Chương 233: 40. Royal Capital Latpan 2

The place they put me wasn't far from the wing-field — but it also clearly wasn't one of the outer guest residences. It felt more like something halfway between an annex to the inner court and a wartime quarantine zone. The corridor was quiet. The walls bore old dragon motifs. Every door and screen was too well-made, too elegant for someone who'd just crawled out of a pile of harbor ash.

And precisely because it was so quiet, so orderly, so precisely in line with protocol, I knew the moment I stepped inside that this wasn't rest. It was storage. They sent in hot water, medicine, clean clothes, and food that — by wartime standards — counted as borderline civilized. When I took off my coat, I discovered that aside from smoke, blood, and ash, there were faint marks where the edges of dragon scales had scraped the fabric.

The court physician tending to my injuries froze for a fraction of a second when he saw them, then continued applying salve as if nothing had happened, quick enough that I might have doubted my own eyes. But I hadn't imagined it. In this capital, a great many people were well-trained enough not to say a word. That didn't mean they hadn't seen anything. I washed the filth from my face and changed into the dark inner-court attire they'd prepared.

I'd barely sat down when a soft announcement came from outside the door.

"Deputy Head of the Eckhaus delegation, Lord Hans, requests an audience." I almost laughed. Finally. Someone to remind me that I had originally come here as a member of a diplomatic mission, not as whatever I'd just been repurposed into.

"Come in." The door slid open. A lean, straight-backed middle-aged man stepped inside. His hair was combed with surgical precision. His coat still carried a few fine creases from long travel he hadn't had time to smooth out. His face wore an expression I knew very, very well: Thirty percent headache. Thirty percent composure. Thirty percent I knew it would come to this. And the last ten— How, exactly, have you survived this long? Deputy Head Hans.

I started to stand, but he lifted a hand and pressed me back down with a look.

"Sit, my lord," he said, giving me a brief once-over.

"If you insist on observing formalities in your current state, it will only make me suspect you've taken a serious blow to the head."

"That opening line is making me feel very much at home, sir."

"Good," he said, taking the seat opposite.

"At least it proves your mouth is still functioning."

"Currently operating at full capacity. Thank you for your concern."

"It's not concern." Hans' tone remained flat.

"I'm confirming whether you're still capable of talking yourself to death."... That was very Hans. Direct. Inauspicious. Useful. I leaned back a little, letting my shoulders stop pretending they were fine.

"Where's Jessi and the others?"

"Still en route," he said.

"Wagons don't take dragon paths, and they don't fly into the inner court. Even if they meet no further trouble, it will be some time before they reach the outer residence."

"So right now, I'm the only member of the delegation who's arrived ahead of schedule." Hans looked at me without changing expression.

"This is not what 'ahead of schedule' looks like."

"What would you call it, then?"

"Being carried straight into the capital's core by the Emperor's daughter. In her true form."... Right. Hearing it phrased out loud did make it sound heavier than when it was just an internal complaint. I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

"You don't sound like you're here to comfort me."

"If I were here to comfort you, I wouldn't have opened by asking whether you were going to get yourself killed in the next conversation."

"Deputy Head, you sound very much like you're here to deliver a eulogy."

"If you say the wrong thing, there's no reason I couldn't start drafting one in advance." I looked at him, and that thin layer of familiar human normalcy finally started to settle back into place. Good. At least before I walk fully into the dragon's jaws, there's someone willing to point out — in a way that wasn't kind, but was very practical — that none of this is over yet. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Hans set a thin leather folder on the table, keeping a fingertip resting on it.

"First, current situation," he said.

"Jessi, Alvira, and the rest are still on the road. The main delegation has not formally arrived. For now, in the capital, I'll be handling the initial contact on Eckhaus' side. The Dragon Kingdom's inner court has extended a provisional cooperation status to us — nominally on the basis of emergency wartime coordination surrounding the Isca Apubra incident. In reality—" He lifted his eyes to mine.

"In reality, your situation is already far outside anything covered by the normal envoy protocols." I went quiet for two beats.

"Because of the harbor?"

"The harbor is one element," Hans said.

"Not the only one." He paused, voice unchanged, but dropping half a tone.

"What Latpan saw tonight was Her Highness Ignicia returning to the capital in full dragon form. With a human man on her back. Landing directly in the inner court's wing-field." I opened my mouth.

"Framed like that, I do suddenly feel like some kind of contraband."

"Incorrect," he said evenly.

"Contraband doesn't speak for itself. Nor is it personally carried in by the Emperor's daughter." That was worse. I wanted to protest — something along the lines of it's not like I deliberately chose the deluxe entry package — but the words dried up. It wasn't like I'd been tied to her back. I had, after all, been the one to say a few things in that harbor that would make playing dumb extremely difficult later. With that thought, I found myself reluctant to meet Hans' eyes.

Unfortunately, Hans had no intention of letting me off that easily.

"I'm not going to ask what, exactly, you two said in the Port of Isca Apubra," he said.

"I'm also not interested in listening to you use fatigue, battlefield conditions, or imminent death as excuses to blur the boundaries of what happened. I'm only going to remind you of one thing, Cedric." I looked up.

"You'd do well to stop thinking of yourself as the sort of man who can skate past everything on a handful of pretty lines." The words landed in my chest like a small stone. Not heavy. Perfectly placed. I pulled a crooked half-smile.

