Isla had never been a sprinter.
She was more of a walk-briskly-to-catch-the-bus person.
Tonight, she ran like the floor was on fire.
Adrenaline burned through her veins.
Behind her, voices shouted.
“Hey! Stop!”
“Security!”
Cael’s grip on her wrist was iron.
He didn’t yank—he *guided*.
They moved through the Hammond’s back corridors in a blur, taking turns she wouldn’t have thought to take, ducking through service doors that looked locked but *weren’t*.
“How do you know where you’re going?” she gasped.
“Stone remembers,” he said.
Not helpful.
He seemed to be following some map she couldn’t see—one made of stress fractures in concrete and the faint echo of foundations laid centuries ago.
“That way!” a voice shouted behind them.
A door banged open somewhere to their left.
Red emergency lights strobed.
Cael cursed in a language she didn’t know.
“In here,” he said, jerking open a door marked MECHANICAL.
They tumbled inside.
Pipes.
Tanks.
The thrumming hum of the building’s guts.
He slammed the door shut just as footsteps pounded past in the corridor.
Isla pressed her back to the cold metal, chest heaving.
Her thumb throbbed.
The crown gleamed in Cael’s hand, smug and heavy.
They stared at each other.
“We just stole the Hammond’s crown,” she panted.
“We reclaimed it,” he corrected.
“You manifested in the Hammond,” she said. “We are both very visible right now.”
It hit her fully then.
He wasn’t a voice in her head.
He wasn’t in some coal room under her building.
He was *here*.
In the flesh.
In stolen sweatpants and no shirt, because of course he hadn’t thought about clothing when he’d hoard-tunneled.
His bare chest rose and fell.
The rune-scars along his ribs glowed faintly.
Her brain, traitor that it was, took a snapshot.
“Stop looking,” he said, not unkindly.
Heat rushed to her face.
“I’m not—shut up,” she hissed.
He grinned, teeth sharp.
The emergency lights painted strange shadows on his face.
Footsteps battered the corridor outside.
“Mechanical room! Check it!” someone yelled.
Cael’s expression sharpened.
“Hold on,” he said.
“To what?” she demanded.
He grabbed her belt with his free hand and yanked her against him.
Her body slammed into his.
Every nerve lit up.
She barely had time to register the feel of his skin—hot, too hot, like he ran a fever—before the world… folded.
It wasn’t like the hoard-tunnel.
That had been all *too much*.
This was… absence.
Sound cut out.
Light vanished.
For an endless heartbeat, there was only touch.
His hand on her back.
Her palms flat against his chest.
His breath in her ear.
Then—
They fell.
Literally.
They hit cold stone in a tangle of limbs.
Isla yelped.
Cael absorbed most of the impact, his arm still around her.
Her knee slammed into something hard.
Pain flared.
She swore.
He laughed.
“Language,” he said.
She blinked.
Dim light.
The smell of dust and old coal.
The familiar outline of the City Museum’s coal room.
“We’re… back,” she said, dumbfounded.
“Yes,” he said.
She realized she was still plastered against him.
Her hands on his chest.
Her legs tangled with his.
The crown wedged awkwardly between them, digging into her hip.
She scrambled back like he’d burned her.
Which, honestly, wasn’t far from the truth.
Heat lingered on her palms.
“What was *that*?” she demanded.
“Short step,” he said. “Between places that… know me.”
“You can *teleport,*” she said faintly.
His brow furrowed. “Tele…?”
“Later,” she hissed.
Tim burst into the room then, Jay on his heels.
“What the—” Tim started, then stopped when he saw the crown. “Holy—”
Jay let out a low, awed whistle.
“You actually did it,” he said. “You— Is that—?”
Cael held the crown up.
It glowed faintly in the half-light, not from any external source.
The sapphires burned like captured sky.
“Mine,” he said, with a satisfaction that went bone-deep.
The hum in the room rose to a thrumming.
Isla’s teeth vibrated.
Her bruised knee throbbed in time.
