Annatu stood behind an ancient blackwood desk carved with alien symbols. Shelves lined the wall with a mismatched assortment of artifacts upon them.

As a student, I hadn’t known what they were. And I wouldn’t have known, except by the chance of some research queries I had assisted with during my time on Tranquility. I tried not to look at the sacred melted knife of the Ouborii, supposedly forged on First Earth during the Ealen’s first harvest of humans. Or the dented metal cup that was supposed to have carried the blood of some ancient messiah of Mars.

Kai and I were before her. There were no chairs in her office because she claimed it always made meetings go faster.

But now I realized it made me feel more like a student anticipating punishment after I had been caught doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. Looking at where we were with new eyes, I realized the office was designed to put her in a dominant position of power, relative to the position of a visitor.

I almost shook my head in disbelief.

I had wanted her attention and praise so badly that I had flung myself into my studies, just so she would call me into her office and tell me what an excellent job I was doing.

There was a time in my life where I lived for those moments.

And now I had Annatu’s full attention.

She glanced over at Kai.

Annatu smiled carefully. “Shifters don’t usually come to the Library.” She had greeted my supposed husband as he had her, hiding their suspicions of each other behind bright smiles.

Kai returned Annatu’s exact smile. “Why would I want to visit the place where my ancestors were enslaved?”

Annatu gave a dismissive wave. “That was a long time ago. We’ve moved beyond that.”

“I’m sure you have,” Kai replied.

Annatu sighed. “I was hoping that your marriage to a Infoist signaled a new beginning, Lord Stargazer.”

“The purpose of the marriage was so that I would not have to be Lord Stargazer,” he said, his lie as smooth as the truth. I always found all that bureaucracy to be so dreadfully boring.”

Never one for meaningless talk, Annatu got right to it. “Why are you here, child?” she said, still looking at Kai.

I forgot how she always referred to me as a child. But she wasn’t my mother.

She had known my mother. And kept it from me.

I knew what I was about to ask. And yet, I couldn’t. “I’m here to file a report of necromancy,” I blurted out.

Stupid. So, so stupid.

She raised an eyebrow, looked at Kai. “Active?”

To his credit, Kai didn’t even blink. “They fought and moved like they were alive. They even overran the Stargazer estate. But they were definitely dead.”

A shifter admitting his House could not defend their territory was like baring one’s neck to an enemy. It simply wasn’t done. By Annatu’s expression, she seemed to know that as well.

And yet, there was something else behind her gaze. Annatu turned to pick up an ancient tablet and tapped on the screen. It hummed as it powered on.

“Proof?”

“We are here,” I said. “Isn’t our word enough?”

“Mmm,” said Annatu tapping her fingers on the glass table. “Others have filed similar reports but not in person.”

Her gaze sharpened on Kai. “Are you here to ask for assistance, Tigerlord?”

Kai’s reply was as prompt as anything I had ever heard. “No. We are here as a warning.”

What would happen if she knew we had been hiding up there?

She gazed at me, with the same penetrating gaze I remember from my childhood, the one where I swore she could read my mind.

She couldn’t read minds, could she?

Now I was becoming paranoid.

“Annatu,” I said, omitting the honorific of ‘Teacher.’ “Why was the identity of my mother, a white-robed Infoist, hidden from me?”

It was only because I had spent hours studying her face as a child that I saw the barest crack in her facade.

Ahh. This is what Annatu had been concerned about. An unexpected part of me felt gratified, the rest of me cold.

“Why, whatever gave you that idea, child?”

I lied, trying to keep Kai’s part out. “My father.”

Her brown eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “I see,” she said softly. The shifters had been holding back records from the library for a very long time. She was quiet for a moment as she glanced at Kai, betraying her thoughts.

She had that thoughtful, patient look on her face I remembered from my childhood. “What exactly did…your father tell you?”

I pressed my forefinger and thumb together so tightly that if I had been holding a xiangqi playing disc it would have surely broken. “He said she stabbed in him the shoulder with a knife.”

Annatu laughed, a practiced thing, I suddenly realized, as fake as anything I had ever heard in the Stargazer Court. “Yes, that sounds like your mother.”

Strange, how such few words could break a heart into so many pieces. All this time, Annatu had known. It felt odd to be still standing here, so calmly as if nothing had changed.

“Tea?” she offered brightly, brushing past me towards the already prepared tray of tea in the corner.

“Yes, thank you,” I heard Kai say.

Annatu brought over the tray with its shiny opaque glossy teapot and matching tea cups that I knew well.

The lies, the tests, more lies. Had the Librarians always known? Of course they had always known.

Annatu poured the tea as elegantly as ever. Hot steam rose from a floral painted cup as she set it before me. “You remember this tea set, don’t you?”

I picked the cup up. I had spent hours polishing and cleaning these cups as punishment for childhood mischief. This was the first time I had held one as a guest.