"Deputy Head, was that really your impression of me all this time?"

"Do you want the honest answer?"

"... On second thought, let's pretend I didn't ask."

"Too late," Hans said dryly.

"With a human noble lady, leaving this kind of loose end earns you a reputation for being incorrigibly charming — then one day you get cornered in an alley by someone's older brother and beaten senseless. But that isn't the rulebook you're playing with anymore." He fixed me with a steady look and stripped the thought bare, word by word.

"With the Emperor's daughter, this isn't called charming. It's called you have obligations." The room went quiet for a while. Somewhere far outside, a bell sounded — the kind you only heard in a capital at dawn. Not an alarm, not the cold shock of war-horns by the harbor. Slower, steadier, carrying the city's own rhythm. But sitting here, that sound felt like it was marking the moment a door finished closing. I looked at Hans and slowly exhaled.

"You seem to know more about dragon customs than I expected."

"Not enough," he said.

"But at least more than you do now."

"That's a little harsh."

"Harsh is still preferable to dead." I laughed once, briefly. It came out a little dry.

"So you're here to warn me, then?"

"Half," Hans said.

"The other half is making sure you're not stupid enough to keep insisting this is all just an accident." I didn't answer right away. Because I knew that if I actually said those four words out loud, Hans would show me an expression I very rarely saw — and had no desire to. Besides— I couldn't say it anymore.

From that night with Yanxia — from reverse scale, emergency landings, sharing a roof, all the way through Isca Apubra's last fire and the dragon's back — far too many things had crossed the line of what an accident could reasonably contain. I just hadn't had time to stop and give that thing a name. Hans watched me, and whatever he saw in that silence seemed to satisfy him. He didn't push further. He only leaned back a little.

"Good," he said.

"At least you haven't managed to be an idiot about the last part."

"High praise, coming from you."

"Don't get ahead of yourself." His tone stayed flat.

"I'm not here to find you a way out." I lifted an eyebrow.

"Then what are you here for? Helping me pick casket colors?"

"I'm here to tell you that retreating at this point wouldn't be called prudence," he said.

"It would be called failure." He pushed the folder aside and folded his hands over his knees, expression finally settling into something more formal.

"And frankly, you couldn't run even if you tried." That, at least, was fair. So fair that I didn't waste the effort to argue. I glanced down at the clean sleeves of the inner-court clothes I'd just put on and found them oddly mocking. A few hours ago, I'd been up to my neck in harbor ash beside Ignicia, giving a tower a funeral. Now I was sitting in an annex of the Dragon Kingdom's inner court, listening to my superior tell me — in impeccably civil language: Congratulations.

You no longer have the option of being the fast-talking, hard-to-kill troublemaker who walks away from everything with a shrug. I leaned back and met his gaze.

"So what do you recommend I do, when I get there?" Hans regarded me for a moment.

"Don't play dumb."

"... Concise."

"Sufficient," he said.

"From here on out, every sentence you say on the record represents more than just you. You're a member of the Eckhaus delegation. You are an envoy from another realm. And—" He paused, as if weighing whether to phrase it more delicately. In the end, he didn't.

"And you are also the person Her Highness carried back with her." That line outweighed everything that had come before. Not because it was ornate. Because it split my identity in two and laid both halves on the same table. Cedric of Eckhaus. Cedric brought home by Ignicia. Those two names clearly weren't going to be separated anymore. I stared at the grain of the table for a moment, then managed:"Deputy Head, you are truly terrible at comforting people."

Hans finally let the faintest, briefest hint of a cold smile show.

"That's Jessi's job, not mine."... That was true enough. Silence settled for a moment. Not an awkward silence — more like a final pause to get our breaths under control. Hans didn't waste it on pointless filler. I didn't bother trying to smother things under another layer of flippant remarks. We were far past the point where extra detours would do anything but make me look worse. After a while, Hans rose.

"That's all I can say," he said, smoothing his sleeves.

"Once the main delegation arrives, we'll take over the formal side of things on behalf of humanity. Until then—" He looked down at me, his voice a touch softer, but heavier.

"Cedric. From here on, you'd better stop being just a man with a quick tongue." The words had barely left his mouth when a second announcement came from the hall outside. Lower than the one that had announced Hans. More formal. Like a sheathed blade laid gently down on a table.

"The Emperor summons you." The room stilled. Hans didn't look surprised. Neither did I. Because we'd both known that voice was coming eventually. That didn't stop my stomach from clenching, honestly and hard, the moment it arrived. Hans stepped aside, clearing the path to the door. No encouragement. No good luck. Not even the useless, reflexive don't be too nervous. He simply said one thing:"Go." I stood, pulling my coat straight on reflex.

My fingers brushed the collar — and I suddenly remembered the last scene at the harbor. Fire. Dragon's back. Her taking me away from a city we had given a funeral with our own hands. Now that fire had finally reached here. Not into the walls. Into the order of things. I walked toward the door. The hall outside was quiet. Morning light slanted in through high windows, cutting the black stone floor into alternating bands of cold white and shadow. I couldn't see the throne from here. Or the Emperor.

But I knew that whatever waited at the end of this hall wasn't just a father. It was the part of the Dragon Kingdom, waiting for me to open my mouth and accept what came with it.