Page 49 of The Dragon Queen Complete Series Collection
Chapter 49
“Lady Pippa Wentworth?” A tall man with intense grey eyes and elegant hands approached me, smiling slightly when he had my attention. “Forgive me for being so forward, but we get so few women in here. I thought I should introduce myself: Christian Bailey.”
He held out a long-fingered hand and I took it, feeling the firmness of his grip before he pulled away. I smiled despite myself. Glimmer, not to be outdone, climbed up onto a nearby bench much to Christian’s surprise.
“Well, well, aren’t you beautiful?”
This man is obviously intelligent , she told me, preening under his gaze.
“May I?” He reached out a hand to Glimmer, but didn’t touch, waiting for permission.
“Ask her,” I replied.
She made clear her intentions, shoving her head up and into his palm and he chuckled as he rubbed her eye ridges, the dragon letting out a little purr.
“Quite delightful.” He withdrew his hands and then turned to me. “But while I would happily spend the day in your charge’s company, I suspect that’s not why you’re here.”
“What do you have on Nevermere’s prehistory?” I asked, Glimmer’s prohibition on mentioning Tanis forcing me to find another way to make our request.
“Prehistory?” He blinked and then nodded. “I admit, our general collection is not as extensive as the Royal Library, but I believe we have some works that may be applicable. Is there anything in specific you’re looking for?”
Glimmer?
Tanis. Just Tanis , she told me, her expression and tone conveying both urgency as well as confusion. I had a feeling she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for either.
Have you heard her voice before? I asked tentatively and she stared up at me.
Before there was only the queen, then you . She peered at me as if willing me to see it. Just you.
Alright, let’s see what we can find.
“The history of dragonkind if possible,” I told Christian. “I was quite the amateur archaeologist at home, carrying out small digs on my estate to try and glean more of an understanding of what was here before we humans came.”
“Ah, you’re from Skane, I believe?” I nodded. “There’s an extensive fossil record in all of those slate pits. I confess I spend all the time I can out in the field with my dragon, Jasper.”
“And where are you from?” I asked as we walked between the stacks.
Please don’t say Harlston. Please don’t say Harlston.
“Cantlyn,” he replied with a small smile. “My father’s estates are coastal ones and I spent my boyhood clambering up and down the cliffs, digging for fossils in the sandstone.” His grey eyes seemed to see the sea and the beach for a moment as he stared off into the distance, but he came back to himself with a rueful smile and I found myself somewhat drawn to his quiet energy. “But here we have the pre-historical record. Our collection on dragonkind is, surprisingly, actually more comprehensive than the Royal Library, if I do say so myself. A lot of the volumes that were purged from the Royal Library came here when the old queen was deposed.”
There was only one queen that could be and that was Gloriana.
“Thankfully my long ago-predecessor thought to save the books, rationalising that in the keep they’d be kept out of the hands of the general populace and help inform our understanding of the history of dragons before first contact.”
“That’s exactly what I’m after,” I said, then looked at Glimmer. “I admit I am hopelessly soppy about my dragon and I can’t help but want to know more.”
“I understand completely,” Christian replied. “I was the same with Jasper. Now, did you need any further help, or are you happy to browse the books yourself?”
“I think I should be fine on my own,” I said. “Though I’ll be sure to find you if I get lost.”
And so we came to be sitting at a large table in the stillness of the library, only the sound of the keep outside occasionally filtering in. I flicked through page after page of writing and illustrations, skipping past diagrams and treatises on the geological origins of rock samples to what lay beyond.
Dragons.
Theories about how the different types of dragons came to wield different kinds of elemental breath abounded. There were dig reports on a massive dragon burial ground up in the north. I looked through a book containing some drawings depicting bas relief murals of a similar style to the place Flynn had taken us, but it was a slim volume, one that looked very unprepossessing with its ratty cover and loose binding. I set it very gently on the table and Glimmer began to hum.
She couldn’t read, or at least I didn’t think she could, but she pulled my interpretations of the texts straight from my mind and looked closely at the diagrams and pictures when they appeared. And with this text, she crept as close as she dared and then stared at it intently. Myths and Legends of Dragonkind was the title. When I flipped it open, I found that the language used was clunky and archaic, taking real effort for me to glean the meaning. But when I did…
“Tanis!” I whispered harshly, then stared up at Glimmer, my finger on the page. But my elation was short sighted and somehow Glimmer wasn’t surprised by that. She watched me steadily as I read the intent of the sentences before me, if not the exact words.
The accounts of those who were the first among us regularly refer to this mysterious creature, but gave little explanation of who she was. At first it was assumed that she was a goddess to dragonkind, then some sort of legendary figure, like the demi gods of our sacred pantheon, but increasingly I have begun to assume that she is something more prosaic and yet more wonderful. The first dragon to set foot on Nevermere. Dragons seem to engage in some kind of ancestor worship…
My voice trailed away as I looked up at my dragon.
Why was the ancestor of all Nevermere dragons talking to us via a crystal egg?
Glimmer looked at me, then shifted restlessly on her perch, the same way she did when she needed food, but that wasn’t what was stirring her.
She… I felt Glimmer straining to complete the thought. She…
“I do apologise for interrupting.” We both looked up to see Christian standing there with a small velvet covered box in his hand. “Have you found what you were looking for?” Yes, no, maybe… My mind couldn’t seem to formulate a response and he smiled at that. “You were deep in thought and I blundered in, disrupting that. I know well that pain and I am sorry to be the cause of it, but…”
I dimly watched him raise the box and then open it, revealed a very pretty pendant within, featuring a silver dragon holding a polished ball of stone in its claws.
A stone I now recognised.
Milky pale, yet containing a strange kind of iridescence, it was a tiny replica of the stone we’d seen in the ceremonial space just yesterday.
“My father, like a good many others, sent me some items to be gifted to you.” He flushed then, the tops of his high cheekbones becoming quite pink. “In the hope you might consider my suit. I admit, I am not much of a one for wooing women, spending more time with books than people.”
This man wants to court you, but fears he has no chance , Glimmer said. You’ll go out with him, eat with him, if it will get us that stone.
“I would like you to have this,” he said, holding the box out somewhat tentatively, and it took everything in me not to snatch it from his hands. “Though if you’d be interested in having dinner with me?—?”
“Yes,” I said, a little too fast, a little too abruptly, and Christian blinked in response.
“Yes?” He flushed brighter, then a brilliant smile spread across his face, one that transformed him. There was something quite radiant about the man in that moment and I felt like I would be damned for inspiring that feeling with such base motives. “Would tonight be too soon? My schedule is quite open, but yours?—”
“Tonight would be fine,” I said, much more gently now. “I’d be honoured.”
“Oh, well, if that’s the case…” He took the necklace out of the box and then unclasped it, moving behind me, his body just a warm presence before the cool of the silver landed on my bare skin. “There.”
He came around to face me, staring at the necklace, then me.
“It’s been in my family for some time. A very long time ago, one of my forebears was a queen’s consort. Its value lies in its history rather than the metal or stone, I’m afraid.” I snorted as he downplayed the merits of his own gift and he shot me a rueful smile. “But I think you’re just the woman to appreciate that.”
“I can say without hesitation it’s the most beautiful pendant I’ve ever seen,” I replied. “Now, where shall I meet you tonight?”