“Why look behind a locked door?”
“Was it locked?” He sounded genuinely confused. He was playing up the stupid-but-mighty orc stereotype, and I hid a smile.
“Well, not anymore,” she said in open exasperation.Good, I’d have a way out.“What were you looking for?”
“Bismyth dragons?”
“The compendiums of dragons? They’re reference books; they cannot leave. I’ll show you.” Her voice had changed. She sounded like strangers did sometimes when they talked to Lidi. “Do you want to look at the pictures?”
He laughed a deep, boisterous laugh I’d never heard from him, and I found myself cringing sympathetically. I might hate the way the Fae treated him more than the way they treated me. “Yeah.”
The two of them went up the stairs. I stayed there frozen for a few more moments, my thighs and calves burning from sitting on my heels, and then I edged cautiously along the stacks toward where I thought I might find the right books.
As I studied the titles, it occurred to me that Ander either hadn’tgotten the book he brought me from the archives as he said—or he’d had to commit a little light larceny himself. Funny that he hadn’t told me. Surely he knew a tale of how he’d suffered to suit my wishes would win me over a little more, and he’d wanted me to trust him over Fieran.
It took a while, but eventually I found a different Clan Amber guide I’d never seen before. And near it in the stack, an ancient, crumbling version for Bismyth.
Pulling the books out from the stack almost made it all collapse on me, but I managed to survive, with only minimal damage to my toes and shins as books fell on me. Rubbing my shin and cursing silently since I didn’t want to risk drawing any more attention than the avalanche might already have, I decided to wait a little longer, just in case someone above had managed to hear the books’ fall even up all those stairs.
I moved to the back of the stacks and sat with my back against a wall, opening Clan Bismyth’s book and propping it on my knees. After Kiegan had to deal with that librarian, the least I could do was tell him what dragons might claim him and if there was anything he could do, like a temple offering for a pious dragon or a fight for a dangerous one, for one last chance to win them over.
When I opened the cover, I breathed in the scent of dust and worn leather and time-softened pages, and I breathed again, more deeply.
Then I saw what I’d just found.
A family tree.
There werefamiliesin Clan Bismyth? That made sense, I supposed. I found myself distracted, looking for links.
Fieran’s dragon. Shadowbane.
Mated.
To Lightbringer.
And there were children. Three lines descended from the dragon and his mate. I traced my fingertip over the ornate shapes connecting them all, wondering why this information wasn’t in my own book. It seemed like an important part of the dragons’ lore.
I went back to the mate’s name.
Lightbringer.
All the dragons had preposterous names, but I wondered about the backstory for that one.
Chasing an impulse I didn’t want to admit to, I flipped back in the book to find Lightbringer. But there was no page for Lightbringer. It skipped from Lashtail to Loresword. Had it been torn out? I ran my fingertip between the pages, searching for a tell-tale raggedness, but there was nothing. Maybe it had been removed by magic.
Frowning, I examined Fieran’s dragon’s page instead. Shadowbane.
The shifters Shadowbane chose seemed like a series of arrogant but courageous pricks. Meanwhile, there was nothing about Lightbringer except for the place where she was listed as his mate.
What if Lightbringer was from another clan entirely? I flipped through the Clan Amber book without finding Lightbringer, then through every other dragon compendium I could find.
Nothing.
I sat back, hot and frustrated from my fruitless search. I gathered the books up with my heart pounding, then hid them as best as I could under my tunic before I went up the stairs.
There was only one person who could answer my questions, one person who had studied the dragons so intensely—and even kept his own compendiums, likely stolen—and was able to readily predict what dragons might be drawn to a given shifter.
Who was Lightbringer?
