18. Quinn
QUINN
SOLD TO PADDLE TWELVE
By Sunday evening, I had repeated the phrase client first so many times that it had started to sound like a cult mantra.
Client first. Future first. Professional reputation first. Dragons with emotionally devastating flight privileges a distant, legally complicated never.
My plan had several strong points, including career stability, moral clarity, and not becoming a woman who lost her mind because one man had shown her Manhattan from the sky and then wrapped her in his ridiculously soft, ridiculously expensive coat.
Unfortunately, my brain had other opinions.
It had opinions about the way Rafe’s scales had warmed under my hands.
About the city spread beneath us like a spilled jewelry box.
About his estate glowing in the distance, grand and private and loved.
About the heat he’d coaxed through my skin on the roof when he realized I was cold, his hands careful on my arms, his face tightening because he had forgotten I was human in the most literal, shivering way possible.
He had said it was only heat.
It hadn’t felt like that.
So, I had spent the intervening hours being extremely reasonable. I’d dropped Max with Avery, who had listened to my carefully edited version of events and said, “You flew on a dragon, and you’re still pretending this is about work? Seek help, girl.”
I had prepared my notes for the auction. I had reviewed the lot materials Helena Wallace sent over. I had eaten lunch because Avery had given me a Tupperware container of her famous sausage and potato soup.
Now, I was standing in a private auction house on the Upper East Side, wearing a black silk dress and embroidered green jacket, trying not to think about Rafe’s coat still hanging over the back of my blue chair at home.
My left side felt too empty without Max, my purse too light without his collapsible bowl and emergency treats. My entire nervous system seemed offended by the lack of one elderly Malinois providing moral oversight.
I forced myself not to think about that as I focused on the auction house.
The front room had paneled walls and low lighting.
The staff were all dressed in black, and there was enough discreet security to make me think I might have stolen something.
Guests moved through the preview space with catalogs in hand, murmuring over glass cases and pedestals.
Nobody here looked shocked by money. To them, it was a climate they were accustomed to living in.
Rafe stood beside me, severe in a dark suit, one hand resting lightly on the back of the chair in front of him. He had the auction catalog open to the page with the shrine mirror, though his attention kept moving around the room.
The man was shockingly handsome, even when he was completely focused.
The shrine mirror was Lot 47. We were on Lot 19, a bronze basin from a minor kelpie court, and an old man in the second row had just won his fifth item of the evening.
He looked harmless in the way extremely rich old men sometimes did when the world had stopped requiring them to prove anything.
White hair, neat beard, elegant suit, cane topped with carved amber.
He smiled mildly, his paddle relaxed in his lap until the last possible second, and then he lifted it with infuriating calm and ruined someone else’s evening.
“Sold to paddle thirty-two,” the auctioneer called.
The gavel came down.
The room produced a polite ripple of applause.
Two seats ahead of us, a younger man in a dove-gray jacket lowered his paddle and gave the old man a look sharp enough to open mail.
I recognized him from the catalog reception earlier: Luke Gildstein, a private collector from an old sorcerer family with a reputation for expensive instincts and eclectic taste.
He had won one minor lot the old man had ignored and lost two directly to him.
Every time he lost, his mouth compressed like someone had stepped on his very expensive shoe.
I leaned slightly toward Rafe. “Who’s the old man?”
Rafe’s gaze didn’t leave the front of the room. “Dimitris Burelian.”
“Should I know that name?”
“Yes.”
“That was informative. Thank you so much.”
His mouth tightened, but his irritation wasn’t directed at me. “Collector. Hoarder of priceless cultural artifacts. He has spent decades acquiring relics that should have been returned to families, clans, and courts who lost them during the Winged War and other conflicts.”
“Hoarder,” I murmured. “Like a dragon?”
Rafe turned his head very slowly. “He’s a phoenix.”
Every drop of humor dissipated. “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I said again, this time with significantly more historical awareness and less need to be funny.
Everyone knew the broad shape of the Winged War, even humans who slept through Olden Folk history in school.
Dragons and phoenixes had once been powerful enough to bend economies, borders, weather patterns, and entire royal successions.
Then they had gone to war and kept going until the world had fewer of both.
Rafe had taught me the personal version that came with displaced families and songs remembered by mothers on balconies.
The public version was tidier and therefore easier to digest.
“I’m sorry.”
Rafe gave one short nod, accepting the apology without making me suffer under it. “Dimitris Burelian is one of the few phoenixes left old enough to remember the war personally.”
