The beach at evening was a different thing entirely from the beach in the afternoon.
The vendors had packed up. The boats sat still on their moorings. The light had gone from gold to the particular deep amber that happens in the last hour before the sun fully commits to leaving, and it moved across the water in long, shifting ribbons that made the whole surface look like something alive and breathing.
Esther sat on the sand with her shoes beside her and her feet bare, and looked at it.
Dillon settled next to her without being asked — close enough to be present, far enough to be respectful, still calibrating the exact distances that were appropriate in a life that had just changed its entire geography. He was getting better at it. She noticed.
She had received Thor's update a little while ago — late evening tomorrow, he expected. She held the knowledge of it warmly, the way you hold the thought of something good that is coming. She thought about Killian and Kyrell in the palace that smelled of volcanic rock and the particular warmth of a city that had reclaimed itself, and felt the distance between her and them as a physical thing — not painful, but present, the way missing something is present when you are not yet used to the missing.
She exhaled slowly and looked at the painted sky.
"It would be really nice," she said, more to the ocean than to Dillon, "if we all had a place out here."
Dillon looked at her, then at the water, then back. He was quiet for a moment in the way he was quiet when he was deciding whether to speak — not hesitating out of uncertainty, she was beginning to understand, but choosing. He chose more deliberately than most people.
"You could, though," he said. "Once you've been adopted into the McMillan family — a noble name opens doors here that money alone doesn't. A property in Seacliff wouldn't be out of reach." He paused. "I just meant — if you wanted it, it's not impossible."
Esther turned to look at him.
He was watching her with the focused attention he brought to things he cared about, and there was something in his expression that she was learning to recognize — the particular quality of someone who was trying to offer comfort while also needing it, and doing so with enough grace that the second part wasn't obvious unless you were looking.
She was looking.
"Possibly," she said. "If we come back — maybe." She turned her eyes back to the water. "I still have so much of this world left to understand. Until I've found my footing — until I know what I'm actually building and where — I don't think I'm allowed to stop moving." She smiled, but it was the peaceful kind, not the performed kind. "I have to keep searching for my purpose."
Dillon was quiet for a moment.
"Purpose," he repeated, and something in the word seemed to catch him, to turn him inward. He looked down at his hands in his lap. He had spent his entire life being told what he was for — by his family, by the people who had sold him, by Amanda, by every system he had passed through that had reduced him to function. The question of what he was for in any sense that mattered to him specifically had simply never come up.
He thought about it now.
He looked at the woman beside him — this ancient, extraordinary, quietly lonely creature watching the sun dissolve into the water with an expression that no one who hadn't been paying close attention would ever catch — and recognized something.
He reached over and set his hand over hers.
Not a romantic gesture. A human one. The gesture of someone who has noticed that another person is carrying something and wants to acknowledge it without making it heavier.
"Until you find it," he said, "there are people who will walk alongside you. Who will do what they can to help you along the way." He glanced at her. "Including me. So please remember — you have people in your corner. Even now. Even here."
Esther looked down at his hand over hers.
Then she looked up at his face, and the smile that came was the most unguarded one he had seen from her — gentle in a way her smiles usually weren't, soft at the edges, the expression of someone who had not expected to be moved and had been moved anyway.
She brought his hand to her lips and pressed them briefly to his knuckles.
Dillon looked like he had briefly left his body.
"I know," she said. "Every time I find someone like you, I'm tempted to stop entirely. To just — stay. Say the rest of the world can manage without me." She turned back to the water. "But I know there are others out there like you. Others who need something I might be able to give. And that thought won't leave me alone."
She was quiet for a moment.
"It's strange," she said. "I spent three thousand years taking. Taking the throne, taking power, taking whatever I wanted because that was simply what I was and what I did. I never thought about what any of it meant." She watched the last sliver of sun touch the horizon. "Now I think about it constantly. Now I'm surrounded by people who don't fear me for the first time in my existence, and apparently that's all it took to make me wonder what I've been missing." She let out a small sound that was almost a laugh. "Ridiculous."
"It's not ridiculous," Dillon said quietly.
She glanced at him.