“Yes. Of course.”

She nodded at Kai. “It is a long story. Why don’t we all take a sip of tea and give silent thanks to the Creators before we begin.”

A small enough request. I brought the cup to my lips, thinking how much of my life had been spent longing to attain enough of Annatu’s respect to have her serve tea to me in her office.

The green liquid tasted so bitter.

And yet, I drank my cup of tea, concentrating on keeping my movements smooth and steady, trying to disguise what I felt. Getting angry would not answer any questions.

“What kind of tea is this?” asked Kai. “It doesn’t taste like anything I’ve ever had.”

“We grow it here at the Library,” said Annatu. “It is a rare plant whose origin world was destroyed many ages ago. It thrives only here.” Annatu leaned forward, her hands reaching out to mine. “I wish I could have told you.”

I jerked my hands back. The tea sloshed in my cup, the hot liquid stinging my wrist for a moment.

Annatu looked as if she were offended by my reaction. Then in a gentle voice, lyrics from the same anthem I had been singing: “We are the Library. We are here to help.”

The institution that had raised me, the institution I had trusted, the institution I believed in, had kept me from my mother. No, they had not just kept it they had stolen my mother from me. Even worse, they had knowingly stolen my mother from me.

“Knowing what you know, Annatu,” I said, looking into the woman’s eyes, “about me, and my mother, what questions would you be asking?”

She smiled. “We have trained you well.” She looked at Kai. “But he is not one of us.”

“Kai is my husband,” I said, reminding her about his status. As the spouse of an Infoist, he was allowed certain privileges and exemptions.

“Very well,” she said in an attempt at reassuring in a way that was not reassuring at all. Annatu had never been the warmest of teachers. And yet, that never stopped me from thinking of her as my foster mother.

I felt a hollow space in my chest.

Annatu stood up straight. “Come,” she said, walking forward without a backward glance. “It will be easier to show you.” She led us out of her office, down a metal walkway. The walls were endlessly white, as it was nearly everywhere in Library Main. Here and there, spheres drifted, ever watching, ever waiting to be of service. I hadn’t thought much of them when I had lived here. Now it seemed odd to have something forever listening, and watching everything you said and did.

I wondered what they had seen of my mother.

Annatu’s voice called back, as if she were on my way to teach me another lesson. “What do you know of the Dragonlords?”

The Dragonlords? She was trying to change the subject and had had clearly accessed my searches. I shook my head, still in disbelief at the thought that she had cared for me.

Kai put an arm around my shoulder, and squeezed. I swallowed, the taste of salt in my mouth.

Kai answered for me. “An ancient race, long gone like the Ealen. Even so, people have been looking for them or their relics for as long as they have been gone.”

I took a deep breath and forced myself to pay attention. “Though they were always far fewer in number, the abilities of the Dragonlords rivaled the Ealen, in part because they were much older,” Kai continued.

I didn’t understand what this had to do with my mother. Was Annatu trying to avoid telling me the truth? I was determined to get the answers I deserved. “Is she still alive?”

Annatu’s eyebrows raised at my sudden topic change. “I don’t know. She vanished after reporting that she was pregnant. So imagine our surprise when we found you, the child we had so carefully planned for, in a borderspace frontier refugee camp on Karj.”

Kai was so much more calm. I was thankful he was there holding on to me, forcing me to walk. “Planned for? You have seers?”

Annatu snorted. “You shifters attribute all kinds of things to the Ealen breeding program. The reality is that there are no seers.”

“They tried,” Kai said.

Annatu shrugged. “And they failed. The idea that ‘seeing the future’ is a trait that could be biologically bred is ludicrous.”

I tried to avoid looking at Kai, without trying to look like I was avoiding looking at him.

Annatu narrowed her eyes at me and glanced at Kai so fast I almost missed it. “You’re taking this quite well,” she said with the gaze of an inquisitor.

“The Library must have had their reasons for hiding my mother from me,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, trying to mask my hurt. “I’m confident I will be satisfied with your explanation, once I receive it.”

She smiled a smile as fake as the one I had. “You will be.” Annatu turned, white robes swishing in her wake. “Most of the Dragonlords are gone, that is true. But a few still live. They are out there, in stasis, waiting to be awakened and restored to life by one with the right genetic makeup.”

Annatu stopped before a door. “I was ordered never to reveal this to you.”

The door opened and she led us inside.

Lights flickered on revealing racks of silver gray canisters. The air, despite being the same recycled air, had an odd dryness to it.

Annatu’s voice echoed strangely in the room.

“The Library exists not only to preserve knowledge, but also bring back what has been lost.”

Another door opened, and she led us to a room. It was oddly gray, with a strange sort of biological odor. Blinking lights and charts were on the wall, with numbers that fluctuated up and down by the second.