Tim swore under his breath again.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’ll process the insanity of what just happened in a minute. We have more immediate problems. The Hammond’s on lockdown. When they realize Isla’s gone, they’re going to freak out. She can’t just… vanish from their logs.”
Isla’s stomach dropped.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Claire. She’s going to think I’m dead. Or complicit.”
“Probably both,” Jay said helpfully.
She glared at him.
“How much time passed?” she asked. “From the moment the alarms went off to…” She gestured around.
Tim checked his watch.
“Four minutes,” he said. “Maybe five. Jay?”
“About that,” Jay said, glancing at his laptop. “Cameras glitched at the Hammond for thirty-seven seconds. Then came back with everyone running around like headless chickens.”
She winced.
“We need a story,” she said. “Fast.”
“Fainting,” Tim said.
She blinked.
“What?” she asked.
“You fainted,” he said. “Stress, blood sugar, cursed crown, take your pick. You came to in the bathroom. Panicked. Called me. I picked you up at the Hammond staff entrance. We wave at the cameras. No one can accuse us of teleporting.”
“That’s… actually not terrible,” Jay said. “Given the alternatives.”
“You want me to fake a medical emergency,” Isla said.
Tim looked at her.
“Is it really faking?” he asked softly. “You look like hell.”
She sagged.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
He shrugged. “I mean that lovingly.”
Her knee throbbed in agreement.
She was shaky.
Sweaty.
Her thumb burned like she’d pressed it to a stove.
“I can sell it,” she admitted. “I just… hate lying to Claire.”
“Give her the truth in doses she can handle,” Tim said. “Start with ‘I blacked out and freaked out.’ Save ‘I smuggled a dragon into your gallery’ for the memoir.”
“Can I blur your faces in the HBO adaptation?” Jay asked.
“Shut up,” Tim and Isla said in unison.
Cael set the crown gently on the coal-dusted floor, next to the chalice and reliquary.
The hum in the room deepened.
He exhaled.
The rune-scars along his ribs flared, then dimmed to a steady, faint glow.
He looked… steadier.
The jagged restlessness in his eyes softened.
“How do you feel?” Isla asked, despite herself.
He considered.
“More,” he said.
“More what?” she pressed.
“Just… more,” he said, frustrated. “More… myself. Less… scattered. The thing in the cracks… it cannot push so easily now.”
Her skin chilled.
“You felt it,” she said. “The… other thing.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes,” he said. “It is… clever. It rides the edges of my magic. Like a… parasite.”
Tim’s face went grim.
“Any idea what it is?” he asked.
“No,” Cael said. “But it wants what I want. Or thinks it does. That makes it… dangerous.”
“Great,” Jay said. “So we’ve got Magic Tapeworm on top of everything else.”
Isla rubbed her temples.
“This is too much,” she muttered.
Cael watched her.
“You are shaking,” he said.
She glared at him.
“Adrenaline,” she snapped. “And maybe a mild concussion. And the existential horror of stealing cultural heritage while being chased by a glitch demon.”
He tilted his head.
“You need… rest,” he said.
She snorted.
“Are you volunteering to cover my shift?” she asked.
He frowned. “Shift.”
“Work,” she said. “My job. The thing that pays my rent and my father’s medications and my mother’s rosaries.”
He looked… offended.
“I can provide for you,” he said.
The words landed like a thrown gauntlet.
She stared.
Jay’s eyes went comically wide.
Tim choked.
“Excuse me?” Isla said slowly.
Cael shrugged, as if he hadn’t just said something that rewired the air between them.
“You are… part of my hoard now,” he said matter-of-factly. “I take care of what is mine.”
Heat rushed to her face.
Anger.
Embarrassment.
A flicker of something disturbingly like… satisfaction.
“I am not your pet,” she snapped. “Or your… kept woman. Or your… whatever dragons have instead of wives. I have a life. A job. Autonomy.”
His brows knit.
“I did not say you were less,” he said. “I said you are mine. That is… more.”
Jay made a small squeaking sound.
Tim covered his mouth with his hand.
Isla’s pulse pounded in her ears.
