Darklis
This is a really, really bad idea.
Darklis’s inner voice – the voice of reason – was loud in her head as she sneaked down one of the massive stone corridors of Drakos Castle.
It’ll be fine, she tried to soothe herself, doing her best to ignore the nervous flutter of her heart.
Stefan would go absolutely ballistic if he knew what she was doing right now – but then, she thought with a smile, what Stefan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. And there was definitely absolutely no way he would ever find out she’d shirked her official ceremonial duties as representative of the Novak Clan to go poke around in the Drakos Castle library.
How would he? I bet no one even knows I’m gone.
It would all be so easy. She’d slip back into the hall before the end of the ceremony and take her place as if she’d never been gone. Not that she’d even gone to the hall this morning to begin with, since leaving halfway through the ceremony would have drawn a lot of undesired attention. It had been simpler just not to go at all.
Maybe I don’t even have to go back before the end, Darklis thought as she finally found the door she was looking for – the one that led to the library, and all the ancient books it contained. Maybe I can just stay in here until the ball this evening...
Somewhere inside herself, Darklis realized she felt bad for betraying her brother’s trust like this. Stefan had sent her here as the Novak Clan’s official representative, since he himself had decided staying at home with his heavily pregnant mate, Holly, took priority over any official duties he might have.
It was Holly and Stefan’s second child, and so far everything had gone absolutely fine – but separating a dragon and his mate when there was even a slight chance she might need him was never going to happen.
And so, here Darklis was.
Not doing what I’m supposed to be doing at all.
Well, to be fair, Darklis didn’t know how Stefan had expected her to resist temptation in the face of what had to be the biggest and most ancient library of dragon history in the entire world.
He knew she was fascinated by all aspects of magic and magical history. She voraciously devoured any and all books about it that she could get her hands on – and without her knowledge, she and her clan most likely wouldn’t have survived some of the challenges they’d faced in the past.
So really, I’m helping the clan, Darklis rationalized. Surely reading these books and learning more about dragons and magic is more useful than sitting in a stuffy ceremony for someone I’ve never even met?
Still, it had been good to see Magnus again – brief as their meeting had been. She had helped him out with a sticky situation with a manticore last year, not to mention broken him free of a dragon hunter’s control collar. Now that he was back with his family – where he belonged – they hardly got to see him anymore. Of course he visited, but Darklis supposed that being a dragon prince could be time-consuming.
Not that it doesn’t also have its advantages, she thought as she pushed open the door, gasping as she saw what was on the other side.
Books.
Shelves upon shelves of books, reaching up high into the massive, vaulted ceiling; books on shelves so enormous and so tall that they could obviously only have been designed for dragons.
Books that held knowledge passed down from generations past; books that contained secrets that had long since been forgotten.
Darklis felt a giddy excitement rising up within her. The Drakos family could be very possessive with its... well, possessions. She wasn’t sure that if she asked for permission to be here, she’d actually get it. Sneaking in was so much simpler.
And if no one ever found out... well, where was the harm?
It wasn’t like she was going to find out dragon secrets in order to sell them to their enemies, like manticores or dragon hunters.
She only wanted to know.
As she wandered between shelves wondering where to even start, Darklis wondered if her love of reading was all because of how she’d grown up. She hadn’t had a happy childhood, to say the least.
She had grown up thinking her entire family had been murdered by the Lukich Clan of dragons – and they almost had been. Her father, mother, all her uncles and aunts... gone. She had been too young to remember any of them. The only reason she had been allowed to live was because Erik Lukich, the leader of his clan, had thought she could be used as bait to lure out her brother, Stefan.
His plot hadn’t worked, but Stefan had still been forced to fight him anyway, after Erik had kidnapped Stefan’s mate, Holly.
That had been the first time Darklis had seen her brother since she was very young. She had known it was him, all the same – even though she had always been told her family was dead. The Lukich Clan had kept her locked up for thirteen years – and the only thing she had been able to do to keep herself sane was read.
Darklis had read anything and everything – books when she could get them, not that she was allowed to have them very often. But then scraps of paper, receipts, notes, old newspapers... anything to remind herself that there was a world outside of the Lukich manor where she had been imprisoned.
Sometimes the Lukich dragons who had guarded her had taken pity on her and given her a few old books to read. After all, Erik Lukich had told them he was sparing her out of mercy, since she’d barely been more than a toddler when the blood feud between their clans had broken out – and, she supposed she had to admit, not all of the Lukich Clan were bloodthirsty monsters like Erik.
Shaking her head, Darklis tried to put the gloomy, terrifying memories of her past out of her head. She was here in the largest, oldest library known to dragonkind. And she intended to make the most of it.
Sighing in exasperation, she tugged at the hem of her long ceremonial robes, red and green for the Novak colors. She wasn’t used to wearing them, and they kept catching at her feet.
Losing her patience as once again the long robe snagged on the rich carpet of the library, Darklis simply hiked the robe up, tucking it into her undergarments. This brought the hem up well above her knees, but so what? There was no one else here to see.
Finally feeling a bit more free in her movements, Darklis scooted up the long aisle between the shelves. Dragon organization techniques tended not to make sense to anyone who wasn’t intimately familiar with them, but Darklis knew what she was looking for. There was one book in particular she had always dreamed of seeing – and the only known copy was here, in the Drakos Castle library.
Biting her lip, Darklis felt her heart flutter in anticipation as she reached the shelf she’d been looking for. The gaps between the shelves were vast, so she didn’t have to worry about knocking against anything as she made her way between them, her eyes scanning over the titles of the books as she passed.
The Compleat History of Drakos Dragons and their Vassals, no... The Dangers of Manticores, Past and Present, no... Encyclopaedia of Dragon Clans and the History of their Lands, YES!
Darklis could barely contain her excitement as she finally found what she was looking for. The Encyclopaedia of Dragon Clans and the History of their Lands was an ancient book – and it recorded the origins of all the dragon clans since the beginning of history.
Including her own, the Novak.
So much of their rich history had been lost when her parents and the other older dragons in the clan had been killed. The Novaks had gotten some of their treasure back, but most of their history had been handed down orally, passed from dragon to dragon by spoken words. The things that had been written down had only been half of what the Novak Clan needed to know about itself – the things that the next generation of Novak dragons would need to know to keep them strong.
And now, at last, she finally had her hands on a book that would tell her everything she wanted to know. How the Novak Clan had come into existence, their history, their struggles... basically everything about the early history of her ancestors.
Darklis barely dared to breathe as she slowly eased the book down off the shelf. It was a massive tome, bound in leather, and clearly as ancient as the history it recorded. Dust rained down on her as she finally managed to pull it down, and she sneezed, her eyes itching.
Ugh!
Sniffling a little, Darklis wiped her nose with the sleeve of her robe, then immediately felt bad.
Not very elegant. Not a good representative of my clan.
Well – if she were truly a good representative of her clan, she wouldn’t be here in the first place, she supposed. She’d be upstairs, watching Magnus’s brother be declared heir to the throne.
She simply couldn’t bring herself to feel too bad about it, though. Not when she finally had the book she’d always dreamed of reading right here in her hands.
I’ll go to the ball this evening, Darklis thought, trying to assuage what small parts of her conscience were hurting her. No one will ever know.