Chapter 5 #2
I didn't close them. Couldn't, really, not when the world had become so impossibly detailed that blinking felt like voluntary blindness. He sighed—I felt it more than heard it, the expansion of his lungs creating minute pressure changes I could track—but didn't insist.
The first wall we walked through made my brain try to turn itself inside out.
Not painful, exactly, but like trying to see all sides of a cube simultaneously while also being the cube.
My human memories insisted we'd just passed through solid matter, but my new perception understood the truth: the wall existed in seventeen dimensions, and we'd simply stepped through dimensions four through eleven where it wasn't solid at all.
The mathematical elegance of it was so beautiful I might have cried if my tear ducts still worked the same way.
"You're seeing it," Sereis said, and there was something like pride in his voice. "Most transformed beings take weeks to perceive dimensional architecture."
"It's like . . ." I struggled for words to describe what my enhanced vision showed me. "Like the space between spaces has its own geography."
"Precisely." Another wall approached, this one rippling with trapped lightning that my human self would have feared. Now I could see it was merely aesthetic, the electricity following predictable patterns that we slipped between like threading a needle. "Your mind is adapting remarkably quickly."
Three more transitions, each one easier as my consciousness learned to process reality's flexibility.
The corridors weren't just passages—they were equations made manifest, shortcuts through existence that my mathematical training helped me grasp even if I couldn't have calculated them myself.
By the time we reached my chambers, I understood why he'd designed them this way.
Not for efficiency, though they were efficient.
For beauty. For the sheer artistic joy of making space dance.
The Sensory Bath drew us with humid air that tasted of mineral salts and lavender, though I could detect seventeen other scent notes my human nose had missed—crystallized moonlight (apparently that had a smell), powdered pearl, essence of deep winter.
Sereis lowered me into the water with the kind of care usually reserved for ancient manuscripts, and the temperature hit my transformed skin like silk made liquid.
"Don't move," he commanded softly, and my body obeyed before I could form the thought to comply. The bond between us hummed its approval at my automatic submission, sending warmth cascading through places that had nothing to do with the bath's heat.
His hands were methodical. Clinical, almost, except for the way his fingers lingered possessively on each part of me he cleaned.
He started with my hair, working out the tangles our activities in the Grotto had created, massaging my scalp with pressure that made me want to purr.
The oil came away in rainbow sheens on the water's surface, dissipating into nothing as the bath's magic consumed it.
When he moved to my shoulders, tracing each frost pattern with a soft cloth, I shivered despite the warmth.
His touch was completely asexual—I could feel his focus through the bond, intent only on my care and comfort.
But it was also absolutly possessive, claiming every inch of skin he cleaned as territory under his protection.
"Arms," he said, lifting each one to wash from shoulder to fingertip.
He paid special attention to my palms, as if erasing any memory of when they'd been damaged, when they'd bled.
"Your transformation preserved your scars," he noted, thumb tracing a thin line on my left hand from a childhood accident.
"Interesting. The magic usually erases such imperfections. "
"Maybe it knew they weren't imperfections," I said without thinking, then tensed at my own boldness.
But he only hummed agreement, moving the cloth down my torso with the same careful attention.
By the time he'd washed my legs, my feet, even between my toes with disturbing thoroughness, I felt cleaner than I'd ever been.
Not just physically—spiritually, somehow, as if he'd washed away every moment of fear and servitude that had clung to me.
He helped me stand, water streaming off my marked skin, and wrapped me in towels that materialized from the humid air.
The dressing came next—a pale blue day dress that felt like wearing clouds.
The color wasn't accidental, I realized.
Not the white of his robes, which would have suggested equality.
Not the jewel tones that might imply seduction.
Pale blue, soft and yielding, the color of morning sky seen through frost.
The Nursery Nook called to us—or maybe just to him, and I followed because the bond made his desires feel like suggestions I desperately wanted to fulfill.
The rocking chair carved from ice radiated warmth, another impossibility I just accepted now.
