8. Arthur
ARTHUR
I put the book on the padded table and forced myself to breathe evenly and remain focused.
A near-impossible feat with Artemis Ripley in the next room.
Her presence was a warm current that practically flowed through the walls. My senses tugged toward her with ridiculous insistence, as if some part of me had decided she was now the center of gravity in this building.
She should have been resting. Humans required recovery after shock. And yet she was functioning after her ordeal. I didn’t know what to do with that.
I would insist she rest after this.
The thought arrived uninvited—and deeply inconvenient.
It was absurd. She was mortal. A human. And I was an alpha dragon with political obligations and a dwindling magic supply threatening my entire people.
Yet my heart hammered harder when I thought about her than it did when I thought about what I might find in the book I was holding.
Pathetic.
I dragged my attention back to where it should be.
Page after page of human commentary. Human stories. Human interpretations of draconic lore that were—to put it mildly—simplistic.
I flipped to another section, my frustration rising. “Nothing,” I muttered under my breath. “Not even a whisper.”
Maybe it was foolish of me, but part of me had expected something. A clue of some sort. A faint trace of magic. Instead, all I found were diagrams of medieval farming practices, and a surprisingly long anecdote about a poet who may or may not have been drunk for twenty years.
My father would have scoffed at this. Proof, he would have said, that humans could catalog but not understand.
That letting them near our history diluted it.
And yet it was a human who had protected this volume.
A human who had noticed it was missing and set out to find it.
A human who had nearly been killed because she was helpful and understood that knowledge was important.
And through all of it, the pull toward Artemis only grew stronger. Her soft, earnest voice drifted faintly through the doorway. Her scent—something like tea leaves and hope—lingering in my lungs.
I ground my teeth. This was absurd. I could not let a woman—a human woman—distract me. Not now. Not ever.
My father would have been furious to know how acutely my attention bent toward her, how easily my focus fractured.
He would be rolling in his grave.
And yet.
I forced my attention back where it belonged. Then… something shifted. The next chapter opened to a page that felt different beneath my fingertips. Not visibly—no marks, no discoloration—but the texture was subtly wrong. Finer. Almost slick.
My pulse stirred.
I lifted the page to the light. Nothing.
And then a memory flickered to the forefront of my mind: Heat reveals what ink attempts to hide.
Slowly, I rose and crossed to the wall switch, plunging the room into darkness. I leaned over the page and exhaled, letting controlled warmth roll from my lungs.
Gold shimmered between the lines.
Runes. Draconic runes.
My heart jolted.
Carefully, reverently, I turned the page. More runes appeared, revealing genealogies of every noble house—names I knew intimately, histories I’d studied since hatchlinghood.
My father had insisted lineage was strength. That the past was fixed and what we knew was sufficient to move our clan forward. I’d tried to believe him because belief was easier than doubt. Now doubt burned brighter.
With each page I turned, the entries became more obscure. Until I reached a name I recognized too well. My oldest ancestor. The first of our line.
The text described him plainly: appointed a small stretch of land, granted modest wealth. Nothing surprising. Nothing extraordinary. He was, by historical record, unremarkable. And yet, his son’s entry gleamed with sudden prosperity. And his heir. And the next. Until—
A jump. A nine-generation gap, then suddenly my great-grandfather. The same missing window I’d traced across the decline of our magic.
I stared at the space where pages should have been. Where truth should have lived.
Suddenly, an alarm chimed overhead.
I sucked in a sharp breath as cool air rushed back into the room, the temperature shift signaling over-warm conditions—my own fault.
Then a knock.
“Arthur? The alarm—”
The door eased open, and there she was.
Artemis stood framed in the doorway, soft light behind her, her hair still slightly mussed, her expression gentle but puzzled.
She stole the rest of my composure with a single glance.
“It’s too warm in here,” she said. “Also… why are you in the dark?”
For a moment, all I could do was look at her. Curiosity shone in her eyes, and her presence steadied everything inside me.
“I run hot,” I said, stepping closer. “Here.”
I held out my hand. She stared at it for a long beat, and I held perfectly still. When her small fingers finally slid into mine, warmth sparked up my arm so sharply I almost forgot how to breathe.
She let me guide her inside.
“The dark?” she asked quietly.
“I was starting to get a headache,” I lied. Before anything else could unravel inside me, I forced my focus back to the book. “Pages are missing.”
She frowned, looking a little bewildered. “Missing?”
I opened to the gap. She stepped closer—too close—and my breath caught again.
“How would someone even—” She leaned in, eyes narrowing. Then she pulled out her phone and shone the flashlight along the binding. The numbers glinted. Except one.
“See that?” she whispered. “Reflective ink… reflective ink… and then—this one isn’t. Someone altered the numbering.”
There was that competence again.
I stared at her in awe.
She was brilliant. She was gentle. She was breathtaking. She was—
I had to focus.
Losing hope scared me more than I expected.
But then she murmured, “Can I have the book, please?”
I immediately put it in her steady hands. Her brows drew together in concentration as she studied, then she set it down on the table and marched straight out of the room. I followed like my feet had no choice.
Back at her desk, she pulled up the checkout logs and scrolled, muttering to herself. She shifted her weight from side to side, tapping her temple and rambling under her breath. It was mesmerizing.
“Transfer forms!”
I jerked out of my trance. “I beg your pardon?”
She spun toward me, eyes bright with triumph.
“I recognize the name of the last person to check this out. It was on a transfer request from another library. Someone moved books around and—wait—wait—yes!” She clicked rapidly.
“He works in First Editions and Historical Records. Since he was the last person to check out the book, maybe he knows something about the missing pages. Looks like these transfer forms indicate he works at the… Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.”
My pulse soared. We had a clue. A next step.
I didn’t think—I just grabbed her by the waist and lifted her, spinning her once, joy exploding through my chest like heat through stone.
“You’re incredible,” I said, laughing.
“Wha—whee—put me down,” she choked out.
I did immediately, horrified. “I—oh. Apologies. I forget my strength.”
She took a moment to recover her breath, leaning against the counter, then looked up at me with wide, delicate eyes that nearly undid me.
“I can go see him now,” I said, heart racing. “Thank you, Artemis. Truly.”
“Wait.” She held up a hand. “You can’t just march in and demand answers from a man who may or may not have damaged a half-million-dollar book.”
I frowned. “What should I do?”
She grabbed her purse with sudden, fierce purpose. “I’m a librarian. I know the system better than anyone. So… I should probably go with you.”
“I’m not sure that’s—”
No. My first instinct was distance. Her protection required distance from me and this project of mine. Didn’t it?
But distance had already failed her once. She had been taken because I wasn’t near enough. I couldn’t protect her from afar.
She pulled out a taser, pressed the button, and a bolt of blue crackled cheerfully in the air.
“I’m… somewhat prepared, now,” she said. “In a minimal, please-don’t-measure-me-against-real-heroes sort of way.”
My heart flipped. There was no version of reality where I could refuse her.
My father would have said this was why we shouldn’t mix with humans. They were fragile, reckless, liabilities. And yet every instinct I possessed aligned with one truth. If Artemis went somewhere, I would be there. If danger found her again, it would reach me first.
“Very well,” I said softly. “You come with me.”
She grinned—bright and determined—and warmth spread through my veins.