I looked back at the man in the second row. “He looks…”
“Old?”
“I was going to say harmless, but yes. He does look old.”
“That is his natural form now.” Rafe’s voice stayed low. “Phoenixes regenerate through fire, but regeneration is not the same as youth. If he burns hot enough, he can return to a younger body for a time. By morning, he would look like this again.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“I suspect he finds it theatrical.”
“So he’s not pretending to be an old man?”
“No. He is an old man. He simply has options.”
I looked back at Dimitris Burelian. He was smiling at the auctioneer, who smiled back too quickly.
Something about that caught under my skin.
Lot 20 came up: an illuminated bestiary page attributed to a monastery that had once served mixed human and Olden Folk communities.
Luke Gildstein bid early. Dimitris let him.
The auctioneer’s gaze kept dropping toward Dimitris after every call.
When Dimitris leaned back, the auctioneer moved slowly.
When Dimitris lifted one finger from his cane, the auctioneer suddenly found a burst of speed.
Rafe raised his paddle once, then again, pushing the price up by ten thousand.
Dimitris’s mild smile didn’t change. He raised his paddle. Rafe raised his. Dimitris raised his again. The auctioneer looked delighted in a way I didn’t trust.
“Sold to paddle thirty-two.”
Rafe lowered his paddle.
“Were you bidding because you wanted it?” I asked.
“No.”
“Because he wants it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re making him spend money.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a little petty.”
“I prefer to call it strategy.”
“Petty strategy.”
He didn’t deny it.
I watched the next three lots with growing unease.
Rafe pushed Dimitris on two items, withdrawing at precisely the point where Dimitris had to pay more than he wanted but not enough to stop him from continuing.
Luke Gildstein tried for a set of silver ritual cups, won only when Dimitris didn’t bother to lift his paddle.
The auctioneer kept looking at Dimitris, but it wasn’t obvious enough for everyone to notice because their attention wasn’t on the auctioneer.
“Rafe,” I whispered.
“What?”
“The auctioneer is watching him.”
“Of course. He’s the dominant bidder tonight.”
“No. More than that.” I kept my eyes on the front. “He’s taking cues. When Dimitris hesitates, he slows down and repeats the bid. When Dimitris looks ready, he moves faster. He’s giving him room when he wants it and momentum when he doesn’t. He is making sure Dimitris gets what he wants.”
Rafe went very still.
I kept watching. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“Let’s test it.”
Lot 26 was a landscape painting by a wolf shifter artist from the nineteenth century, all stormy sky and dark pine trees, with a stag hidden in the brush. Rafe’s attention sharpened.
“My father likes that painter,” he said.
The auctioneer opened bidding.
Rafe lifted his paddle.
“Thirty thousand from the room,” the auctioneer called, but his eyes had already moved past us.
Dimitris raised his paddle.
“Thirty-five.”
Rafe lifted his again.
The auctioneer looked toward Dimitris. “Forty?”
No acknowledgment of Rafe’s bid.
Rafe’s hand tightened on the paddle, and he raised it higher.
The auctioneer didn’t call it. He kept his eyes on Dimitris, waiting.
Heat seemed to gather in the air beside me, and I was suddenly acutely aware that Rafe was no longer merely annoyed.
The woman seated on my other side shifted away by an inch.
Dimitris raised his paddle.
“Forty thousand,” the auctioneer said smoothly. “Do I hear forty-five?”
Rafe stood, and several heads turned in his direction.
The auctioneer finally looked at him, and for one second, his face showed panic before training covered it. “My apologies, sir. I didn’t see your bid.”
Rafe’s smile was so cold it should have required a weather advisory. “No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
The room held its breath.
The auctioneer coughed. “Forty-five from paddle twelve.”
Dimitris raised his paddle.
“Fifty.”
Rafe sat down and didn’t bid again.
“Sold to paddle thirty-two,” the auctioneer said.
This time, the applause was less enthusiastic.
Without taking his eyes off the stage, Rafe said, “You were right.”
“That feels less satisfying than usual.”
“If he does that when the mirror comes up?—”
“I know.”
His jaw shifted once, and a low growl rippled from him. Not loud enough to draw attention from anyone else, but I was seated so close to him, I couldn’t miss it.
My pulse jumped for reasons that were unhelpful and frankly embarrassing.
Then the auctioneer announced a fifteen-minute intermission.