The royal summons arrived three days later.
A sealed letter — black wax, the dragon crest pressed sharp and perfect into it. A palace courier delivered it personally, which meant the king had sent it himself rather than through his staff.
Thomas Atwood accepted it with both hands, bowed, and waited until the courier had departed before turning to look at his daughter.
Nora was finishing a sale. She completed the transaction — measured, cut, rolled, tied, handed over with the change — before she looked at the letter in her father's hand.
"Open it," she said.
Her father broke the seal.
The king's handwriting was nothing like she had imagined. Not bold and heavy-handed. Precise and controlled — the writing of someone who wrote often and had reduced it to its essential elements. No flourishes. Just words, clear and exact.
Her father read it twice. Then a third time.
"What does it say?" Nora asked.
"He's inviting the family to the palace for dinner. Fifth day of next week." He paused. "You, me, your aunt Sera if she's in the city. He wishes to discuss a matter of mutual benefit."
"Mutual benefit," Nora repeated.
"His words."
She thought about the three days since their walk through the merchant quarter. She had noted his absence without particular feeling — the way she noted weather patterns. She had also noticed the two unfamiliar men who had appeared at the marketplace perimeter, watching the stalls with the quality of trained observation.
She had filed it under: he is still paying attention.
"We should go," her father said.
"Yes," Nora agreed.
That evening she sat at the kitchen table of their house — narrow, two-storey, solid and modest — and read the letter herself. She read it several times. Then she folded it and looked at the candle flame and thought.
The thing about the Dragon King, she was beginning to understand, was that he was not what the stories said.
The stories said: cold, merciless, dangerous. Those things were not false. But they were incomplete.
The man who had laughed in the marketplace. Who had followed her through the merchant quarter asking careful questions. Who had waited at the bottom of the stairs.
He was also curious. Possibly lonely — though she was too careful to say so with certainty. And genuinely unused to someone who was simply themselves in his presence.
Most people performed for him. Fear was a performance. Worship was a performance. He had lived inside other people's performances for seventeen years and had perhaps, somewhere along the way, forgotten what it felt like when no one was performing at all.
This was an interesting situation.
She blew out the candle and went to bed.