"It's not," he said again, with more certainty than she expected. "It means something changed in you. That's not nothing." His thumb moved in a slow arc over the back of her hand. "You said no one ever listened to you. Can I ask — who was supposed to?"
Esther considered that.
"No one," she said. "There was no one who was supposed to. That was simply how it was."
Dillon absorbed this.
"Well," he said. "You can talk to me. Anytime. About anything." He said it without flourish, without making it a performance of generosity — just stated it, plainly, as a fact he was offering. "I may not always know the right thing to say. But I can listen for a very long time."
Esther looked at him for a moment longer than she meant to.
"Also," he added, with a shift in his voice that was almost shy — a small, sideways thing, like he was mentioning it in passing and hoping she would catch it without him having to make it a point — "I'm quite good at baking. If you ever need something to brighten a difficult day — I can make you warm cookies. Whatever kind you want."
Esther stared at him.
Then she laughed.
It startled him — genuine and open, spilling out of her with the spontaneity of something she hadn't planned — and he startled, and then his expression did something absolutely wonderful, breaking into a bewildered smile because he hadn't expected to be funny and wasn't entirely sure what to do with having been funny.
She pressed her hand to his cheek, still smiling.
"Then I'm very glad I went to find you," she said, and looked at him, and meant it.
Dillon looked back at her with sky-blue eyes that were doing something complicated and warm.
He was still looking at her when something hit the water.
The sound was distinct — not the rhythmic wash of waves, but a specific impact, a displacement, the particular sound of something large and fast breaking the surface and submerging again. Esther's head turned immediately. Her eyes found the spot without effort.
For just a moment — just barely, at the edge of the fading light — she saw them.
Fins. Enormous, and extraordinarily beautiful, the deep jeweled green of shallow tropical water threaded through with vivid purple that caught the last of the sun like living stained glass. They rose and turned and disappeared beneath the surface in a single fluid motion, heading with purpose toward the far end of the beach.
Toward the estate.
It sat at the water's edge like something dreamed rather than built — pale stone and high arched windows and terraces that appeared to extend directly over the ocean, the whole structure designed around the water rather than beside it. Even at this distance, in the dimming light, it was remarkable.
Esther was still looking at the place where the fins had been.
"Esther."
She blinked.
Dillon was looking at her with the expression of someone who had been about to say something and had then watched her attention leave the planet entirely. He was also, she noticed, leaning very slightly in a direction he probably wasn't aware of.
"I'm sorry," she said, pulling her gaze back. "What is that estate?"
Dillon followed her look. Something in his posture shifted — a small tension, the particular quality of someone identifying something they have complicated feelings about the location of.
"That belongs to the Duke of the South," he said. "Zorion Cove." He paused. "He's — well-known, in certain circles. He rarely appears in public. Doesn't attend social engagements. The only event anyone ever reliably sees him at is the Empress's birthday celebration in the capital." He glanced at her. "They say he's so attached to the ocean and its inhabitants that he can't bear to be away from it for long."
Esther was quiet, looking at the estate.
"Hmm," she said.
Dillon looked at the side of her face.
Then he looked at the estate.
Then he looked back at his hands.
They found a restaurant as the city settled into its evening self — quieter, lit differently, the particular unhurried quality of a coastal town after dark where the ocean is close enough to hear from most tables.
The patio seating overlooked the water directly, the sound of it present and constant beneath the noise of the other diners, and Esther settled into her chair and felt the sea air move through her hair and felt something in her unclench.
She ordered a seafood platter for Dillon and red wine for herself. Dillon sat beside her with the improved posture of someone who was slowly remembering that sitting at a table was not a privilege.
She had nearly finished her first glass when she became aware of being looked at.
Not the ambient awareness of general attention — she was accustomed to that, had been accustomed to it for three thousand years in various forms. This was specific. Directed. The particular quality of a gaze that had made a decision about where it was going and had no intention of reconsidering.
She looked up.
Across the patio, at a table that had a clear sightline to hers, sat a man.
Esther had seen beautiful people. She had met beings of considerable power and extraordinary appearance. She had stood in rooms where the accumulated physical perfection of assembled supernatural creatures had made the air feel different.
This man made her forget, for approximately three seconds, what she had been about to think.