“Okay,” she said, voice tight. “Let’s get something very clear. You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to just… declare me yours and have that be some kind of cosmic fact. That’s not how this works. Not in *my* world.”
He stared at her, genuinely baffled.
“But your blood chose,” he said. “The scale. The hoard. Me. You caught it. You held. You *stayed*.”
“That doesn’t mean you own me,” she said. “It means we’re… entangled. Partners. Co-conspirators. A very specific kind of friends with enemies.”
“Friends with enemies,” Jay whispered. “I’m stealing that.”
Cael’s jaw flexed.
“Words,” he said. “You throw many at this. It does not change the… feeling.”
He touched his chest.
Then, cautiously, reached out and brushed his fingertips over the faint scar on her thumb.
The bond roared.
Her breath caught.
The room fell away for a second.
There was only the electric line between that touch and his ribs, between the crown and the scale in the drawer, between her heartbeat and his.
Her body swayed.
Tim grabbed her elbow, steadying her.
Cael drew back slowly, eyes dark.
“See?” he said quietly.
She swallowed.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I see. I feel. But that still doesn’t give you the right to talk about… providing for me like I’m some… damsel in your lair.”
“You are no damsel,” he said. “You are… all teeth.”
It *shouldn’t* have sounded like a compliment.
It did.
“Damn right,” she muttered.
He smiled.
“Then perhaps,” he said, “we… share. The providing.”
Her brows drew together.
“You mean… like… equals?” she asked.
He made a face at the unfamiliar word.
“If that makes you less likely to bite me,” he said. “Yes.”
Her lips twitched despite herself.
“Consent and equality in one night,” Jay whispered. “Look at our boy grow.”
“Shut up,” Cael and Isla said automatically.
Tim cleared his throat.
“Before we solve three hundred years of dragon-hoard gender politics,” he said, “Isla has to go back to the Hammond and pretend she fainted in a bathroom.”
Reality crashed back in.
Isla groaned.
“Right,” she said. “The part where I’m not, in fact, here.”
“Can you… short step… back?” Tim asked Cael. “Without her?”
Cael shook his head.
“I used the path between the crown and the sword,” he said. “It is… one-way, for now. The other place does not know me well enough yet.”
“Translation,” Jay said. “He can get from here to there easier than there to here. Which… tracks with addiction metaphors I don’t want to unpack.”
“Then I have to go the old-fashioned way,” Isla said. “Uber.”
Tim winced.
“You’re going to show up twenty minutes after a security breach,” he said. “Claire is going to have a coronary.”
“I’ll say I blacked out in the bathroom,” Isla said. “Hit my head. Came to. Panicked. Called Tim. He drove over to pick me up.”
“Why me?” Tim asked.
“Because you’re the only one whose number I’d have memorized in this scenario,” she said. “Sorry, Jay.”
“Rude, but fair,” Jay said.
“Our cameras here will back that up,” Tim mused. “I’ll go in the main entrance. Wave at their security. They’ll have footage. They’ll assume you made a stupid, human decision under stress.”
Isla sighed.
“I hate being believable as ‘stupid human,’” she said.
“Welcome to the club,” Tim said.
She looked at Cael.
“Stay put,” she said. “No… hoard-jumps. No calling me in my head unless it’s an emergency. No deciding to ‘provide’ anything without asking first.”
He looked vaguely offended.
“I do not think in terms of… emergency calls,” he said. “But I will… try.”
“Good,” she said. “And maybe find a shirt. If you’re going to haunt my dreams, you might as well not give me a heart attack.”
His mouth curled.
“Too late,” he murmured.
Heat flared in her cheeks.
She turned on her heel and stalked out before he could see it.
Behind her, in the coal room, the crown hummed.
Cael watched the doorway close, hand resting lightly on the cold metal.
“Mine,” he said again, but this time the word held more than one meaning.
Tim sighed.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
***
Isla’s head pounded by the time Tim dropped her off at the Hammond staff entrance.
He pulled up to the curb as close as he could get to the security checkpoint.
