Chapter 16 #2
"In this house, word doesn't travel. It's already arrived before you have." He rolled his eyes, and I felt Cinder relax. He stepped aside, gesturing us in. "Ignatius is in the study. He's been on the phone since seven, which means he's either deeply concerned or deeply irritated. Possibly both."
The house smelled like cedar and old paper and something faintly herbal that I'd never been able to identify—some tea Doryu brewed for Ignatius that probably predated the industrial revolution. Our footsteps were muffled by thick rugs as Doryu led us down the hallway, past bookshelves that lined the walls floor to ceiling, past framed photographs I didn’t examine.
The study door was open.
Ignatius stood by the window, silhouetted against the rain-gray light, his hands clasped behind his back, phone silent on his desk.
He was in one of his tailored suits—dark navy, silver tie, the kind of clothing that suggested he'd been dressed for battle since dawn.
When he turned, his eyes—gray, sharp, flickering with something almost metallic—landed on me first, then moved to Cinder with an intensity that made the air in the room feel heavier.
"Please sit," he said. Not a suggestion.
We sat. The leather chairs were deep and old and probably worth more than my annual salary.
Cinder perched on the edge of his, spine straight, hands folded in his lap—his professional posture, the one he used when he was determined to be taken seriously.
I wanted to reach for him but didn't, unsure of the protocol in Ignatius's study, where everything felt formal and weighted with centuries of significance.
Doryu closed the door behind us and settled into the chair beside Ignatius's desk.
Ignatius didn't sit. He studied us for a long, measured moment—the kind of silence that would have made most people squirm.
Cinder held it without flinching, and I watched Ignatius register that with the faintest shift of his brow.
"Tell me everything," Ignatius said. "From the beginning."
So I told him. All of it, starting further back than last night—starting with the first temperature drop Cinder had caught, the way his hands hadn't recoiled.
I left out the growing certainty in my dragon that something was happening between us that I couldn't control or explain, but I was talking to an ancient dragon.
I didn't need to spell it out. I told him about the apartment break-in, about the police dismissal, about the decision to take Cinder to the mountains so I could show him what I was.
And then I told him about why we suspected Gavin, with Cinder’s input.
The sedan. Cinder interrupted to clarify he hadn't recognized the car.
I went on to describe the impact. The way rage had detonated through my chest like a bomb, and the shift had taken me before I could stop it.
My voice went rough on that part—the shame of losing control, the terror of what could have happened—and Cinder's hand found my knee.
Warm. Steady. The anchor I didn't deserve but desperately needed.
Ignatius listened without interrupting. His expression didn't change, not when I described the shift, not when I admitted I'd frozen a quarter mile of road, not when I told him Cinder had walked toward me and touched my scales and the cold had bent around him like a river around a rock.
But at that last detail, something shifted in his eyes. Something ancient and knowing that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"The cold didn't touch him," Ignatius repeated carefully.
"No."
Ignatius's gaze moved to Cinder. Held there. The silence stretched long enough that I felt my dragon press forward, protective, bristling at the scrutiny directed at its—
At him.
"Cinder," Ignatius said, and his voice had changed—gentler now, but with an undercurrent of significance that made the room feel smaller. "May I ask you something personal?"
Cinder met his gaze without wavering. "Yes."
"When Taranis shifted—when you touched him in dragon form—what did you feel?"
I watched Cinder consider the question with the same methodical care he brought to everything. Not rushing. Not performing. Just thinking.
"Safe," he said finally. "Which doesn't make sense, because I was standing in front of a creature that could have killed me. But the cold—it wasn't hostile. It was almost... welcoming. Like it recognized me." He paused, and something vulnerable flickered across his features.
Ignatius closed his eyes. Just for a moment—barely a second—but in that second, something passed across his face that looked almost like relief. Or grief. Or both.
When he opened them again, he looked at me. Really looked, with the full weight of whatever he was, however many centuries he carried.
"There's something else," Ignatius said, and his tone shifted—harder now, the gentleness of the previous moment folding away like a blade being sheathed.
He moved to his desk and opened a slim folder that had been waiting there, its contents already organized with the kind of precision that suggested Doryu's hand. "Gavin Mercer."
Beside me, Cinder went very still.
Ignatius slid a printed page across the desk toward us. "I told you I would handle this. I've begun. And what I've found is... instructive."
I leaned forward. The page was a financial summary—account balances, transaction records, debt notices. None of it was addressed to me or Cinder. All of it bore Gavin's name.
"Your ex-boyfriend," Ignatius said, addressing Cinder directly, "is in catastrophic financial trouble.
Gambling debts, primarily. Online sports betting that escalated over the past eighteen months into something well beyond recreational, and has deteriorated sharply in the last four months.
He owes approximately one hundred and ninety thousand dollars to five separate platforms, two of which have already sold his debt to collection agencies.
His credit is destroyed. He's three months behind on his mortgage, and as of last night, his car was repossessed. "
Doryu leaned forward. "A silver Porsche Cayenne, but that was towed before the incident with the blue sedan."
Ignatius shrugged. "If it was him, he could have rented or borrowed a car."
Cinder stared at the numbers. I watched the color drain from his face in stages—first surprise, then confusion, then something harder that settled along his jaw.
"That's not possible," Cinder said quietly. "When I was with him, he was meticulous about money. Obsessive, even. He tracked every dollar. He used to lecture me about my student loan repayment schedule like it was a personal failing."
"People change," Doryu said from his chair, not looking up from his notebook. "Especially people with compulsive tendencies. The same personality traits that made him controlling in a relationship can redirect into other obsessive behaviors when the original target—you—is removed."
Cinder's hand tightened on my knee. I covered it with my own.
"But that's—" Cinder shook his head, the furrow between his brows deepening.
"Even if he's desperate for money, I don't understand why he's coming after me.
He knows I have nothing. He knew it when we were together.
I was a nurse making barely enough to cover rent.
The savings I had disappeared while I was out of work.
I didn't have family money. He used to remind me of that constantly.
" The bitterness in his voice was thin but unmistakable.
"It was one of his favorite ways to keep me small. "
"Precisely," Ignatius said. "And there are only so many exposés he could write before the world becomes bored. Which is why this pattern doesn't align with a straightforward financial motive."
Cinder frowned. "Then what is he after? And I understand the article even if I don't like it, but he was deranged last night."
Ignatius turned another page in the folder and placed it beside the first. This one was a series of emails—screenshots, it looked like, captured from somewhere I didn't want to think too hard about.
The headers showed correspondence between Gavin and someone whose name had been redacted, though a partial email domain was visible: something ending in .
"Before the gambling debts reached their current level," Ignatius continued, "Gavin made several inquiries to sports media outlets.
Freelance pitches. Story proposals." He tapped the page.
"All of them centered on the Colorado Dragons once you got the job. Most of them referred to the previous scandal.”
The blood in my veins went cold. Actually cold—I felt the temperature in the room dip before I caught it and hauled it back.
Cinder's eyes widened. "He's trying to sell another story."
"He's trying to sell something," Ignatius corrected.
"Whether it's a story, information, or leverage—that's what I haven't determined yet.
But the timeline is clear. The stalking behavior escalated after he began making these inquiries, not before.
He wasn't harassing you out of jealousy or obsession alone, Cinder. He was harvesting."