Chapter 49 #2
“Yes,” I insisted. “What if we can make one last final move or two for the dragons most likely to select us to show them we’ll make good pairings?”
He looked disappointed. Clearly, he’d like to spend the rest of his day in simulated—or real—violence, but he was a faithful friend. “Will this make you feel better?”
“Yes, absolutely!”
“Fine then. Save my life.” He sounded glum about it as he went to collect our knives.
But standing here in this scorched room, it felt essential to me to give ourselves our best chance to survive.
“Do you really think there have never been others marked like us?” I asked him as we went toward the archives.
“I don’t think I’m special.”
“Because if they didn’t turn themselves in, they would have burned as the curse caught up to them.”
“Do you really believe in that curse business?”
“Don’t you? Why else are you here?” I’d been pretty convinced by the sense I was about to burn alive.
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. Obviously I don’t care where I burn. But the food’s good here.”
“Does it make you feel better to keep saying that over and over?” It was grating on my nerves.
“Yes.”
“Then carry on.” I’d endure it. We all had different ways of reckoning with things, and I might not understand Kiegan, but I wanted to be a good friend.
Especially since a few minutes later, he was following me into the massive echoing archive.
It carried the same hushed, cool, reverent sensation of being in a converted temple.
I tried to lead him to the dragon compendiums, but I was navigationally challenged, so we wandered a bit.
I rose to my tiptoes. The entire library was full of reminders I was miniature compared to the Fae.
“Come on,” Kiegan said, his hands around my waist. He lifted me up as if I weighed nothing, setting me on one of his broad shoulders. He was so big that it felt as if his shoulder were a perfectly adequate bench. “Can you see now?”
“A little notice next time, Kiegan.” I felt a glow of warmth at the easy, platonic way he’d manhandled me. His friendship felt comforting.
“Just thought you’d enjoy having a normal perspective. It must feel strange not to be looking up.”
I looked around before pointing across the library. “I see the dragons’ reference section!”
He was fixed on something to our left, but then he jerked his gaze in the direction I pointed. “We’re not going over there.”
“What are you doing?” My voice came out slightly shrill since he was walking in the opposite direction without putting me down.
He took enormous strides that made me feel as if I’d slide off, though he still gripped my waist. I put my hand on his hair, feeling the coarse, dark curls against my palm.
“I’m going to use your hair like reins if you don’t set me down. ”
“You can grab it if you’re scared. You won’t hurt me.”
“That wasn’t what I was saying—reins are for control, not balance—and oh.” I let my fingers sink into his hair, holding myself steadier.
He pushed at a locked door. The lock strained, then burst—or maybe it was the door that gave way—and then we were going downstairs. I ducked forward slightly involuntarily, afraid I’d hit my head on the stone ceiling. The air was dank.
“You’re going to get us kicked out of the library!”
“I don’t trust it,” he told me.
“The library?”
“The books chosen by the royal librarians.”
I could concede that point. “So what did you see down here?”
He turned a corner, and we were facing an enormous room filled with haphazard stacks of books. He let them slide down his shoulder carefully, setting me down on the ground.
“A mess.” He frowned at the stacks.
“I guess we’ll just be glad the books haven’t been burned.” I cast an anxious look over my shoulder. “I hope we don’t get caught. I love the archives.”
“You do? Well, the busted door may alert someone.”
“That was my concern,” I murmured, but I let it go for now and began to hunt through the stacks. The organizational system left a lot to be desired.
“We’re just borrowing. That’s what libraries are for, right?” He put a hand on top of a stack to steady himself as he leaned over to read the titles, but books cascaded across the floor as the stack tumbled. “Oh.”
“Who’s down there?” The voice was distant and cross, coming from high up the stairs.
“Hide,” he whispered. Or at least, he tried; it was a Kiegan-whisper, louder than a lot of mortal speaking voices.
I stared at him for a second, debating, and he turned his back to me, his face the picture of innocence in the split second I caught in profile. His back blocked me completely from the view of anyone on the stairs. I only had a moment to decide.
In an impulsive moment, I whispered a curse word and dove behind some of the stacks.
“What’s going on here?” The librarian’s voice was exasperated.