The guard at the door—a different one than before—stared as Isla climbed out, hair mussed, hoodie half-zipped.
“Reyes?” he said. “We thought you were still inside. There was a—”
“I fainted,” she said, layering her voice with just enough wobble. “In the bathroom. I… I must have hit my head. I woke up on the floor, and I panicked, and I called Tim, and he—” She gestured vaguely at the car.
Tim leaned over the steering wheel and gave an awkward little wave.
The guard blinked.
“You… fainted,” he repeated.
“And you just… left?” another guard, coming up behind him, demanded. “In the middle of a security breach?”
Isla flushed.
“I—yes,” she said. “It was… stupid. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what was happening. I just wanted to get out. I—”
She let her voice crack.
It wasn’t entirely acting.
The thought of being back inside with that cold presence in the cracks made her skin crawl.
The second guard’s expression softened.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. You should get checked out. Come on. We’ll get Claire.”
Claire arrived at a near-run, eyes wild.
“Isla,” she said, grabbing her shoulders. “Where were you? We thought—”
“I’m sorry,” Isla blurted. “I passed out. In the bathroom. I must have hit my head. I woke up, everything was… chaos, and I panicked.”
Claire’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
“You should have told someone,” she said. “But… I’m just glad you’re all right.”
Guilt stabbed.
“I’m so sorry,” Isla said again.
Claire sighed.
“We’ll need you to give a statement,” she said. “To security. To the police. They’ll want a timeline. But first, the EMTs will look you over.”
“I’m okay,” Isla started.
Claire cut her off with a look.
“Reyes,” she said. “You fainted in my building. You’re getting checked.”
Isla sagged.
“Okay,” she said meekly.
The EMTs—kind-eyed, efficient—shined lights in her eyes, took her blood pressure, asked about dizziness, nausea, pain.
She answered truthfully enough.
Headache.
Knee ache.
Existential dread not listed on their form.
“You probably have a mild concussion,” one said. “You should go to the ER for a scan, just to be safe.”
“I can take her,” Tim said, appearing at her elbow like a conjured guardian.
Claire looked between them.
“You’re sure you want to stay involved?” she asked him.
He shrugged.
“Occupational hazard,” he said. “She’s my favorite pain in the ass.”
Warmth flickered in Isla’s chest.
Claire sighed.
“Fine,” she said. “Go. Text me when you know more.”
Isla opened her mouth to protest—she did *not* have time for an ER—but the glint in Claire’s eye said *argue and I will staple you to a gurney myself*.
She shut up.
Tim got her into the car, pulled away from the curb, and promptly took a detour that was very much *not* toward the hospital.
“Tim,” she said weakly.
“You need a scan?” he asked.
“Probably,” she admitted.
“You also need to not have your blood drawn in a place that reports everything to a central database,” he said. “Given the whole ‘dragon magic in your veins’ thing.”
Her stomach lurched.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to a clinic I know. No questions asked. Cash only.”
She frowned. “That sounds… sketchy.”
“It’s run by a retired ER nurse with a god complex and a vendetta against insurance companies,” he said. “You’ll love her.”
She stared out the window.
The city blurred by.
Her muscles slowly unclenched.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
He shrugged, eyes on the road.
“Someone’s gotta keep you alive,” he said. “Can’t trust Dragon Drama in there to do it without burning half the block.”
She huffed a laugh.
“Dragon Drama,” she repeated.
He smiled faintly.
“You should tell him that to his face,” he said.
“I like living,” she said.
They drove in silence for a while.
Then, quietly, Tim asked, “How bad was it? In there.”
She hesitated.
Then decided he’d earned the truth.
“Bad,” she said. “The crown… it’s like a live wire. And there’s… something else. In the cracks. It tried to get in. To ride the connection. I think… I think it would have, if not for the scar.”
She touched her thumb.
It still glowed faintly, under the skin.
Tim’s grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She blinked.
“For what?” she asked.
“For not being in there with you,” he said. “For asking you to do this. For… not having better options.”
Her throat tightened.
“This isn’t on you,” she said. “I made my choice. I could have walked away.”