He was — the word that arrived was simply distinguished, and it was insufficient. Long white curly hair pulled back loosely, with ringlets that escaped at the temples and framed a face of the particular structure that suggested something other than purely human origin. Emerald green eyes that caught the restaurant lighting and held it. Noble clothing that fit the way things fit when they have been made specifically for one person's body and no consideration has been spared.
He was looking at her.
He was looking at her in the uncomplicated, unhurried way of someone who has decided they are allowed to look and sees no reason to pretend otherwise.
For the first time in longer than she could accurately recall, Esther Scarlett had nothing to say.
Beside her, Dillon had gone very still.
Then he made a sound.
"I can't believe it," he breathed, in the voice of someone whose brain has presented them with information their body is not sure how to process. "That's — that's him. That's the Duke."
Esther said nothing.
The Duke, for his part, showed no indication of looking away.
The waiter appeared to take Esther's order. She managed it — placed Dillon's food, requested her wine without looking at the wine list, maintained the surface appearance of a person conducting a normal transaction — and when the waiter left, she set her glass down and looked across the patio.
"Would you like to join us?" she said.
Dillon's head turned toward her sharply.
The Duke rose from his table with the ease of someone who had been waiting for exactly this and had not doubted it would come. He crossed the patio without hurrying and settled into the chair across from her with the particular grace of something that had never once in its life needed to think about how it moved.
He looked at her from across the table.
She looked back.
"Your name," she said. "May I have the pleasure?"
"Zorion Cove." The voice matched the face — low, unhurried, with something in it that suggested depth in the literal sense, the way water sounds different when it is very far down. "But you may call me Zoey, if you prefer."
"Well, Zoey." The curve of her lips arrived slowly. "The woman you followed here is called Esther Scarlett."
Something moved through his expression — surprise, and then something warmer than surprise, and then simple delight. "Fascinating," he said. "You noticed."
"I notice everything," she said pleasantly. "It's a habit."
The waiter returned with the wine and Dillon's food, and Esther glanced at Zorion.
"Have you ordered yet?"
"Sex on the beach," he said, to the waiter.
The waiter noted it and departed.
Esther looked at him over the rim of her glass. "My, Zoey. I would at least like to get to know you before anything of the sort." She took a sip. "Besides — I already have three husbands, and a fourth I am currently in the process of pursuing." She glanced briefly at Dillon, who had been in the act of lifting his fork and had now put it back down to stare at her.
Zorion's gaze moved to Dillon, then back to Esther, with the unhurried assessment of someone absorbing new information without being particularly troubled by it.
"Slot number five, then," he said. "I'm not inclined to let the opportunity pass."
"If you weren't so remarkably good-looking," Esther said, with complete seriousness, "I would probably have killed you by now for following me."
"I would consider it an honor," Zorion said, without missing a beat. "To be ended by such beautiful hands." He accepted his drink from the returning waiter with a brief nod. "And since you've confirmed the attraction is mutual — I take it I've at least gotten through the door?"
Esther laughed.
It was the second genuine laugh of the evening, and Dillon registered it with the particular attention of someone cataloguing the things that produced it.
"You're a sweet talker," she said.
"I try."
"I'm not especially fond of sweet things, as it happens." She set her glass down. "Let's say you have my attention. What does that mean for you? What are you actually offering me?"
Zorion was quiet for a moment — not because he didn't have an answer, but in the way people are quiet when they are deciding how much of a true one to give.
"A secret," he said. "Something I have not told a single living person. That, to begin with."
"I have my own secrets," Esther said. "What else?"
"I like that you're making this difficult." He smiled — and the smile was different from his other expressions, warmer and less composed, the face of someone who had expected charm to be sufficient and was genuinely pleased that it wasn't. "All right. Something more concrete, then."
Esther had refilled her glass. She tilted it slightly, and a drop of wine ran down over the curve of her collarbone toward her décolletage. She didn't appear to notice. Both men at the table noticed considerably.
"My home," Zorion said, collecting himself. "I'll offer you my home — for you and your companions, however many there are. I am familiar with the affairs of this world in ways that most people aren't, and also with what lies beneath it. I know things that would be useful to someone learning this world from the outside." He looked at her steadily. "And I have not taken a mate. Not once. Whatever I am offering you — it has not been offered before."
