Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 154

CHAPTER 128 PART 2

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“I need someone in Grayson City who reads like me,” Marcus said. “Shadow Warriors are tracking movement patterns. If I disappear and you disappear simultaneously, the picture becomes clear.” He held her gaze. “You’re the decoy. Act accordingly.”

Cosmo processed this for three seconds. “So I stay here, pretend to be you, and attract assassins.”

“You enjoy it.”

“I-” She paused. “That’s not the point.”

“Quinn stays too,” Marcus said, glancing at his wife. “The Hartford Group needs you visible. Zachary’s people are still watching for instability. Disappearing now gives them an opening.”

Quinn nodded once. The agreement was immediate and without performance – the Saintess’s particular form of trust, which expressed itself not through declaration but through the simple absence of objection.

“I’ll have Aaron’s people supplement your security,” Marcus continued. “And I’ll make a call before I leave.”

He pulled out his phone and dialed.

It rang twice.

“Marcus Steel.” Amadeus Fairbanks answered with the specific energy of a man who treated every phone call as a theatrical event. “To what do I owe—”

“Quinn Hartford is in Grayson City,” Marcus said. “While I’m gone, she doesn’t get touched. Not a threat, not a tail, not a shadow she doesn’t already know about.” A pause. “I’m not asking.”

A brief silence on the line. Then Amadeus’s voice shifted the performance stripped back, something more direct beneath it. “Understood. She’ll be covered.” He paused. “We’ve made progress on the Deep Cold situation as well. Three of their-”

Tell me when I’m back.”

Marcus ended the call.

He looked at Quinn. She was watching him with that composed, cool distance she wore in public, the version of her face that gave nothing away to anyone watching. But her Saintess aura had moved – barely perceptibly, a warmth at the edges that wasn’t temperature but was something adjacent to it.

He crossed to her. His arms went around her once, unhurried, and her Saintess energy and his dragon aura pressed briefly against each other the way they always did not merging but recognizing, the specific resonance of two very old things that had found each other and were not inclined to explain why.

He stepped back.

“Don’t do anything I’d have to apologize for,” he said.

Quinn’s expression didn’t change. “I never do anything that requires apology.”

“I know.” He looked at her for one more second, then turned toward the elevator.

Five-River Province announced itself from the air as something between a city and an ambition – a coastal metropolitan sprawl that had been growing faster than its infrastructure could contain for twenty years and had decided to treat the overflow as a feature. The harbor caught afternoon light in long silver panels. The financial district climbed the hillside in glass and steel with the aggressive confidence of money that had somewhere to go.

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Marcus Steel walked through Hargrove International Airport in a white suit and dark glasses, his dragon aura contained to something barely above baseline – a shimmer that registered as important without specifying why. The terminal traffic moved around him with the unconscious deference that powerful things generated in crowds, a parting that nobody initiated and nobody acknowledged.

He was three steps from the arrivals exit when someone fell into pace beside him.

She was early twenties, professionally dressed in the loosely interpreted sense of the phrase, with the kind of confidence that came either from experience or from having never yet encountered a situation that couldn’t be resolved by smiling at it.

“So,” she said, without preamble. “You finally noticed.”

Marcus looked at her.

“I’ve been sitting two rows behind you for three hours,” she continued. “Dropped my pen twice. Made eye contact four times. Laughed at nothing near your row.” She tilted her head. “Most men pick that up by cruising altitude.”

“Most men are paying attention,” Marcus said.

She laughed as though he’d agreed with her. “I need your contact. There’s a bet involved. My friend Simeon said I couldn’t get it.” She held out her phone with the cheerful certainty of someone who had never lost this particular kind of bet. “Just a number. You never have to hear from me again.”

Marcus looked at the phone. Then at her. The dragon eyes behind the glasses registered the situation with the mild interest of something enormous observing something very small.

He took the phone. Added a contact. Handed it back.

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