Page 75 of I Dream of Dragons

Be still my heart.We need to talk. But libraries make me weak. I haven’t been inside one… since I was alive.

I walk over to the nearest shelves and look up lovingly at all the colorful spines with their curling calligraphy and stamps from old royal printer houses, from the time before the fae arrived in our world.

Looks like you can kill a girl but you can’t kill her love of reading.

For a moment forgetting everything else—the shadows and the icy mist, the mark that almost killed me, the shuttered expression in Jai’s eyes before he walked out—I set out to explore the shelves. I can’t help it. I have to take a quick look.

It’s like escaping into sleep and dreams. My mind needs this. It did before, and it does now. After I’m truly gone from this world, my spirit will probably haunt a library somewhere and be happy.

“You like books.” He says it as an observation, but as the silence stretches, I realize it’s a question.

Doesn’t he know already?

“I used to love books,” I whisper. “I told you about our library. About my favorite book.”

He says nothing.

“Did you establish a new printer?” I ask absently as I browse the shelves. “Is it at the new capital in?—”

“We don’t have time to produce new books. We collect the books that offer knowledge about the gates, the Eosphors, the dragons, and the other worlds. It is our mission to discover how to reconnect the worlds.”

I turn to stare at him. “No novels? No romances? No great adventures? All these books… they only contain stuffy information about the four topics that interest you?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Of course I’m surprised. Back when I knew you, you loved stories. We talked about myths and fairytales and long serial novels written in the days of yore. You said you had discovered the Tale of the Serpent that Swallowed its Tail and were fascinated. You said your favorite story ever was the Book of the Maze and the?—”

“Stop trying to return to the past,” he says softly, but there is a new hardness to his voice. “This is the present.”

Shit.He’s right. I’m trying to go back in time, but time doesn’t turn back, just like Jai said. Time isn’t a tide, not for us. It’s a path leading to a cliff and there’s no telling what comes after.

“I just wanted to know what happened to you,” I say, hating how my voice grows small. “Why I was told you died. Why?—?”

“A misunderstanding.”

I frown. “Misunderstanding? How can anyone misunderstand something like that? And why didn’t you tell me you were fae? And the heir to the throne?”

“I had to keep it a secret. Nobody would have approved of me courting a human girl.”

Courting.That was what he’d done, wasn’t it? But the word feels too shallow for what we used to have. Soulmates. That’s what we were.

And these half-answers don’t satisfy the ache in me. I observe his handsome face and try to find the boy I loved there. His features have grown harsher, sharper. I barely recognize him.

“What do you want with me?” I whisper.

“I want you to help Athdara find his true power. To help Phaethon remember what he lost and what he can do.”

“But Athdara is controlling him.”

“Barely.”

“I—”

“Remember the prophecy. When the old dragon falls through the sky and a soul thought lost returns to life, watch for the signs in the shifting stars: a new order will come. He has a name written on his chest. She has an eye on her back. The dragon will stand on the sand of the seashore, as the vault of the sky opens to another world and?—”

“The Pillar will slow its endless rotation,” I whisper, “the gates will open to great exultation, behold, behold! The dead will return. Return changed but the same, in glory reborn.”

“Yes.”