She could see those next steps all too clearly.
Eloise and the others on the ship had Julian’s scales.Allthe dragon scales currently in existence—stitched into body armor, being examined in secret labs around the world—were Julian’s. The magic they held would allow their enemies into the fortress.
But all trace of dragon shifters disappeared when the dragon shifter died. If Julian was killed while Eloise and the other invaders were inside the fortress, that would deal with the invasion problem. They would all die trapped in ice and rock.
I shouldn’t have let him find out about the baby dragon,she thought, feeling as though her chest was about to crack open.
Julian’s family had kept the Soul-Eater trapped for generations. The so-called shifter god reincarnated into a new body when it was killed, so they kept it magically contained. Frozen in ice. Julian wouldn’t dare kill him—that would be as good as letting him loose on an unsuspecting world.
When he’d been the last shadow dragon, Julian’s death would have meant the end of all shadow dragon magic. The fortress would have fallen. The Soul-Eater would have died and lived again.
But now there was another. Julian could die, and only the infiltrators bearing his scales would die. The Soul-Eater would remain imprisoned.
And if she knew him at all, after their time together, she knew he might think that was worth the sacrifice.
Bastard.
*Francine?*
“Hmm?”
He was watching her, those icy eyes concerned. “We’re here.”
A dragon-sized archway led off the landing, to a room that lit up at a wave of Julian’s hand.
“Where?” she asked.
“My clan’s archives. If the fortress has any ancient defenses I never learned about, then we’ll discover them here.”
And if they found nothing? She didn’t ask, and he didn’t answer.
He must have thought of it already. A neat solution to the threat. A last resort that would save them all, except for him.
She wouldn’t let it happen.
Because he was right. She was his.
And he washers.
“This is more than an archive,” Francine said, frowning down at the texts Julian had pulled from the shelves. “This is a history of an entire civilization.”
“Hundreds of years of it.” Julian pulled another armful of papers from an over-packed shelf. “Not precisely an archive. I’ve seen such things in your world. They havefiling systems.This is—” He stood staring for a moment, then his shoulders slumped. “Hundreds of years of random thoughts and old grudges and whatever my people thought worth preserving, written with whatever ink they could create or steal on whatever passed for paper.”
“Most of thisispaper,” Francine pointed out.
“That’s because I have only brought out the paper. Adria and I—” Pain creased his face. “We never managed to translate whatever shorthand our ancestors used on the bone records. She had some luck with the language sewn into sealskins.”
“You speak English,” she said, half a question hidden in the words.
“I grew up speaking it. A form of it, at least. Hamish taught Adria and me the appropriate updates,” he said dryly.
“But the rest of your family also spoke other languages?”
“Of course. We went out into the world and stole away human and shifter mates, to live here with us beneath the ice. We plucked them from sailing ships and coastal villages, lands so distant we’d forgotten what they were called, and they brought their languages with them. And not only my family. There were seven clans, once. Though I’ve always found that hard to believe. I could never imagine this place holding the number of people it was built for. I never saw that many people in the world until I left.”
His throat moved, then he handed her another stack. “Here.”
She looked at the sheaf of papers and blinked. “This is typed.”
