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He didn’t look at her, and she quickly had to scramble out of his way before he stepped on her.

Standing by the wall, she watched as he walked backwards out of the cave while pulling different size rocks with him. The larger ones came with ease, but he constantly had to grab the smaller ones that rolled away. He took the rocks outside to the side, and she wasn’t able to leave to see where he went.

Because he so rudely called her Witch, she pretended she didn’t care what he was doing when he came back inside, ignoring him in the same way he ignored her.

She sat back down to stare at the sky bright with light, soft white clouds passing over the sun.I would really love to walk this land.She’d often walked through the woodlands near her cottage to talk to the trees and wind.

Not too much later, the Dragon came through again with more rocks. Instead of telling her to move this time, he pushed her out of the way with his tail, making her squeal.

“Stay out of the tunnel,” he said when he came back inside.

“What are you doing?”

Okay, he had officially piqued her interest.

“Leave me in peace while I work.”

Moody prick.

If she wasn’t able to find peace at the mouth of the cave, then she would go elsewhere.

I will have to go through those books again.She thought she might have been halfway through them until all the stacks tumbled.

Now the area was just a mess.

Since the books were in one of the last alcoves in the tunnel before the large expanse of nothing until the room of tapestries, she had to walk next to where he was working in order to get there. She swore she could hear the sound of claws scraping against rock walls.

He stuck his head out and growled at her when she travelled by. She lifted her head to snub him even as her eyes tried to peek around him blocking her view to see what he’d been up to.

For most the day and late into the night, she heard him moving around his lair by his large footsteps pattering around.

She stayed away, going through the books until she was most of the way through them, and her own pile had grown. She hadn’t been able to find the book she saw earlier, and she was desperate to.

She constantly eyed the entry to the alcove.

Amalia had found a spell book in this collection. She knew he wouldn’t like that she had, and she intended to hide it in plain sight with the other normal ones she’d put aside for herself to read.

It had been a simple one filled with remedies and teas, but there had been chants and spells as well – ones she didn’t know. There had been a spell to create a shield, a way to protect herself. Everything inside the spell book had been harmless magic.

She had just started reading it when he gave her a fright earlier.

The chests in this room had been taken away. She wondered if they had also been full of spell books, and this one had not been put away like it was intended to be.

There it is!It sat at the very bottom of the pile.

She started flicking through the pages.

“Come,” that deep voice said behind her, and she gasped, shoving the book to her chest to hide it. Amalia stared at him as he stood there. “Come.”

“No. I am busy,” she answered, crawling over to her pile of books and shuffling them around to hide the spell book with them. “Go away.”

With an irritated snarl, he turned away, his tail swishing into the room. Then, to her surprise, he grabbed her with it!

She let loose a small scream when he picked her up and dragged her from the room in the air. His tail had a heart-shaped spade at the tip and looked awfully sharp near her face.

“Put me down!”

She struggled to free her arms, and her legs dangled as she kicked them like she was running in the air.