In three strides, Lorn is suddenly next to me, and then his Wing and Aeson’s both move into position around us. Herm, Jori, and Blay stand on my side, and Lorn’s Wing guards his. Out of nowhere, light filters through the seams of the braided tree trunk. It grows brighter to the point of almost being blinding, while the woven gold of the trunk slowly loosens until a large arched entryway appears.
My eyes search the opening in the tree for anything that resembles a Crush, but all I see is the same glittering black stone that the rest of this cavern is made out of. Lorn’s hand presses against the small of my back. I flinch at the unexpected contact, barely managing not to pull away or deck him.
“We have to step in,” he tells me, gesturing with his other hand at the empty entryway.
“Oh, right,” I chirp, and then I hesitantly step forward.
Lorn’s hand doesn’t leave my back, and I end up having to press closer to him as everyone steps inside the golden opening. Immediately the braided seams start to close back together, and all too quickly the trunk seals itself up, completely trapping us inside.
Small spaces have never been an issue for me, but as the seconds tick by and nothing happens, I can feel the cold touch of claustrophobia as it starts to slink closer and closer. Lorn’s palm starts to grow warmer where it’s pressed against the skin of my back. The pounding of my pulse grows to a crescendo in my ears until it’s all I can hear. Heat sparks in my cheeks, and I don’t know what to make of the scion’s touch. Is he trying to comfort me, or is this motivated by something else?
I should step closer to him. I should encourage this, just like I planned. But all of a sudden, my feet are leaden, and a heavy boulder has decided to take up residence in my chest. The overwhelming urge to slap Lorn’s hand away and put as much distance between us as I can, starts to peck at my limbs. The longer I ignore the urge, the more it digs under my skin like an infestation of skittering insects.
It’s completely counterintuitive to what I’ve planned and the opposite of what I need to be doing. If he has been flirting with me, if he’s acting on attraction, then I should be trying to hook him closer to get what I need. And yet, I’m on the verge of giving in to the driving force demanding that I push him away from me. Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with the Noctises trying to throw me off. Maybe this is meant to unsettle me and nothing more.
The floor beneath us suddenly lurches, yanking me from my frenzied thoughts, and then we slowly start to drop. A ticking sound fills the tree trunk as we descend, and the stone platform that we’re standing on rotates until we’re all facing the other side of the tree.
An exit starts to form in the trunk, or maybe this is an entrance too because it grants access to a new gleaming room. I wasn’t sure what to expect—a cave with mounds of treasure was high on my list—but I’m surprised to find a large expanse of walls covered in drawers and doors. Every surface is made from some kind of metal that has a patina to it that’s not quite bronze or gold but something unique and in between.
It reminds me of a feed I saw once on a vid screen in the human district. I think they called them safety cubes or something along those lines. Big treasure hoarders, orbanksas they call them, let special humans store their valuables in these kinds of cubes. The cavernous space in front of me looks similar, only the drawers and doors here are bigger and seem to cover every surface.
In awe, I step out of the tree trunk into the chamber. Only Lorn moves to follow me, his Wing and Aeson’s staying within the open trunk. The tech I can sense here is top of the line, and the room itself is massive. A bright purple light flashes across the ground, and I freeze. My eyes drop to my feet, and I see a list of data scroll by quickly with different dates attached to names. I recognize a few of the names as precious metals.
Huh. Weird.
There’s a seam in the ground and I step over it, only for a new list to light up in purple next to my foot. This one appears to be a list of gems, rare and common, again with dates attached to the designations.
“There are vaults built into the ground too. If you want to call them up or access their contents, tell the roots what you want and they’ll obey,” Lorn tells me, pointing to the different sections that make up the entirety of the floor and then to the drawers and doors on all of the walls.
Astonished, I suck in a sharp breath and quickly stride over to a row of drawers. A new list, alight in bright purple, scrolls across the drawer front. It contains rings of some sort, and it tells me not only who they belonged to, but the gems and metals used to make them and their sizes.
“If you press your finger to the upper right-hand corner of any of the vaults, it will tell you the current monetary value of its contents,” Lorn instructs.
I test the drawer of rings and press the pad of my finger to the corner, and the list of contents disappears and a string of numbers takes its place. They keep ticking by until the digits look more like an international com number and not what a single drawer of rings should be worth.
“Fuck the fae,” I whisper, aghast as I spin to take in the whole vault.
I’m tempted to pull open every drawer and door. I want to inspect each item, take note of what my father and kindred contributed. Suddenly I need to know which items they valued enough to add to their Crush, and I’m desperate to discover the treasures that called to their dragons. But as quickly as the overwhelming desire comes, I shove it away even faster.
This Crush isn’t mine alone. I have no right to touch anything until all the Syphons are here and can decide what to do. We lost everything together. We’ll reclaim it all the exact same way.
I allow myself one more spin to take it all in. My stunned gaze lands on Lorn, and I shake my head in utter disbelief at the magnitude of it all. A wide smile blooms across the scion’s face, and a deep resounding chuckle fills the vault.
“I guess the days of caves filled with piles of gold, jewels, and the skeletons of humans who tried to steal from a dragon are long gone,” I note, completely gobsmacked but doing my best to rein it in.
Lorn’s chuckle blooms into a laugh. I notice that no purple lists light up at his feet when he moves, and realize that effect must only be keyed to me.
“Yes, Princess,” Lorn teases. “Those daysare very far behind us. That lore only exists in fairy tales now.”
“Fairy tales and in the daydreams of broken little Syphons,” I mumble to myself.
Carefully, I walk around, noting what lights up on the floor and the walls as I go. There are a lot of things I would expect to find down here—jewels, crowns and tiaras, centuries-old coin collections, pottery, art. But there are vaults for things that surprise me too—ancient documents, digital photo albums of ancestors long forgotten, clothes, books.
I have to stop myself from reaching for the archives of photos. It’s funny because I was terrified I might find exactly that down here. But now that the images are at my fingertips, all I want to do is see my kindred’s faces again. I want to replace the last memories I have of their shattered bodies with new images of them laughing and…living.
I stare at the drawer longingly, torn and conflicted, and then I force myself to walk away. I will look, I’ll scour their archives and soak up everything I can about everyone I’ve lost, but not today. Today I need to focus on anything that might help me, anything that might point to answers about who might have planned the attack or how we were cursed.
It’s a long shot that anything useful might be down here, but I’d be an idiot not to look. Treasure looks different to every dragon. Some desire gold, others covet jewels or lands, and then there are those that deal in secrets and see the value in gossip. If I’m lucky, I might find a vault filled with classified information or maybe even royal secrets.