Esther studied him across the table.
"My father," she said, with great solemnity, "always told me never to follow a stranger home. How do I know you're not simply planning to kidnap me?"
"Honey," Zorion said, "everyone who meets you wants to kidnap you. That's not specific to me."
Dillon, to his own apparent surprise, nodded.
"Lady Amanda couldn't stop thinking about you from the moment she saw you," he said. He hesitated, then added, with the candor of someone deciding honesty was the appropriate offering here: "Neither could I, if I'm being truthful. Though my intentions were considerably different from hers."
Esther looked between the two of them.
"That's a fair point," she conceded. "They do keep trying." She swirled her wine thoughtfully. "Though I should note that no one has managed it yet."
"I'm not concerned," Zorion said.
"You should be," Esther said pleasantly. "I have two king dragon husbands and a Fenrir. My fourth—" another brief look at Dillon, who had returned to not knowing what to do with his fork— "has dark magic at his disposal. And you still don't know what I am."
"You're right," Zorion said. "I don't. And you don't know what I am." He let that sit for a moment. "I think that makes us even. We both have things to reveal."
Esther was quiet.
The wine had done its work — not enough to dull her, but enough to soften the edges of her natural caution, enough to let the warmth of the evening and the water and this extraordinary, infuriating, entirely intriguing man sit more comfortably in her chest than they might otherwise have.
"My home is yours to sink to the ground if you choose," Zorion said. "I genuinely don't care about the property. I care about—" he stopped, and for the first time in the conversation looked briefly uncertain, the composure shifting to reveal something more honest underneath— "I've never done anything like this. Following someone. Sitting down at a stranger's table." He looked at her. "From the moment I saw you on the beach this afternoon, I felt something I don't have a good word for. A pull. The kind that doesn't ask your permission." He paused. "Your expressions. The way you move through a conversation. The way you looked at the water when you thought no one was watching you." He shook his head slightly. "You are unlike anything I have ever seen. And I have seen a great deal."
The table was quiet for a moment.
Dillon was looking at his food with the careful attention of someone studying a plate they have already fully memorized, because looking at Esther's face right now felt like it would be an intrusion.
Esther drained what remained in her glass.
"If this is simply a strategy to get me into bed," she said, "I want you to know it's working."
Zorion laughed — a real one, startled out of him, the sound of someone who had not seen that coming and was delighted not to have. Dillon made a strangled sound and looked at the ocean.
"It isn't a strategy," Zorion said, when he had recovered. "Everything I said, I meant. The other thing is simply — also true."
Esther looked at him for a long moment.
Then she appeared to make a decision.
"Here is what I'll do," she said. "Dillon will go back to the inn tonight. Tomorrow evening — come and find me, and I will give you my answer about the house." She paused. "I'll bring my other companions with me. One of them has been traveling for some distance. I want him there."
Zorion's expression said clearly that he had hoped for tonight and was adjusting gracefully.
"Tomorrow evening," he said. "What time?"
"Late afternoon. Enough time for everyone to settle and for me to have made a decision." She tilted her head. "And I'll warn you — I intend to present you with every reason this is complicated. If you're still interested after that, then we can discuss the house."
"Bring all of them," Zorion said. "Bring your husbands and your companions and anyone else you've collected along the way. We'll all be family eventually anyway." He said it with the straightforward certainty of someone stating something that simply was rather than something they hoped for.
Esther looked at him.
"You are a very strange man, Zoey," she said.
"Thank you," he said.
She signaled for the bill.
Zorion's hand rose before the waiter reached them. "My treat," he said, with a look at Esther that said he was not going to negotiate this point.
Esther looked at his hand.
Then at his face.
Then she sighed — the sigh of someone accepting a small defeat with moderate grace — and sat back.
They said their farewells outside the restaurant with the particular quality of people who know they are going to see each other again soon and are thinking about that rather than about the goodbye. Zorion held her gaze a moment longer than the occasion strictly required. Dillon watched him do it with an expression he was not successfully keeping neutral.
Then they went their separate ways into the Seacliff evening, the ocean sound following them all the way back to the inn.