“Could you?” he asked quietly.
She thought of the scale.
Of Cael’s roar in her head.
Of the hum of the hoard.
“No,” she admitted. “Probably not.”
He nodded, as if that confirmed something for him.
“You’re in deep,” he said.
“So are you,” she shot back.
He smiled wryly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I am.”
They turned onto a quieter street.
Neon flickered over a grimy storefront with a faded sign: *Rivera Family Clinic*.
Tim pulled into the alley.
“Welcome to the underfunded side of medicine,” he said.
She managed a crooked smile.
“Feels like home,” she said.
***
The clinic smelled like antiseptic and old coffee.
A woman in her fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and sharp eyes looked up from a clipboard as they walked in.
“Tim,” she said. “What did you break this time?”
“Nothing,” he said. “For once. My friend here—Isla—took a knock to the head. Might be a concussion. We’d like to avoid the ER circus.”
“Hm,” she said, looking Isla up and down with an assessing eye. “Sit.”
Isla sat.
The exam was brisk, thorough.
By the end, Dr. Rivera pronounced, “Mild concussion. No obvious bleeding. You should rest. No screens. No getting up on ladders to rescue artifacts for at least forty-eight hours.”
Isla blinked.
“You know about the artifacts?” she asked.
Rivera snorted.
“Tim’s been bringing me walking disaster victims from that museum for years,” she said. “I’ve pulled a Roman coin out of a grad student’s nose. Nothing surprises me.”
Isla looked at Tim.
He shrugged.
“Occupational hazard,” he said again.
Rivera’s gaze sharpened.
“Anything… else?” she asked Isla. “Weird tingling. Visual disturbances. Feel like you’re not alone in your own skin?”
Isla’s heart leaped.
She must have gone still, because Rivera’s eyes narrowed further.
“Relax,” the doctor said. “I’m not calling an exorcist. Yet. I just know that building. And Tim. And the kind of shit that ends up in that basement.”
Isla swallowed.
“You… believe in… weird,” she said.
Rivera snorted.
“Believe?” she said. “Honey, I’ve stitched up enough security guards who swear a statue tried to bite them to have an open mind. I don’t need to know the details. Just tell me if anything makes your headache feel like your brain’s on fire. That’s my line.”
“I’m… okay,” Isla said slowly. “For now.”
Rivera held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded.
“Then go home,” she said. “Sleep. Ice that knee. Come back if you start seeing double or smelling toast.”
“Smelling toast?” Isla repeated.
Rivera waved a hand. “Old ER joke. You’ll be fine. Probably.”
“Reassuring,” Isla muttered.
Tim paid in cash.
As they walked back to the car, he said, “Rivera’s seen some things.”
“Apparently,” Isla said.
“You okay?” he asked.
She thought.
She was bruised.
She was exhausted.
Her head hurt.
Her thumb glowed.
There was a dragon in her museum and something worse in the cracks between worlds.
“No,” she said honestly. “But I’m… not shattered. Yet.”
He nodded.
“That’s something,” he said.
She slid into the passenger seat.
As they pulled away from the curb, her phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
No.
Not unknown.
The bond hummed.
It read: *Sleep. I will watch.*
Her heart stuttered.
She typed back before she could think better of it.
*Consent, remember? No dream-invading unless I say so.*
There was a pause.
Then: *Then I will watch the walls. Not you. Sleep, Isla.*
Her chest did that stupid tight thing again.
She tossed the phone into her bag.
Tim glanced at her.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She stared out at the city lights.
The museum’s silhouette loomed ahead, dark against the sky.
“No,” she said again.
But her voice was softer.
“Not yet,” she added. “But… we’re making the next right moves.”
Tim smiled faintly.
“Yeah,” he said. “We are.”
She rested her head against the cool glass.
Her eyelids felt heavy.
As the car turned toward home, somewhere under the city, a dragon sat in a ring of stolen, reclaimed treasure and listened for the thing in the cracks.
And, very carefully, did not step into her dreams.
Yet.
***
End of Chapter Eight.