After breakfast and a quick text to Stacey, Savage and I head down to the library. Minnie is busy with her mates this morning, and so is Scythe. Lyle promises to meet me after his morning class with the third-year students. He said it would be good for everyone to try to get back into some semblance of a routine; try to find some stability after the upheaval in their lives. Eugene won’t meet my eye, but Henry sails over on his tiny power, chirping a friendly hello and settling on my shoulder.
“How have you guys been?” I ask Stacey as she pulls out a seat for herself and sets Eugene down on the table. We watch Savage shake Eugene’s wing with amusement. It’s such anormalquestion that it sounds odd to my ears.
“Oh, you know,” she says, waving a hand. “I’m trying to keep busy while we work on my rex. He’s given Marduk some useful information about The Collector butstillwon’t talk to me.”
“Keep at it,” Savage says. “We’ll break him down in no time, and he will learn to love you like Aurelia learned to love me. Do you remember when she tried to reject me? But I convinced her.”
Stacey presses her lips together. “I don’t think any of us is going to forget that Goddess-forsaken time.”
I clear my throat. “This place is a collection point for assholes. Just another day at Animus Academy.” Savage nods sagely.
Stacey snorts as she opens her laptop. “Tell me about it. We’re researching real-lifebasilisks! I bet the humans don’t even know we have one.”
Savage chuckles. “Do you remember when they found out about phoenixes? That was funny.” I had only been a child, but the media went crazy when they found out the animalia population included phoenixes. Dragons and the rest of us they’d known about for so long, no one even remembers when we came out of hiding.
“They know about Boneweavers now,” Stacey says. “There were newspaper articles about it when you were on the run after Drakos Estate, and they had no choice but to tell the authorities. But…” She looks at me sheepishly. “You missed all the fuss, of course.”
“Probably for the best,” I say darkly. “And even for me, it was hard to find information about my kind. There was just that one old tome we found. Maybe we should check that first.” I wander to the locked cabinet where older, fragile texts need permission to be looked at. Luckily for me, this cabinet is academy-wrought, so when I go up to it with my fingers stretched out and say, “Open, please,” the old lock obediently clangs open. The handle is cold under my hand as I open it, the inside dusty and dry. I reach for the familiar leather-bound tome and take it out to the table.
“Take a picture of anything that looks important,” Stacey says. “I’m gonna look up the other serpent texts we have. The internet is useless for this.”
I leaf through the yellowed pages of the book and quickly find that most of it is not in English but another swooping language I’ve never seen before. The section relevant to me,about Boneweavers and their extensive powers, has a regular A4 sheet of paper stuck inside with an English translation that Minnie and I presumed was from Selene when we first saw it. Eventually, I give up on trying to make sense of anything else and search through the mythical creatures texts while Savage and Eugene doze on the table next to me.
“I’ve got to go check on Etienne,” Stacey says, closing her laptop. “I’ll come back straight after.”
“No, we’ve been at it for hours,” I say, nodding at the wolf and rooster asleep next to me. “We’ll take it back up tomorrow.” Stacey waves me goodbye, and Henry chirps his farewell to Stacey’s nimpin. My current book is a compendium of the mythic orders, ancient and modern, and includes some really strange creatures I’m almost certain that someone like Katerina Crocodylus Frankensteined in a lab somewhere. I pat my stomach thoughtfully. “But not anymore.”
It’s then that I feel it—an icy draft. I sit up, my head snapping to the right as if I’ll see the culprit standing there. But of course, it’s only the library wall, black brick and solid with no open windows. It wasn’t like Scythe’s hoarfrost, nor any other power I’m familiar with. It’s alarming enough to make me stand up, and after a glance at Savage and Eugene, still unmoved, I pat Henry on my shoulder and move to inspect the area. The shelves end a metre and a half before the back wall, giving enough walking room so you can round the corners. I turn to the next row and narrow my eyes down the length of empty space. Everybody is at class and even the librarian must be at a meeting because I’m the only person who sees the new addition on the back wall of the library.
An ancient door.
It’s arched and made of black wood. Charcoal bricks form an arch around it in the same Gothic manner as the rest of the school. Sitting at the apex of the arch is a gargoyle’s head, withcheeks so large they droop, bat-like ears, and a rounded button nose. He looks like a brother to Charlotte and Bastien, but he has no body.
“Hello?” I ask, stepping forward. “You are new, sir.”
Black eyes follow my movement, and a low, sonorous voice greets me with severe seriousness. “Great Lady Boneweaver. So we meet in this time and place, but I am not new.”
“And so we do,” I agree slowly, stepping before the door. “What is your purpose here?”
“My purpose?” he says as if offended. “It was aroundmethis noble house was built, after all. It is formethat you are guardian.” Something strikes me in my gut—a shooting memory—of the day Celeste left and gave me the title. I hadn’t been entirely sure what it meant and had assumed she just meant that a building made by dragons required someone powerful to oversee it. And since I’d returned as a dragon, it only made sense that it was me. But…
“Is it your wish to enter?” the gargoyle asks.
I stare at the door, at the strange, old power that seems embedded into it, and quite suddenly I don’t think I want to see what’s on the other side. My foot takes an involuntary step back. “What’s behind it?”
He blinks at me. “Do you wish to enter, my lady?”
I ask the question again, and the gargoyle repeats his answer. “What is your name?”
“Ashfang, my lady.”
“That’s an interesting name.”
“I was named after the beloved of the enchantress who made me.”
The name tickles something in me now. It suddenly gives me courage. “Open up, then, Ashfang.”
The gargoyle bows his head as much as he is able, and the door swings silently inward. There’s darkness beyond. Solid,everlasting. My heart pounds as power spirals through it, pulling me in, drawing my feet forward. It’spowerful.I want to go in,but equally, I do not. This is not a power of this world, and yet something about it is irrevocably familiar. Torn between wanting to peek in and wanting to run in the opposite direction, I rock back and forth on the balls of my feet, gasping under the force pulling me. Henry shrieks on my shoulder.
