Sugar & Dragon Act I: Temptation (Sugar & Dragon #1)

VIII Hera

And the doorknob turned into a tightly packed knob of sugar.

Apparently it wasn’t only gilded. Oops.

Hera looked at the imp sheepishly, but he only giggled.

“Dago will go crazy when he sees it,” he said joyfully.

Hera collected herself and touched the doorknob with her other hand. When it regained its metallic structure, she turned it cautiously and opened the door, tense and suspicious.

This time the morpheus didn’t lie. The vast room contained dozens of shelves with hundreds of scrolls… Thousands, if not millions of pages, waiting to be read.

Paradise , she thought, awestruck.

She strolled along the nearest shelf, looking hungrily at the volumes it contained. At first, almost all the titles sounded familiar, but the further she went, the more she saw items that she had never heard of—or items she had heard of but were no longer available for sale.

Such as this hefty volume in a green tube, titled Alternative Spells Development , whose author was so intimidated by its success that he had decided not to renew his contract with the publisher, and as a result, its distribution had stopped.

Hera swallowed. She had dreamed of reading this book for years.

Blood buzzing in her ears, she raised her hand to take the volume off the shelf but froze. It wasn’t her property. She shouldn’t touch it without permission.

Fighting her disappointment, she forced herself to lower her hand and move on. Unfortunately, other shelves turned out to hold wonders of no smaller caliber, and Hera felt her insides squirm and writhe until they turned into a monster that kicked and screamed at her to pack the books in a fireproof bag and escape through the window somewhere where she would have time to read them before the owner found her and reclaimed them…

Hera recoiled from the shelf. The vision suggested by the book monster was too real, too doable…

She took two more steps back and turned away from the den of temptations. The monster inside her roared with rage, but instead of giving in, she moved toward a huge table, made of the same black wood as the shelves but separated from them by a solid piece of empty space. Instead of looking at the shelves she passed, she surveyed the furnishings. There were lunar lamps, which grew from the ceiling like stalactites and which reminded her of the fangs of some giant beast, and a dark green carpet, which resembled the sea depths and hadn’t even a speck of dust on its surface. Eventually, the monster burst into tears and turned into a pile of misery…only to raise its head again.

Her gaze moved over the scrolls lying on the table and she felt her pulse quicken. She could tell by the titles that two of the three volumes in front of her concerned the geography of magical resources. She couldn’t see the runes written on the third tube, but the scroll belonging to it was partially unrolled.

It’s unrolled , she thought, repeating the excuse and drawing closer. I won’t touch it.

“Of all the ingredients that have been used in attempts to create a transmutation spell, koralion is one of the most frequently mentioned…”

Her eyes widened. Dago was reading a book about transmutation. Did that mean that he was going to help her even if…?

“Therefore, it is believed that although there is no concrete evidence of its effectiveness in this area, it is worth having for testing purposes. This advice seems to have roots in Turquoise Treaties, whose author described the shellfish producing it as ‘dreampoietic.’”

“Do you like my library, Galenos?”

Hera, who was already falling into a reading trance, started, but when she looked up, she froze. Midais was dressed in a long, dark robe that covered his body from the hips down but nonchalantly exposed much of its upper part. A hand-width ribbon of fabric hung loosely from his shoulder, covering less than half of his chest—which looked like the work of a talented sculptor. Its end touched the golden belt around his hips which, together with wide bracelets that resembled arm guards, was the sole, impressive decoration of his outfit. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him in similar clothes, but the sight of him dressed so formally while she was wearing an everyday dress made Hera feel strangely intimidated. Then she remembered the purpose of her visit and her embarrassment spread over her cheeks with a burning blush.

Dago approached her unhurriedly, as if he wanted to give her time to get used to his presence… or to admire his person. Considering who she was dealing with, Hera was more inclined to believe the latter.

“Are you here because you have a new plan?” he asked, stopping at a distance that was courtesy nudging the gates of intimacy. “Or because you don’t have it?”

Usually, Hera didn’t mind being direct; she was often so herself, especially with her patients, as it usually saved a lot of time. Now, however, getting to the point so quickly almost left her breathless.

…you will come back here and let me touch you.

When she didn’t answer, Dago moved closer, bending the rules of civility. “I’m guessing you don’t have another plan.”

In a desperate attempt to regain her composure, Hera looked down at the book in front of her. “It seems you came up with something new, though,” she said, forcing a neutral tone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take another step. They’d stood this close together in the past. Hera couldn’t quite understand why it hadn’t triggered any physical reactions in her then, but now every cell in her body seemed to be on alert. True, back then they’d been forced to cooperate under the threat of failing the course, and now they did it voluntarily, but was it really that different?

With the awareness of his proximity pouring into her senses with the insistence of a river, she had no choice but to admit that, yes, the difference was colossal.

“I was thinking about a short vacation by the sea,” Dago said, and she realized that he was referring to her statement. “You could come with me.”

Surprised, she instinctively raised her head to look at him, but because she wasn’t mentally prepared to see his gray eyes so close, it took her a moment to gather her scattered thoughts.

“Why?”

His eyebrow went up almost imperceptibly. “You don’t expect me to figure out your curse alone , do you?”

Her blush deepened, but she forbade herself from averting her gaze. “So you will help me even if nothing happens between us?”

“The journey would be more pleasant if something happened between us.”

Feeling her self-control shake under his intense gaze, she looked down at the table again. So he persisted in his idea…

“Do you want to eat something first?”

Hera shook her head. There was no point in making dodges. She’d known from the beginning what would happen.

Dago moved closer. When she didn’t cringe, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. For some reason, their warmth surprised her. She thought they would be as cool as the color of his eyes.

When a moment passed and she still wasn’t pulling away, he said, lowering his voice, “Put your hands on the table.”

“Why?”

“Because of occupational safety and health.”

Involuntarily, her lips curved into a smile. “You think that you are made of gold?”

“Certainly not of sugar.”

A soft chuckle escaped her throat but faded when Dago moved to stand behind her.

“Hands on the table,” he reminded her, gently touching her stiff arms. “And be so kind as to hold your flames for yourself. If you burned my collection, I would be inconsolable.”

“Would you cry?”

“A whole night.”

She smiled again, amused by this vision. “That’s short for such a loss.”

He moved his right hand over her arm, up and down. “I could sit and cry, but that wouldn’t change anything. The time spent on rebuilding would be more rewarding.”

“That’s practical.”

“I am a very practical man.”

He stroked her skin again, using both hands this time. He didn’t stop, however, gradually lowering his hands. When his fingers wrapped around her wrists and tugged lightly, she gave in and placed her hands on the counter. The table was relatively high, so the angle at which she leaned her body was too shallow for her to feel embarrassed about her new position. When Dago moved so that her back was no more than two fingers away from his chest, his proximity made her more curious than afraid.

He moved one hand back to her shoulder but placed the other on her hip. “I think you’re ready for another level of fun,” he murmured, but since he was so close she could understand every word. “Am I wrong?”

The gentle but determined touch of his hands enlivened her skin, which seemed to vibrate under their warm weight. The uncertainty regarding his next move fueled her curiosity, and her curiosity crowded out her shame. Hera wouldn’t be honest if she insisted that she didn’t like it. She could withdraw, but why? It would be like stopping the experiment in the middle of the research.

Reasonless.

“No,” she said because she was a very practical woman. “You’re not wrong.”