Chapter 94

Kate’s POV

The words still vibrate at the tip of my tongue. My cheeks remain hot, my eyes wide, and my mouth slightly open as if I’m surprised by the firmness of what I said — and I am. Then even that dissolves.

I take a step back, but before I see it, I feel a shift in the air pressure. No sound of footsteps, no new shadow added to the ones already surrounding me. Even so, my body knows: I’m not alone.

I turn.

Dan is leaning against one of the thick roots that descend from the ceiling, cut through the wall, and anchor into the ground like living pillars. His posture is rigid, arms crossed, and shoulders tense, and his eyes lock on me in a way that makes me retreat half a step without realizing it.

The jolt makes me burn. First comes irritation. Was he here the whole time? Watching while I confessed to the mirror things I can barely say out loud to myself? I hate the feeling of being spied on. But right after irritation, another heat seeps in, even more disturbing. Because if he’s here, it means he followed me. It means he didn’t leave me alone. It means he cares.

I don’t say anything, but my heart hammers.

My eyes return to him, searching for something — explanation, irony, anything. But Dan says nothing. He just uncrosses his arms. The movement is slow, yet even the dim lights caught in the cracks of the Mother-tree seem to hesitate, as if summoned to witness. His tail slides, brushing the floor like an animal sniffing out familiar ground. Only then does the rest of his body follow, steady, each step unhurried but full of intent.

“You were there,” I say. Not a question.

“I was.” His voice comes low. There’s no guilt in it.

“I don’t like an audience.”

“Neither do I. That’s why I chose the hour when everyone’s asleep.”

“You heard everything,” I conclude.

“I heard enough.” He doesn’t look away.

“And?”

“And I won’t decide for you, if that’s what you so badly need to know.” The words come without knots. “But I also won’t pretend this is only about you.”

The words fall like stones into a shallow lake. Not aggressive, but reverberating through me. I swallow hard. The Mother-tree creaks softly, and I feel exposed.

He keeps coming closer. The corridor narrows, or seems to. It’s not a clear threat, but there’s something about his presence that takes up more space than his body should.

“If you fall,” he says, his voice now carrying the weight of muffled thunder, “everything around you crumbles with you.”

My stomach twists. My chest aches as if about to split open. And suddenly the memory invades again: Varkhael draining my magic until I was nothing. The world shrinking around me. My heart stumbling in its own rhythm. My life slipping out of me. And all of it starting again the next day.

Anger rises in response.

“Then what’s the point of spying on me?”

The words escape sharply, and my fist closes at my side. My voice echoes down the corridor as if it were bigger than me. But Dan doesn’t retreat. On the contrary, he takes another step.

Now he’s close enough that I feel the impossible contrast of his body: heat that chills. My heart races, the air feels thicker, and shadows slide around us like a tide rising and enclosing me without touch.

I want to hate this feeling. But I can’t. The fear running through me tangles with something else, an attraction that keeps me on edge. My body reacts before my head: I draw a breath, and the air fills me as if it also carried part of him.

Dan looks down at me, but there’s no arrogance in the gold of those reptilian eyes. Only conviction — and it unsettles me, because it shakes the foundation of what I just affirmed before the mirror. Still, I don’t look away. I don’t yield. Even with my heart racing, even with my body torn between distance and closeness, I hold.

The silence that follows is a rope pulled too tight, fraying in despair, warning it won’t hold if we pull harder. But neither of us lets go.

He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze stays fixed on me, weighted with something I can’t decipher — and when he finally speaks, it’s not about me.

“Ashleen.”

The ground shifts beneath me, because no word carries more power over me than that one.

“She’s safe.”

It’s simple, and yet the impact crushes me inside. The sentence I always longed to hear, the certainty I chased in every risk, in every night, now exists, spoken from his mouth. I should feel free, but freedom tastes strange when it arrives suddenly.

Dan draws a deep breath.

“That means our deal… could already be over.”

My heart stops for an instant. I knew that. I repeated it to myself countless times: when Ashleen is safe, I return it. A promise is a promise. But hearing him say it now is different. The clarity of the statement weighs heavily than the memory of the deal.

“You could give back my True Name now.”

The words hang between us. I almost repeat them, tasting the bitterness of each syllable. My body reacts, remembering it takes just one decision from me, and he won’t need to be here anymore.

But then he adds:

“Except I can’t see myself away from all this anymore.”

My breath falters, caught, vanishes. I expect irony, some provocation, but there’s none. He doesn’t speak in the cold tone he uses to push away, nor with sarcasm meant to annoy. He speaks like someone stating a fact, asking for nothing in return. My chest tightens. Because, for the first time, I realize maybe he’s not here out of duty or Name. He stays by choice. And that realization, instead of comforting me, leaves me confused. Because if it’s choice, it means he could leave. That what keeps him here isn’t magic, but will. And will can change.

I stare at him, my heart split between tenderness and fear.

Why does he stay?

The words slip out before I can weigh them:

“What exactly is ‘all this’?”

Dan raises a brow, and the corner of his mouth threatens a smile that doesn’t fully form.

“Niv’leen and his hysterical screeching.”

I sigh, unwillingly. The image of Niv’leen, always with his voice one pitch too high, fills me. Dan’s irritation, always masked in grumpiness or in a shadow that vibrates stronger, too. The way that, behind all his posturing, he never stops listening to what Niv’leen says.

Dan continues:

“Ashleen and her elaborate hairstyles.”

A pang hits my chest. I see my sister’s tiny fingers trying to braid his hair, like earlier today, her tongue pressed to the corner of her mouth in concentration.