Only then, did I see the organs floated in a tank, submerged in some gelatinous blue fluid.

The door slid shut behind us and Annatu turned to face us.

“Ealen and Dragon DNA for whatever reason cannot be grown in a lab or cloned by any technological means,” she said, looking at me. “Though many, including the House of Nightclaw, have tried. Though my spies tell me that Nightclaw may have succeeded with Project Phoenix, but that’s another matter for another day.” She turned sideways, and looked at the tank. “But I know for sure, that Ealen DNA can be bred.”

I fought the urge to back away screaming in horror, because that’s what this was. They weren’t bred. So whose organs were those?

“Your mother was part of a genetic line calculated and designed by the Library. She was part of a set of twins. She lived. Her brother, your uncle, did not. When he was a teenager, there was a terrible accident.”

Annatu gestured to the tank. “This was all we could save of him, and what we’ve kept alive.”

Her hands were tight fists.

“This was all I could save of him.”

The edge of the border on the wrap of Annatu’s robe had frayed. It was an imperfection oddly out of place with the image I had always held of her in my mind. I had an urge to peel off the border, make it more ragged, make it more reflective of what Annatu was. Not someone to be admired, feared, and obeyed. But someone very flawed.

“The goal for your mother was to produce a child with Nightclaw paternity. Your bloodline consists of generations of careful calculations, bringing together what remains of the Ealen genetic line.”

Kai’s voice was cold. “You insult me and my ancestors, madam Librarian. I am not Ealen.”

Annatu rolled her eyes. “It’s the combination of Ealen and human DNA that allows for the change, son. Denial doesn’t change the truth. It also won’t change what Seria is.”

A laugh bubbled out of me. I tried to hold it in, but my efforts to stifle it only made it worse. What could have been a giggle erupted into a full-blown belly laugh.

All I could do was laugh.

Because if I didn’t laugh, I would cry.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

Everything I had known about my life was a lie. My parents, my journey, my very reason for being.

Kai’s voice had that deadly shifter calmness to it. “And what is she?”

I already knew the answer. The werewolves were their ancestral enemy, but one with a shared past of captivity and victimhood. The Ealen, however, there were no words to describe how much shifters hated the Ealen.

And I was one of them.

I moved away from Kai before he could move away from me.

Annatu turned back to me, her expression as serene as a goddess of compassion. “The organs are for you, my dear. So you don’t have to die.”

“I wasn’t planning on dying.”

“You were bred to be…a gift.”

Kai’s voice was deceptively casual as if he were commenting on the weather. “In all the most ancient stories across the deep myths of humanity, dragons always require sacrifices. Is this the fate you meant for Seria?”

Had he known?

The truth struck me like lightening. He had known.

Was that the real reason why he had been so intent on separation? Not that it mattered now. I was part Ealen. I started laughing again.

I couldn’t think, forced myself to breathe. Couldn’t think about this now because there was so much to think about.

Annatu waved at him. “Of course not. Not with these organs here. Annatu smiled serenely, looking at me as if Kai wasn’t there. “If this were the Sleeping Beauty story, my dear, you were born to be the Prince.”

“If Sleeping Beauty required eating live organs maybe,” I said. I rubbed my temple to block my vision of Kai.

I held my hands up. “Even if I am supposed to wake the Dragonlords, we don’t even know where they are.”

Annatu cocked her head expectantly, just like she did when she had been my teacher and I was on the verge of figuring out a problem.

“You know where they are,” I said.

Annatu smiled. “On Tranquility.”

Laughter boiled out of me. I bent over, trying to stop, trying to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. It was so fast and rapid, it felt oddly unnatural as if it was propelled by something beyond my social anxiety.

Annatu’s tea.

To my surprise, I heard Kai laughing too, a great big bellowing roar, such as I had never heard from him before. He staggered, clutching his gut, laughing.

Horror filled me as I stared at Kai through the laughter. He had been right.

I looked at Annatu in fury. The woman who had raised me had drugged us.

I stumbled toward her, reaching for her as tears of anger filled my eyes. She only stepped backward, shaking her head.

Kai snarled, and drew himself up, only to be doubled over by another loud bellow of laughter. Spheres began circling around him, hissing white cloudy jets of moisture in the air that were tinged with an odd sweet smell.

“NO,” I said through the giggles. “Kai!”

“He is only an anchor on your destiny.” said Annatu. “You will be freed.”

I lunged for the sphere, while Kai leapt toward her, but it was as if we had lost control of our limbs. Both of us crashed to the floor. My sides were hurting, my muscles aching as the laughter strangled my throat.

Kai had been right. And I had brought him to this.

A sphere floated above me and hissed a white gas in my face.

Annatu’s voice echoed in my head.

“Relax and be well.”

And then I stopped laughing and it went dark.