Chapter 28 #2
"I went for a walk." Which was true. It just wasn't the whole truth, and the part I was leaving out was currently seared into my nerve endings.
But the fact that Draven could read the heat on me meant at least I wasn't in the same hollowed-out state I'd been in after Lucien's exercise this afternoon.
The walk had done something. Shaken something loose. I'd take buzzing over broken.
"Mm." His eyes—hazel edging toward amber in the warm light—held mine a beat too long. "Where's Ciaran? He's usually the one who leaves you like this."
Heat crawled up the back of my neck. "He's not here tonight.
He stopped by Tuesday with some intel on the warding patterns his network flagged, but he's been running his own threads since then.
" I wrapped my hands around the tea. "You know how he is.
Shows up, drops something terrifying, disappears. "
"Sounds about right." Draven's mouth twitched.
I took a sip. Let the warmth settle.
The mint was cool and sharp on my tongue, and I let it pull me back into myself.
The buzzing under my skin was still there—Theron's hand on my jaw, the press of his mouth, the way he'd tasted like he'd been holding that back for weeks—but it was fading now.
Settling into something I could carry without it showing on my face.
Or at least, that's what I told myself as I reached for the nearest stack of papers.
The shift was easier than I expected. Maybe because the work had its own pull. During the day, I trained—aerial drills, bond coordination, combat scenarios that left me bruised and sharper than I'd been the week before.
But the training only covered half of what being a Rider meant.
These evenings were the other half. The part that didn't come with drills or scores or instructors watching from the sidelines.
This was where we dug into the ugly things happening to people the system had failed.
Because being a Dragon Rider wasn't just the flying.
It was the quiet rooms, the late hours, the refusal to accept that some people weren't worth protecting.
And right now, that weight sat heavier than the ghost of any kiss.
"Okay." I set my cup down. "What do we have?"
Draven studied me for one more second. I could feel his incubus perception brushing against my energy—not pushing, just reading. Whatever he found, he let it go.
"Two things." He leaned forward, forearms on the table, and his voice shifted. The flirtation drained out of it. "First one's ugly."
He slid a paper across the table. I caught it before it reached the edge—our fingers brushed, and neither of us pulled away for a beat longer than necessary.
"My Aegis contacts finally tracked the operational chain," he said. "The people running the bond experimentation facilities. They've got names."
I looked down at the paper. Two names, written in Draven's precise hand.
Dominick Graves. Garanth Kreel.
My stomach dropped. Dominick Graves—the fighting ring. The cages. The smell of blood and fear in a basement that I'd tried very hard not to think about for over a year. I'd been in that ring. I'd been taken, held, and nearly destroyed by people working under Dominick Graves.
"They evolved," Draven said quietly. He was watching my face.
"The ring was phase one—physical force, brute containment.
What they're doing now is different. The techniques are consistent with Concordance Matrix knowledge—one-way servitude bonds, signature replication, the same mechanics we've been tracking.
We can't confirm they have the Matrix itself, but they're using methods that shouldn't exist without it. "
I set the paper down. My hand was steady. My pulse wasn't.
"What's the second thing?" I said.
Draven sat back in his chair. He ran a hand through his hair—a rare tell, the kind of gesture he only made when something was sitting heavy on him.
"This came through separately," he said.
"Different source, different channel entirely.
Someone with access to institutional-level intelligence—the kind of person who deals in information most people don't know exists.
" He paused. "It was routed through three contacts before it reached my team.
Whoever originated it didn't want it traced back to them.
That kind of caution means they're inside something, and they're protecting themselves while still getting the information out. "
He let that land.
Whoever this source was, they were inside something dangerous and risking a lot to get the information out.
"The intel references something called the Heart of the Library. According to the source, it's in play—being actively pursued. And whoever's pursuing it has high-level institutional access. The kind of access you don't get without real power inside the system."
"The source couldn't determine whether this person is protecting the Heart of the Library or trying to compromise it," Draven continued. "But the urgency in the message was clear. This isn't theoretical. Someone is moving on this now."
