Before I could respond, she stopped. We'd reached a flat section of roof, wider than the others, tucked between two taller buildings that blocked the wind. Someone had dragged old crates up here, arranged them like furniture around a fire pit that was just a circle of stones with ash in the center.
"Welcome to my place," Cassandra said.
It wasn't much. A few stolen blankets. A stack of candle stubs. A cracked mirror leaning against a chimney. But the way she said it, my place, carried a weight that made me understand. This was hers. In a world where she owned nothing, she'd claimed this small patch of roof and made it into something.
"It's perfect," I said.
She shot me a suspicious look. "You making fun?"
"No. I mean it."
The suspicion lingered another moment, then faded. She dropped onto one of the crates and stretched her legs out, completely at ease. Raikiri curled at her feet, his constant crackling dimming to a soft glow.
I stood awkwardly, not sure where to sit. Azurene solved the problem by pushing out from under my cloak and flowing down to the rooftop. She stretched, wings spreading, then turned to examine our surroundings with the careful attention she gave everything.
"So." Cassandra was watching me again. "You gonna tell me who you really are?"
"I told you. I'm..."
"A merchant's kid. Yeah." She snorted. "Pull the other one. Merchant kids don't have dragon Anima. Merchant kids don't talk like they swallowed a dictionary. And merchant kids definitely don't climb like they've never touched a rough surface in their lives."
I had no response to that. She was right about all of it.
"I'm Vale," I tried. "That's... my family calls me Vale sometimes."
"Vale." She tested the name. "Fine. Keep your secrets, Vale. Everyone's got them." She patted the crate beside her. "Sit down before you fall down. You look like a stiff breeze would knock you over."
I sat. The crate creaked under me, but held.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The city spread out below us, a sea of dark rooftops broken by the occasional torch or lit window. In the distance, the palace loomed on its hill, blazing with light. From here, it looked like a different world. A painting of somewhere that couldn't be real.
"That's where you're from," Cassandra said. Not a question.
"I..."
"Relax. I'm not going to turn you in." She picked up a pebble and tossed it off the roof, watching it fall. "What'd be the point? Best case, I get a reward and every guard in the district comes sniffing around my spot. Worst case, nobody believes me and I get thrown in a cell for making up stories about the royal family."
"I didn't say I was..."
"You didn't have to." She pointed at Azurene, who had settled onto the roof a few feet away and was watching Raikiri with undisguised curiosity. "Dragon. That's Azure royal blood. Everyone knows that."
She's clever, Azurene noted.
I noticed.
"I'm not going to ask why you snuck out," Cassandra continued. "That's your business. But I've got to know one thing."
"What?"
She turned to face me directly, those blue eyes sharp and searching. "Are you being chased? Running from someone? Because if trouble's following you, I need to know. This is my territory. These are my people. I won't bring danger to them just because some noble kid wanted an adventure."
The question surprised me. Not the words; the concern behind them. She'd known me for less than an hour and she was already thinking about how my presence might affect others. How many palace nobles could say the same?
"No one's chasing me," I said. "I snuck out to see the city. That's all. No one knows I'm gone."
"Yet."
"Yet," I admitted.
She studied me for another long moment. Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because she nodded and turned back to the view.
"Okay then. Welcome to the real Azure, Vale. It's a lot uglier than the view from your hill."
We talked until the stars began to fade.
She told me about street life. About the winter she'd spent sleeping in doorways, waking up with frost in her hair. About the hunger that never really went away, just dulled to a constant ache you learned to ignore. About the older kids who ruled certain blocks and the prices they charged for protection.
"Parents?" I asked.
The question slipped out before I could stop it. Something about the darkness, the lateness of the hour, the strange intimacy of sitting on a stranger's rooftop; it loosened my tongue.
Cassandra's expression flickered. Just for a moment. Then she shrugged, the gesture too casual to be real.
"Got some. Mom and Dad." She picked up another pebble, turning it over in her fingers. "They're good people. Dad works the docks; loading, unloading, whatever needs doing. Mom takes in mending. Sews buttons back on shirts for people who can't afford new ones."
"That sounds..." I searched for the right word. "Honest."
She snorted. "Honest doesn't fill bellies. Dad's Anima is a weasel. Mom's got a wolfdog. Neither of them can do the fancy animus stuff. Just enough to know they've got souls, not enough to matter." The pebble flew off the roof, vanishing into the darkness. "That's most people down here, you know. Common Anima. Common lives. We're not all hiding dragons under our cloaks."
Raikiri lifted his head at that, lightning flickering between his ears. Cassandra reached down to scratch behind them, her touch gentle despite the electricity that sparked against her fingers.
"Then there's this one," she said. "Nobody knows what to make of him. Showed up next to me when I was born, all crackling and angry. The midwife nearly dropped me."
"A raiju." I'd read about them. Storm beasts from old legends. Rare enough that most people would never see one.
"Yeah." Pride crept into her voice despite her efforts to sound indifferent. "Some merchant from up north offered my parents a fortune for me once. Said a girl with a raiju Anima would be worth ten times that when she grew up. Training, he called it. Investment."
My stomach turned. "They didn't..."
"Course not." Her voice sharpened. "I told you. They're good people. Dad threw the bastard out of our home. Literally. Picked him up and tossed him into the street." A faint smile crossed her face at the memory. "Raikiri almost fried him on the way out. Would've served him right."
The raiju made a sound that might have been agreement. Lightning arced between his teeth.
"So they're still around? Your parents?"
"Few blocks from here. Small place, but it's ours." She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I don't stay there much anymore. Too crowded. Too many questions about where I go, what I do." She gestured at the rooftop around us. "Up here, I can think. Watch the city. Figure things out."
"Figure what out?"
Her eyes found the palace again, that distant blaze of light on the hill. When she spoke, her voice had gone quiet. Hard.
"How to change things."
The words hung between us. I thought about asking what she meant. What things. How she planned to change them. But something in her expression warned me off. This wasn't a conversation she wanted to have. Not yet. Not with a stranger she'd just met, no matter how many secrets that stranger might be hiding under his borrowed clothes.
So I let it go. Pulled my knees up to match her posture and stared out at the city alongside her.
Azurene settled against my side, her scales cool and smooth. Through our bond, I felt her curiosity about the girl beside us. Her judgment. Her conclusion.
She's interesting, my dragon decided.
She is.
You should keep her.
She's not a stray cat, Azurene.
No. A ripple of something warm passed through the bond. She's more like us than she knows.
I didn't understand what that meant. But I took note of it, the way I retained everything else I'd learned that night.