Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~6 min read
Chapter 10: The question of how long
SORIN
Veyra arrived on a Wednesday, which meant she’d been watching for long enough that she had an opinion ready.
She stood at the cliff edge looking down at the research vessel for approximately four minutes before she said anything. The dive flags were up. Sera was in the water. It was eleven in the morning and she’d been down for forty minutes, which meant she was almost certainly in the outer cave’s left-hand section, which she’d been working systematically since Monday.
“How long until she finds the rest?” Veyra said.
He had an answer ready. He’d been running the calculation since she’d shown him the acoustic anomaly photographs on Thursday. She’d found the second seal’s influence in the structural reading of the outer wall in three days of surveying — which was fast, faster than he’d expected, faster than he’d planned for. She was building toward something and the thing she was building toward was a question whose answer he was less and less certain he wanted to give her.
“She’s already found it,” he said. “The second seal. She hasn’t said so directly yet, but the photographs from Thursday showed the acoustic differential.”
Veyra looked at him.
“She showed you.”
“She informed me as heritage holder, as the permit requires.”
“And you said?”
“That it was outside the survey zone.”
Veyra was quiet for a moment. In the cove below the vessel moved gently on the mid-morning swell. The dive flags were still up. She was down there now with her dive lights and her systematic mind, building her picture.
“She’s going to request expanded access,” Veyra said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to give it to her.”
He didn’t answer.
“Sorin.” Veyra turned from the cliff. There was a version of her face that she showed him rarely — not the skeptical face, not the monitoring face, but the older face, the one that had seen a great deal over a long time and was not performing its wisdom. She used this face when she was genuinely worried. “You are not managing this.”
“I’m managing it.”
“You’re watching her.” She said it simply. “You’ve been in the water every day she dives. You’re watching her from this cliff. You told me last week you’d given her the outer cave as a containment measure and instead you sat in her kitchen for two hours on Thursday.”
“She had questions about the cave’s structural history.”
“I know what she had. I know what you did.” Veyra looked at him with something between exasperation and something softer. “Your dragon has declared her. You know this. I know this. The behaviour pattern has been clear since the third day.”
He said nothing.
“A declared mate is not a problem to be managed,” she said. “It’s a fact your dragon has determined for reasons I don’t pretend to understand. But a declared human mate — Sorin, the last time this occurred in any territory I know of, the council spent six months deliberating and still didn’t reach consensus.”
“I know the precedents.”
“Then you know that disclosure without elder council approval is not something you can do unilaterally.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m not going to disclose.”
He looked at the water.
He thought about the outer cave, which she was documenting with the patience and thoroughness of someone who intended to understand every square foot of it. He thought about the structural anomaly photographs she’d shown him, the careful professional detachment of her voice when she’d said *I’m documenting what I’ve found and informing the heritage holder* — as though they were colleagues, as though she trusted him to receive the information correctly.
She did trust him to receive it correctly. That was the thing he was struggling to manage, more than the investigation, more than the second seal. She’d found the anomaly and come to tell him, not to alarm him, not to demand access, but to tell him, which meant she’d made a decision somewhere about what kind of relationship this was. What kind it could be.
“She’s going to find the third seal,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The outer cave leads there if you follow the left-hand passage far enough.” He’d been hoping she wouldn’t go far enough. The hope was becoming increasingly unrealistic. “She’s been mapping systematically. She’ll reach it in the current pace of survey in another ten days.”
Veyra looked at him. “Then you have ten days to decide what you’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing. I’m giving her the outer cave access. I’m managing the depth restriction. When she finds the third seal I’ll redirect her to—”
“Sorin,” Veyra said. “Look at me.”
He looked at her.
“You’re not managing this,” she said. “You haven’t been managing it since the first week. You’ve been managing yourself while she’s been finding exactly what she was going to find, and every time she does you sit in her company for two more hours and she shows you something else she’s noticed and you watch her notice it.” She paused. “I’m not saying this is wrong. I’m saying be honest with yourself about what’s happening.”
He looked back at the water.
The dive flags were still up.
She was down there in his cave, in the dark and the bioluminescence, with her lights and her systematic mind and her careful hands that didn’t touch things and her eyes that missed nothing.
He said: “I need to convene the council.”
Veyra went still.
“If disclosure is coming,” he said, “it should be sanctioned. Bring me the contact protocols. I’ll reach out to the eastern bloodlines this week.”
Veyra was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “That will take time.”
“I know. In the meantime, I’ll manage the access.”
“And if she finds the third seal before the council convenes?”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
The dive flags came down at eleven fifty-eight. He watched the vessel from the cliff while Sera came up the ladder and pulled her equipment and stood on the deck looking at her recordings. She had the expression she had after every dive — focused, slightly inward, processing.
She looked up once, toward the cliff, the way she sometimes did. He stayed still in the coastal scrub. She couldn’t see him from that distance.
But she looked.
He thought about the ten days.
He thought: *it’s not going to be ten days.*
Reader Reactions