I turned the phrase over. The Heart of the Library.
I knew this building—I'd worked in it for months, walked its corridors, shelved its books, argued with Moriyana about cataloguing systems. I'd felt the Library's awareness pressing against mine like a living thing.
Thalon had told me about the Heart of Creation.
Mason and I had researched the Progenitors and the Concordance Matrix in the restricted stacks.
But the Heart of the Library, as a specific name, a specific place—
I'd never heard it.
"I don't know what that is," I said. "The Heart of the Library—I've never come across it. Not from Moriyana, not from the restricted archives, not from Thalon." I looked at Draven. "Do you know?"
He shook his head. "My source used the phrase. That's all I've got."
I said it again, slowly, feeling the shape of it. "The Heart of the Library."
The room changed.
It wasn't dramatic—no explosion of light, no trembling shelves.
But the Library's attention shifted toward us, the way it sometimes did in those halls, as though the building had turned to listen.
A section of the wall behind Draven's chair—stone that had looked solid every night we'd worked in this room—receded silently.
A shallow alcove revealed itself, no larger than a drawer, and inside it sat a single object.
A crystal. Roughly the size of my fist, dark as obsidian but threaded with veins of deep gold that pulsed with faint light.
I recognized the craftsmanship immediately—Flameborn.
Dragon-recorded knowledge, stored not in text but in impressions and memory, accessible through dragon fire or dragon-linked magic.
"What the hell," Draven said. He was on his feet.
I was already moving toward it. The second heartbeat in my chest—the Draconis Heart, the dragon essence that had merged with me—quickened. Warmed. Recognized.
"It's Flameborn lore," I said. "Dragons don't write things down the way we do. They record knowledge in objects like this. You need dragon fire to access it, or—"
Or what I had. The essence of an ancient dragon, fused with my body, beating alongside my own heart.
I reached for the crystal.
The moment my fingers closed around it, the world dropped away.
A flash—not a full memory, not the kind of Flameborn experience I'd had before.
A burst. Three seconds, maybe four. But in those seconds I saw it, a chamber.
Deep beneath the Library's foundations, deeper than anything I'd ever sensed walking those halls.
Ancient stone. Sealed passages. And at the center, something vast and radiant and sacred—held in darkness, protected since the Library's founding.
The Heart of Creation. Stored in the Heart of the Library.
Beneath my feet. Every single day.
The flash released me and I was back in the study, gasping, the crystal hot in my palm.
Draven was there. Not across the table anymore—right next to me, his hands on my arms, steadying me.
His face was close, and the worry in it was raw, undisguised.
Not the calm, controlled Draven who ran briefings and managed intel.
Urgent. Protective. 6'5" of muscle and tattoos and barely restrained concern focused entirely on me.
"Tess." His hand came up to my face. Thumb against my cheekbone, tilting my head so he could see my eyes. "What just happened? Where did you go?"
"I'm okay." My voice came out rougher than I expected. "I'm here."
He didn't let go. His palm was warm against my jaw, and I could feel his pulse through the contact—fast, faster than his composure suggested. "Your eyes went blank. You were gone—"
"Hey." I brought my hand up and covered his where it rested against my face. His fingers stilled. "I'm here. I promise. I'm okay."
He exhaled. It shuddered out of him—just barely, just enough for me to hear—and his thumb moved once across my cheekbone.
Slow. Grounding himself as much as grounding me.
The look on his face did something to my chest that had nothing to do with the Draconis Heart and everything to do with the fact that for a few seconds, I'd scared him, and Draven didn't scare easily.
"Don't do that again without warning me," he said. Low. Not an order—a request, from a man who didn't make many.
"Deal." I squeezed his hand, then let go. Took a breath. "It was Flameborn lore. The crystal—the Draconis Heart inside me let me access it. Other Riders couldn't. You need dragon essence, not just a dragon bond."
He nodded, still close, still watching me like he was checking for cracks. "And what did you see?"
I set the crystal down on the table between us. My fingers were trembling. I pressed them flat against the wood.