The rooms they gave her were in the east wing, three floors up, facing a courtyard garden.
From the window she could see it all — geometric hedges, stone paths, and at the center a fountain in the shape of a dragon in flight, water pouring from its open mouth in a continuous silver arc.
The rooms were large without being overwhelming. A sitting room, a bedroom, a small study with shelves and a writing desk. The furnishings were good without being ostentatious. The fireplace was already lit when they brought her.
The steward — grey-haired, whose name she learned was Aldric — showed her each room with efficient brevity. He told her the breakfast hour, the location of the kitchen, the hours of the library, and the name of the maid assigned to her if she required assistance.
"I won't need much assistance," Nora said.
"Of course," Aldric said, with perfect neutrality.
After he left, Nora unpacked the bag she had brought — not much, she intended to keep returning home — and sat by the window looking at the courtyard garden.
She thought about what she had agreed to.
She was here. Accessible to him. That was the core of it.
He wanted someone around who spoke to him plainly. Who didn't perform. Who didn't fear him. She understood this need — she had absorbed this quality from her father and recognized its value. If she had grown up surrounded by people who said what she wanted to hear, she thought she would be considerably less useful in the world.
The Dragon King had grown up surrounded by people who said what they needed him to hear. Nobody told him uncomfortable truths. Nobody looked at him without performing something. Nobody called his invitation kidnapping to his face and then walked away to sort fabric.
She had honesty to offer. She was good at it. And it would apparently be rarer here than gold.
A knock at the door.
She opened it.
Malik stood in the doorway. In his hands, a small carved box — dark wood, plain.
"I wanted to show you something," he said. Then he stopped. "Is this — you said your rooms required agreement."
"Yes," she said. "But you can knock."
He looked at the door. "I knocked."
"Then this is fine," she said, and stepped back to let him in.
He came in and sat in the chair near the fire — not the one she had been using, the other one, as though leaving her space. He looked at the courtyard below.
"My mother planted the central garden," he said. "The hedges were her design. She wanted something visible from as many rooms as possible." He paused. "She died when I was twelve."
"I'm sorry," Nora said.
"It was a long time ago." He turned and held out the box. "This is part of the agreement. A practical part."
She took it and opened it.
Inside, on dark velvet, lay a small pendant — a dragon in flight, gold, no larger than her thumbnail, on a fine chain.
"It marks you as under royal protection," he said. "While you're in this palace, in the city, anywhere in my jurisdiction — that mark means no one touches you. No one questions you." He paused. "It also means you can enter any part of this palace freely."
Nora looked at the pendant. It was very finely made. The dragon's wings fully articulated, every feather visible.
She closed the box and handed it back.
He looked at the returned box in his hand. Then he looked at her.
"I don't need it," she said. "If someone gives me trouble, I'll handle it myself. I always have." She paused. "But thank you. It's beautiful work."
He looked at the box for a long moment. Then he put it in his pocket.
"You're the first person," he said, "who has ever given something back."
"Is that strange?" she asked.
"Very," he said.