“I was looking for a book,” he said.
“Why look behind a locked door?”
“Was it locked?” He sounded genuinely confused. He was playing up the stupid-but-mighty orc stereotype, and I hid a smile.
“Well, not anymore,” she said in open exasperation. Good, I’d have a way out. “What were you looking for?”
“Bismyth dragons?”
“The compendiums of dragons? They’re reference books; they cannot leave. I’ll show you.” Her voice had changed. She sounded like strangers did sometimes when they talked to Lidi. “Do you want to look at the pictures?”
He laughed a deep, boisterous laugh I’d never heard from him, and I found myself cringing sympathetically. I might hate the way the Fae treated him more than the way they treated me. “Yeah.”
The two of them went up the stairs. I stayed there frozen for a few more moments, my thighs and calves burning from sitting on my heels, and then I edged cautiously along the stacks toward where I thought I might find the right books.
As I studied the titles, it occurred to me that Ander either hadn’t gotten the book he brought me from the archives as he said—or he’d had to commit a little light larceny himself.
Funny that he hadn’t told me. Surely he knew a tale of how he’d suffered to suit my wishes would win me over a little more, and he’d wanted me to trust him over Fieran.
It took a while, but eventually I found a different Clan Amber guide I’d never seen before. And near it in the stack, an ancient, crumbling version for Bismyth.
Pulling the books out from the stack almost made it all collapse on me, but I managed to survive, with only minimal damage to my toes and shins as books fell on me.
Rubbing my shin and cursing silently since I didn’t want to risk drawing any more attention than the avalanche might already have, I decided to wait a little longer, just in case someone above had managed to hear the books’ fall even up all those stairs.
I moved to the back of the stacks and sat with my back against a wall, opening Clan Bismyth’s book and propping it on my knees.
After Kiegan had to deal with that librarian, the least I could do was tell him what dragons might claim him and if there was anything he could do, like a temple offering for a pious dragon or a fight for a dangerous one, for one last chance to win them over.
When I opened the cover, I breathed in the scent of dust and worn leather and time-softened pages, and I breathed again, more deeply.
Then I saw what I’d just found.
A family tree.
There were families in Clan Bismyth? That made sense, I supposed. I found myself distracted, looking for links.
Fieran’s dragon. Shadowbane.
Mated.
To Lightbringer.
And there were children. Three lines descended from the dragon and his mate. I traced my fingertip over the ornate shapes connecting them all, wondering why this information wasn’t in my own book. It seemed like an important part of the dragons’ lore.
I went back to the mate’s name.
Lightbringer.
All the dragons had preposterous names, but I wondered about the backstory for that one.
Chasing an impulse I didn’t want to admit to, I flipped back in the book to find Lightbringer.
But there was no page for Lightbringer. It skipped from Lashtail to Loresword.
Had it been torn out? I ran my fingertip between the pages, searching for a tell-tale raggedness, but there was nothing. Maybe it had been removed by magic.
Frowning, I examined Fieran’s dragon’s page instead. Shadowbane.
The shifters Shadowbane chose seemed like a series of arrogant but courageous pricks. Meanwhile, there was nothing about Lightbringer except for the place where she was listed as his mate.
What if Lightbringer was from another clan entirely? I flipped through the Clan Amber book without finding Lightbringer, then through every other dragon compendium I could find.
Nothing.
I sat back, hot and frustrated from my fruitless search. I gathered the books up with my heart pounding, then hid them as best as I could under my tunic before I went up the stairs.
There was only one person who could answer my questions, one person who had studied the dragons so intensely—and even kept his own compendiums, likely stolen—and was able to readily predict what dragons might be drawn to a given shifter.
Who was Lightbringer?
Although I made it past the busted door and back out of the archives with my stolen goods, my heart didn’t stop pounding as I climbed the stairs. Part of that must be my still-lacking cardiovascular prowess, but I also felt I just might be close to unraveling part of Fieran’s plans for me.
Had Shadowbane forced Fieran to care for me because he wanted Fear and me to be mates?
Or was Fear trying to make me not just his wife, but his mate?
Mortals did not have fated mates…but mortals also did not have dragon marks.