1. Arthur #2
The sky held the cold snap of fall. My wings cut through it with precision. Each rise of air met the power in my chest, lifting me higher. The tension I carried in my human form loosened with every movement. I knew my direction. I knew my purpose.
I launched upward, toward the dark horizon.
The human world waited below, full of rules I had never been taught. I would deal with that later.
The corridors of the manor carried the scent of old stone and magic.
The stone had been quarried from the cliff itself, cut and shaped long before my birth.
The magic threaded through it was old and conservative, designed to preserve rather than impress.
Nothing hummed unnecessarily. The manor wasn’t built to perform, but to endure.
It was too large for only two occupants. That fact announced itself constantly in the unused wings and the rooms kept immaculate but untouched. Sound traveled farther than expected, echoing off the stone, as if the house were still waiting for bodies and voices that no longer inhabited it.
The Overlook Hearth was behind me, only a short flight away, and the falls hummed in the distance.
My mother lived above the café, in an apartment carved into the upper stone, close to conversation and company.
She’d said the manor felt too quiet after my father’s death.
That it held too many echoes. I hadn’t argued.
I had lived within these walls my entire life.
So had Caliban. We knew the manor’s rhythms, its silences, the way it settled at night, even in this new era.
The manor was mine now—and Caliban’s—although saying I owned it felt wrong.
It was more like it was my responsibility.
The building tolerated us. It had not yet decided what it thought of the arrangement.
My mind had already leaped ahead to the research wing. My mother knew this part of me too well. When something struck the right chord, nothing could stop the momentum. Not even my better judgment, and especially not my sense of time.
Caliban would already be nearby. He always was. The house trusted him implicitly. Me, it watched.
I crossed the threshold into my research room and shut the door behind me.
It was a tall, domed room crowned with a skylight that shifted its tint according to enchanted readings of the night sky.
A long telescope rested beneath it on an adjustable brass mount.
The floor featured a detailed world map carved into dark wood.
Shelves filled with ancient tomes lined the walls, interspersed with globes, scroll racks, and instruments calibrated to track the fluctuations of dragon magic.
Glass cases held relics from each era of our lineage.
A fire burned low in the corner hearth, warming the space.
In this room, everything had a place, and everything remained where it was put. I had always found that reassuring.
It had been built for my father and me—mostly me.
It held every question I had asked and every attempt he had made to redirect them.
The room itself had been his compromise.
An effort to keep me close, even if he didn’t believe in the work.
It had been an olive branch of sorts, but the peace had been short-lived.
I crossed the room to the narrow cabinet beneath the window. I rarely opened it because it held personal records and correspondence my father had deemed sentimental and irrelevant to leadership—all of which were, according to him, unworthy of prolonged attention.
I took out the letter.
The paper was older than it looked and reinforced at the folds, the ink faded but still legible. My grandfather’s hand had always been precise. I’d only read it once. Skimmed it, really. At the time, I had been younger and impatient, eager for solutions instead of reflection.
My mother’s words echoed again in my head.
Even in the darkest nights, the sun returns with the dawn.
I scanned the page more carefully now.
And there it was.
Repeatedly woven subtly through the text. A phrase my grandfather returned to again and again, sometimes whole, sometimes fractured. Sun. Dawn. Light returning. Cycles. Endurance.
Halfway down the page, a line I had always dismissed as metaphor caught and held.
A knight must sometimes walk in shadow so that others may remember the light.
My breath stilled.
Knight.
I’d thought it was poetry, but it was a reference.
I straightened slowly, the pieces shifting into place.
Carefully, I folded the letter and crossed over to the clan compendium by the far wall.
The book held the records of the rare moments mortals were trusted with dragon knowledge over the centuries as a way of preserving our history by an unbiased party.
There weren’t many. I ran a hand along the leather binding, my mother’s words still echoing in my head.
Mortals favored drama in their naming conventions, which made research unnecessarily theatrical.
Even so, my pulse jumped. I didn’t appreciate the physiological response. I preferred clarity when I worked. Distance. Objectivity.
But I already knew what I would find.
I traced the entry.
Granted direct access to dragon leadership. Historian. Genealogist. Last recorded human permitted full archival reach prior to the era of secrecy.
The last.
I exhaled slowly.
Before I could read further, the air shifted behind me.