Page 100 of The Keeper of the Kingdoms

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Who isn’t turned on by a library?”

“Dragons,” she shot back before adding, “Usually.”

I gave her a flat look. “Obviously, you don’t spend time with the right dragons. Just because the ones you know are all meatheads doesn’t mean there aren’t intelligent ones out there.”

“How would you know? Aren’t you the only dragon from your village?”

Fuck.

“—I exist, don’t I? If there is one of me, there has to be more.” I barely saved myself.

“Maybe you’re a unicorn.” Kiera seemed satisfied and checked the numbers on her scrap of parchment.

“Ew. Don’t ever call me that again.”

“What’s wrong with unicorns?” she asked, holding back a laugh.

“Pretentious pricks who are obsessed with themselves. You’re a fucking pegasus with a horn. Don’t try to make yourself something you’re not! I’d rather not be compared to them, thanks.”

She rolled her eyes, fingertips skimming over the numbers on the shelves, muttering to herself. We got halfway around the room before she stopped.

“It should be somewhere in this area they said. These would be the years that correlate to the manuscript we read.”

“How much of the shelf?” I asked, scanning it.

“The whole section.” She gestured at the entire stretch of shelves.

“Kiera, that’s hundreds and hundreds of volumes to search through.”

She lifted her shoulders. “Someone has to do it. Through time, they’ve become slightly disorganized. We don’t have the resources to keep them like we used to. There are not enough of us.”

“I can’t imagine how hard a task it is keeping all this straight or even close to organized.”

“We don’t even know all the knowledge we have here. We’ve lost more than we remember.” She sounded wistful.

“Goddess. Better get a cot because we live here now.”

“There are worse places.” She exhaled, surveying our work. “You start over there, and I will begin here, and we can meet in the middle. What do you say?”

It felt like hours passed while we went through tome after tome. “It’s impossible to know the hour,” I sighed. “How long do you reckon we’ve been down here?”

“Twenty minutes?”

I glared. “Don’t play with me, Firefly.”

She burst out laughing. “Reading becoming too much for the dragon?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine over here. You go back to your reading, and I’ll continue with mine.”

“Mmhmm,” she mocked and returned her attention to her book. I watched her turn the page, her eyes scanning the text. She bit her lip in contemplation, then blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. She was beautiful, even after hours of research.

“I can feel your eyes burning into me,” she said without lifting her eyes from her book.

I scoffed. “I’m just concerned for your energy levels, that’s all. We’ve been at this for hours, and it was only a few days ago you were still getting drained far faster than you should.”

She turned a page, feigning focus on the words. “Don’t you worry about me. I have a new way of boosting my energy stores.”