[Draven’s POV]

I find her on the eastern wall, standing at the parapet with her arms wrapped around herself, watching the sea.

The moonlight catches her silver hair and I have to stop walking.

The ache is physical — a compression behind my ribs, sharp enough to steal breath. Not pain.

The particular devastation of seeing something so fierce and fragile that looking feels like holding a blade by the edge.

She doesn’t turn, but she knows I’m here.

I cross the remaining distance and wrap my arms around her from behind. She stiffens for half a second, then leans back against my chest.

Her body is still trembling — faint, residual, the aftershock of what Sera’s address cost her.

“You’re shaking,” I say against her hair.

“It’s been happening on and off since the hall. My body apparently has opinions about being publicly dissected.”

“Do you want to go inside?”

“No, the wind helps; and the sea doesn’t care about my bloodline.”

We stand like that for a while. The waves break against the cliffs below, rhythmic and indifferent, and the salt air carries the cold that comes off deep water after dark.

“Tell me something that doesn’t matter,” she says.

“What?”

“Something small, something that has nothing to do with prophecies or wars or houses. I need to think about something that doesn’t weigh anything.”

I rest my chin on the top of her head. “I hate fish.”

She turns slightly in my arms. “You live on a coastal fortress and you hate fish?”

“Every kind. Khaira loves it — she’d eat nothing but tuna if I let her. But every time the kitchen serves grilled mackerel, I have to keep my face neutral while my stomach tries to leave through my throat.”

“The feared Lord of the Black Dragon, brought low by a fillet.”

“What about you?”

“Porridge, of any kind and preparation. My mother used to serve it cold as punishment — plain oats, no salt, no honey. Three meals of it when I’d done something wrong, which was most days.”

She pauses, and I feel the tension in her shoulders shift — not deeper, but sideways, into something she can hold.

She continues. “I used to steal bread from the kitchen in Mintia. I waited until the cook’s back was turned and hid rolls in my sleeves, and I got caught twice. The second time, my father locked me in my room for three days.”

“For stealing bread?”

“For being hungry without permission and wanting things I hadn’t earned — that was the real offense.”

The words land in my chest and stay there, quiet and heavy.

“Khaira once ate a fishing boat,” I say.

Evelyn turns fully in my arms, eyebrows raised. “An entire boat?”

“She was young, barely two years bonded. A fisherman moored his skiff too close to the roosts, and Khaira decided the hull was a very large, very crunchy fish. Ate half of it before I could reach her. I had to pay the man with my father’s ceremonial silver, and the father didn’t speak to me for a week.”

She laughs.

The sound hits me like a wave. Not the controlled breath that passes for amusement in polite company — a real laugh, full and startled, breaking loose from somewhere she keeps locked.

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