I notice he steps closer. Not much, just enough for me to feel the shift of air. And his hand rises. Slowly, as if asking permission in the gesture itself. His fingers reach my curls at temple height. He touches lightly, no tug, no play, just rests them there as if confirming a suspicion.

“And that unbearable stubbornness of yours, that makes me want to grab your shoulders and shake you until your reason falls back into place.”

My heart races again, now in a dizzying way. It’s not the insult — it’s the intimacy. The shock of hearing him speak of me like that, with his hand tangled in my hair, not hiding how much he’s read me. I should step back. Should laugh it off, push his hand away, say something sarcastic in return. But I can’t. I’m trapped in the contact, in the ease with which he touches me, as if it were always his right to do so.

The narrow corridor fills with that gesture, as if everything else has vanished. And despite my confusion, I don’t step away.

Dan doesn’t withdraw his hand. His fingers sink a little deeper into my curls, firm and careful, as if confirming I’m not an illusion ready to vanish at any moment. The closeness, the touch, the words — everything builds until it becomes an unbearable weight in the air, filled with a resonant sound rising from deep in his chest, a rumble that prickles my skin and makes me sigh.

Dan leans in with calculated slowness, as if giving me time to escape. But I don’t. My whole body is on alert, every nerve awake. My heart beats so loud I’m sure he hears it. My breath falters, short and uneven, and I don’t know what’s happening to me anymore.

His mouth nears, inch by inch. The world loses shape. Only the shrinking space between us exists. I close my eyes. For a moment, I let myself fall. My hands instinctively seek support and find his arms, gripping tight enough to feel the firmness of muscle. I hold, tug lightly, as if to shorten the distance further. My body reacts before my mind: an electric expectation runs through my bones, a heat starting in my stomach and climbing to my throat.

But memory returns.

The clearing. The training. The cut on his arm, black blood flowing like liquid smoke. His eyes trapping me. My lips almost brushing his. And the sound. That low, pain-soaked growl when he turned his face away. Not disgust, but it hurt anyway. The shame burning me for having misread, for confusing vulnerability with permission.

The memory crashes down like a wall.

My eyes snap open, and I see him there, so close that one breath would bridge our mouths. But insecurity paralyzes me, and a cruel thought cuts through: he must only be trying to convince me not to do what the Fairy Queen asked. To not return the Name. To persuade me with closeness, with sweetness I wouldn’t be able to refuse.

The joy that had flared in me stumbles over past pain. My hands still grip his arms, but no longer pull. My lips hover near, but no longer advance. My heart still races, but each beat feels like a brake.

I want him. Want him with terrifying clarity. But I don’t want this used as an argument. I don’t want to kiss him just to be bent.

My body hesitates, and the kiss doesn’t happen. It lingers on a thread. An almost. The distance between our mouths is no more than a breath, yet in that breath everything decides, because I lower my face and rest my forehead against his chest, exposed through the torn shirt. I nearly laugh at the thought that the neckline isn’t part of the design — it was ripped open to be that wide.

And then the sound comes. A low, deep, dragging growl — so deep it seems born in his ribs, not his throat. I recognize it instantly. The same sound from the clearing. Except now it isn’t a refusal, nor a warning. It’s sadness. A contained, heavy lament, as if his very shadow had cried. I feel the vibration before I understand it, as if it passed through his skin into mine. The sound grips me, because it isn’t made for me. It’s his. His pain.

“Sorry.”

The word comes with it, dense, without explanation. Not saying what for, not trying to fix it. Just asking for forgiveness.

My eyes burn. Not anger. Not shame. Raw empathy, as if I suddenly saw beyond the sarcasm, beyond the wall, beyond the massive body radiating shadows. He’s not only a dragon, nor a beast, nor a shadow. He’s also this sad sound, this apology without a place to go.

“I understand,” I murmur, because I don’t need details.

We’re caught in the same weakness.

I inhale slowly, searching for steadiness in the chaos. I feel weary. His and mine both.

“It’s okay,” I say. My voice shakes, but doesn’t retreat. I raise my head and meet his eyes. “We’re confused, overwhelmed, lost… but there’s no mistake in feeling lost.”

He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes stay on mine, and I don’t pull away. I let my hand rise to meet his. My fingers touch it first with hesitation, as if crossing a threshold. Then I hold.

Dan looks at our joined hands like it’s something improbable. But he doesn’t let go. He squeezes back, firm, not excessive.

“Let’s go.”

I turn, bringing him with me, guiding him down the corridor. The Mother-tree creaks softly, as if accompanying each step. The path to the room feels longer, maybe because the silence between us is full of unsaid things. But our linked hands carry it all.

“We both need to try sleeping,” I finally say.

He lets out a nearly inaudible sound, halfway between agreement and surrender. And lets me lead him.

The room greets us with the soft dusk that seems to breathe with the Mother-tree. Moss exhales a fresh scent, and the walls of living wood crackle faintly. I don’t release his hand as we step inside. I squeeze a little tighter, confirming the gesture.

Dan stops beside me, and for a moment we just stand there, unhurried to say anything. His fingers close more firmly around mine.

“Let one thing be clear: I didn’t lie in anything I said to you, nor in anything I did.”

His voice is low, but so clear that my heart stumbles in its rhythm. The words strike where doubt still ached. A deep pang runs through me, almost painful. A mix of tenderness and fear. Because believing him means opening space to recognize myself in “all this".

I breathe deep, but don’t answer. Not yet. Because I know the bigger choice hasn’t been made. The Queen’s price still waits, unmoving as a shadow in the corner of the wall.