“Any of the ancient queens.” Fern turned to her book, scanning the pages with alarming speed, then flipping them over. When I looked at the page, I got caught on the first word. Someone had spent a lot of time drawing the initial letter in this intricate style that had my eyes rolling around and around, trying to make sense of it. “Though…” She shot me a sidelong look. “Do your dragons remember anything about their mother?”
‘Fang?
My mind connected with my dragon’s instantly.
No.His reply was uncharacteristically cautious. Usually, you couldn’t shut the bastard up.She died, but the cave, that was not her den. Her nest wasn’t there. What I remember… it’s all jumbled. Silver mates with gold… She was there, and she was in pain and then… nothing.
I conveyed that information to Fern, the two of us growing serious.
“Her nest would be the collection of dragon stones that contained all of Drathnor’s memories,” she said with a slight frown. “All of hers and the rest of her line.” When her eyes metmine, I saw a fire flare to life. “Like books, but instead of pages full of words, they store their history in them.”
“Touching a stone would be a lot easier than reading these books,” I muttered, but when I looked up, Fern was utterly focussed on the text. It took very little to distract me from reading, but her… The way her teeth sank into that plump little bottom lip, worrying the skin in a way I wanted to kiss away. My tongue flicked over mine, suddenly bone dry.Look away!I told myself, but my focus didn’t shift.Stop staring or Fern will?—
“Is everything alright?”
She looked up then, catching me in the act. My smile was a mask I hid my intense interest behind.
“I’m not finding much in this book.” Liar, I hadn’t read a word. “How about you?”
“Possibly, if this author is to be trusted.” The way she bent over the book, her fingers sliding across the page. I followed its passage, if not the sentence she traced. “It says here these ancient queens, their power was… astonishing.” Fern’s back hit the back of her chair as her hands began to move through the air. “That they were over a hundred metres long. That they had the ability to freeze oceans, raise mountains, reshape the terrain. That can’t be true.”
“What else does it say?”
Dragging my chair over to sit right next to hers? Yeah, that’s what I’d wanted to do since the moment I sat down.
“Auren is powerful, but she can’t do anything like that,” Fern said.
Oddly, my focus was now on the book. The words moved of their own accord, but when I settled down next to Fern, they seemed to resolve themselves.
“She was one of three sisters…” As I leaned closer, so did Fern, the two of us scanning the same page. “They ruled the region around Wyrmpeak. The mountain belonged to them first. Drathnor’s eggs should’ve been born in the hatching sands here.”
“But instead she was forced to birth them in the Tomb ofTerror.” As Fern said the words, my eyes met hers. “What would force such a powerful dragon to do that, so far from her own territory?”
I wish I knew. If Fern wanted answers, then I needed to be the man that gave them to her. Right as I was about to swear I’d find out, even if it meant reading every single book in this library, our study session was interrupted.
“I’m not sure what the rider was thinking, telling me I needed to write my own essay.” Seraphina walked past, two of her cronies in tow. “On dragon anatomy of all things! When I bond with my queen dragon, Father will hire a groom, a healer, to deal with any ailments she might have.”
She turned to one girl, who barely resisted the urge to flatten herself against the book stacks.
“Jocelyn, find the books on… the dragon alimentary system.” Seraphina grimaced. “And prepare some notes for me. An annotated diagram as well. Louise?—”
“We have our own assignments to complete, Seraphina,” her other companion said, standing up taller.
“Then you better work fast to ensure both are done by the due date.” Seraphina shoved a scrap of parchment into Louise’s chest, then turned around. She was about to sweep out of the library, I was sure of it, but then she saw us.
Cruelty and beauty, it was always a powerful combination, but it was one that left me cold. Seraphina approached with a vicious smile.
“And what do we have here?” I knew her kind. There were plenty of posh girls in Blackreach who made a sport of looking me up and down, only to end up sneering. “Learning how to read, are we?” As my hand curled into a fist, her smile widened as she transferred her focus to me. “Don’t let me stop you from sounding out the words. Duh, mm, bah.”
“Says the woman who’s forcing her ‘friends’ to complete her work for her.”
My eyebrows shot up, and I turned to face Fern. The viewwas far better for one, but the sight of my girl defending me was something I wanted to soak in.
“And why would I dirty my hands with work?” Seraphina held hers out, making a show of inspecting the rings on her fingers. Good twenty four carat gold by the look of it, and while there wasn’t a queen’s ransom of precious stones set into the jewellery, those stones were good enough for a duchess. “Something you’d know if you weren’t born in some godforsaken backwater.”
This one thinks she’s a queen. ‘Fang’s voice sounded positively aggrieved.No dragon would ever bond themselves to her.
Then I better correct that assumption, I replied.