When he sat and pulled me onto his lap, I fit against him like I'd been designed for this exact position.
The weighted blanket settled over me like a gentle command to be still.
Cloud-silk exterior, but filled with something that pressed down on my hyperactive nerves just enough to quiet them.
I found myself relaxing despite everything, my head finding the hollow of his shoulder without conscious thought.
"This wing is your sanctuary," he began, his voice shifting from gentle to authoritative so smoothly I almost missed the transition. "But survival requires structure."
His hand came up to hold my chin, forcing me to meet those impossible silver-white eyes. "You will follow three rules. They are absolute, not suggestions. Not requests. Commands that your transformed body will obey whether your mind agrees or not."
My pulse jumped—apparently I still had one of those—but not entirely from fear.
"First," he continued, his grip firm but not painful, "you are not to leave these chambers without my escort. The Frost Veil contains dangers your new body cannot yet navigate alone."
I wanted to protest that I'd survived the transformation, that I was stronger now, but his thumb pressed against my lips before I could speak.
"Second, my commands must be obeyed instantly. Hesitation could mean the difference between safety and catastrophe. Your mind may question, but your body must act."
The bond pulsed between us, reinforcing his words with magical weight that settled into my bones.
"Third," his voice dropped lower, more dangerous, "you are forbidden from the lower levels. Specifically the Deep Ice Gardens, where wild magic grows uncontrolled. The magic there doesn't recognize ownership or bonds. It consumes."
He released my chin but maintained eye contact, waiting. I knew what he wanted—not just agreement but submission, acknowledgment of his authority over my safety, my choices, my existence in this realm.
"Yes, Daddy," I whispered, the words coming easier now, flowing from that place in my chest that recognized him as protector, provider, the axis around which my new existence would spin.
"Good girl," he murmured, and pulled me closer against his chest. "Such a good girl for me."
T he afternoon light through the observation window had shifted to that particular shade of grey that meant snow was coming—I knew this instinctively now, the way I knew my own heartbeat—when Sereis returned to the Nursery Nook.
He moved differently than he had this morning, each step calculated but tight, like a predator who'd scented danger but couldn't locate its source.
I'd been examining the bookshelf, watching how the spines rearranged themselves based on my thoughts—think of dragons and suddenly all the titles shifted to histories and anatomies, think of warmth and they became collections of Southern fire-land poetry.
But the moment he entered, the books froze mid-shuffle, responding to the tension he carried like winter wind.
"The Dragon Council has made their position clear," he said without preamble, moving to stand by the window.
The grey light made his white hair look silver, aging him somehow, though I knew age meant nothing to beings like him.
"They acknowledge our bond's activation.
The transformation is undeniable—you carry my magic in your bones now, visible to any with eyes to see it. "
"But?" I could feel it coming.
"But Caelus's prior claim remains legally active until the Caretaker Pact is sealed.
" His hands clasped behind his back, knuckles white with pressure.
"Three centuries ago, there was a precedent.
A fire drake—not a Lord—in the Eastern Reaches transformed a human who'd been claimed by another, thinking the transformation would void the prior ownership.
The Council ruled that without the Pact's completion, the original claim held priority. "
"What happened to them?"
"The human was returned to their original master." His voice went flat, emotionless in that way that meant too much emotion. "The transformation was reversed through . . . traumatic means. They survived perhaps a day as a human again before their body simply forgot how to maintain itself."
My hand went to my throat, to the frost patterns I could feel pulsing beneath the skin. The thought of them being torn away, of becoming human again after tasting this power, made something in my chest seize with panic.
"That won't happen to you," Sereis said quickly, turning from the window. In two strides he was before me, hands on my shoulders, thumbs pressing against the bond marks. "I would freeze the entire realm before allowing it."
"You can't fight the Dragon Council." It wasn't a question. I'd learned enough about dragon politics to know that even someone as powerful as Sereis couldn't stand against their combined might.