eyes, slender in a way that came from not having enough to eat rather than natural build." I held Leila's gaze and made myself say the rest of it. "She was quiet. Subdued. Years of her husband's cruelty had shaped her into someone who barely spoke above a whisper, and when she smiled, it never quite reached her eyes."

Leila's breath was unsteady, but she didn't look away.

"We had one night together," I continued, my voice rougher now. "One night where I thought I understood what the legends meant. She was beautiful, and she wanted me, and for those few hours I let myself believe that fate had finally given me something after centuries of waiting. We talked. Not much. She was afraid of her husband, afraid of being discovered. But there were moments where she smiled at me like I was the only thing keeping her tethered to hope. And when I touched her, when I was inside her, I felt something shift in my chest. I thought it was recognition. I thought it was the bond."

I ran a hand through my hair, remembering the softness of her skin, the tremor in her voice when she whispered my name in the darkness.

"But even then, even in those moments when I should have felt the absolute certainty the legends describe, something was missing. Her blood song was beautiful, yes. But it was like listening to music from behind a closed door. The melody came through soft and distant, almost fragile. The moment I stepped away from her, the song faded. I could leave her side and feel nothing pulling me back. No ache. No compulsion. No desperate need to return to her."

I looked at Leila then, seeing the understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes.

"I told myself the old legends exaggerated. I was young and grieving and confused about what I was supposed to feel. I never once considered that I might've misunderstood what I was hearing altogether."

Leila's hands had gone still against my chest, though she hadn't pulled away. "You're saying Marion wasn't your blood singer."

"I'm saying Marion was the beginning of her." The truth settled into me with a strange, aching clarity. Grief and relief tangled together in a way I hadn't expected. "She carried something in her blood, a resonance, an echo of a song that hadn't been born yet. Powerful enough to travel through generations because the bond at the end of that bloodline was going to be exceptional. Powerful enough that a dragon standing on a cliff seven hundred and fifty years too early could hear a whisper of a female who wouldn't exist for centuries." I searched her face, needing her to understand this the way I finally did. "Her blood whispered, Leila. Yours sings. And mine answers it. That's the difference. That's the piece I never had until you walked down that ramp and every instinct I own turned toward you like a compass finding north."

"So all this time, you thought fate had given you a mate and then let her be murdered." Her voice had gone soft, careful, like she was turning the idea over slowly enough not to bruise it.

"I thought fate was cruel." My throat tightened around the admission. "For seven hundred and fifty years, I told myself I'd been given the one gift our kind is granted and that I'd failed to protect it." I shook my head slowly, still absorbing the shape of the alternative though I knew in the depths of my soul it was the absolute truth. "But fate wasn't giving me a mate that night on the cliff. It was giving me a promise. The promise of you."

Leila searched my face for a long moment, her eyes bright and wet, her breath coming unsteady between us. "That's a very convenient realization to have right after I accused you of using me as a substitute."

A rough laugh escaped me, startled out by the sheer, familiar audacity of her. Even now, even with her voice still shaking. "Believe me, wildflower, I'd have preferred to figure this out seven hundred years ago and saved myself a great deal of guilt." I let my hands slide down to her shoulders, needing the contact, needing the anchor of her presence grounding me after the vertigo of everything rearranging itself inside my skull. "But I'm not saying it to win an argument. I'm saying it because it's true, and because I think some part of me has known it since the mountain when I wanted to kiss you so badly I would have sold my kingdom for a taste of your lips."

"You're sure." It wasn't quite a question, not anymore, but it wasn't quite surrender either.

"I've never been more certain of anything in my life, and I've been alive a very long time." I leaned down until my forehead rested against hers, breathing her in, letting that layered, impossible song of her fill every part of me. "I don't want you because you carry an echo of something I lost. I want you because you're relentlessly, impossibly yourself, and I've never in seven hundred and fifty years met anyone else like that."

She was crying openly now, tears streaming down her face, but when she looked up at me, there was something in her eyes that made my chest ache. Something that looked like hope.

"How do I know that's true?" she whispered. "How do I know you really want me and not just the ghost of her?"

The question hung between us, weighted with all her fear and uncertainty. I realized then that words weren't going to be enough. I needed to show her. Prove that this was real.

"Tell me how," I said. "Tell me what I need to do to prove it to you."

She bit her lip, and I watched her mind work behind those emerald eyes. Then, slowly, a small smile curved her lips. "Take me on a date."

I blinked. "A what?"

"A date," she repeated, now definitely smiling despite the tears. "You know, where you take me somewhere and we spend time together and you try to woo me with your charm and wit."

"I don't know what that is," I admitted, feeling oddly off-balance. "Is that an Alliance custom?"

She laughed, and the sound loosened something I'd been holding tight without realizing it. "It's a human custom. Though I guess it probably wasn't a thing on Earth seven hundred and fifty years ago, was it?"

"We had courtship," I said slowly. "But it was more formal. Involved families and negotiations and—"