Page 19 of Lightningborn

Gem darted out of hiding and hurried across the floor to the desk. Her heart raced, and she felt horribly exposed as she scurried behind the desk and sprinted to the door. Grabbing the handle, she half expected it to be locked, but it turned easily in her palm, and she almost fell through the doorway into a dark stairwell beyond.

Gem stifled a yelp, barely stopping herself from tumbling down the steps. The stairs beneath her were made of stone, not wood, and descended into absolute darkness.

Gem closed the door behind her, then opened her hand. With a little pulse of magic, a light appeared in her palm, glowing a soft blue. It illuminated a narrow stairwell leading to a short stone hallway. Another door sat here, much heavier than the first, the wordRESTRICTEDpainted across the wood in red. Holding the mage light in her hand, she crept down the stone steps to the door and reached for the old brass handle. This one wasn’t locked, either, turning beneath her fingers with a soft click.

Slowly, Gem pushed the door open. It creaked as it swung back. She cringed, hoping the sound hadn’t reached the front desk and the head librarian. Stepping through the frame, she gazed around in awe.

The mage light cast a flickering glow over rows and rows of books on dusty shelves. Some of the titles were in languages Gem didn’t recognize, and some books were so old the words on their spines had faded entirely. Several times, Gem started to reach for a book with an intriguing title—Dwarves: Are They Really Extinct?orTendril, the Terror of the Maelstrom, orSecrets of the Elves.Each time, she had to stop and remind herself: She wasn’t here to browse. She was here to find information on the Ancient Ones.

Finally, on the third shelf she checked, one title jumped out at her.The Mystery of the Ancients.That seemed exactly like the information she was looking for.

Stomach twisting, Gem pulled the tome from the shelf. There were no tables or chairs in this part of the library, so she sat cross-legged in the corner with the book in her lap and the mage light hovering over her head.

She opened the leather cover to the first page and started to read.

CHAPTER

NINE

“What is this place?”

Remy’s voice echoed into the darkness, bouncing off the walls of the empty space he had stepped into. It was too dark to see anything, but the floor under his bare feet was stony and cold. Bart vanished into the pitch-black for a moment, and then the orange glow of an oil lantern sprang to life, illuminating the darkness.

Remy blinked as the light spread over the walls of a small cavern. It was empty except for an uneven table that rested against the far wall, one leg propped up with a rock. Yellowed papers covered the surface, and the faded image of a hand-drawn map hung on the wall. Remy assumed it was a map, but it was so marked up, with circles, Xs, and words hastily scribbled out, that it was impossible to tell what the original image had been.

“You can keep your dragon here for now,” Bart said, hanging the oil lamp on a nail driven into the wall. “This cave is big enough for a full-grown dragon to live in, and no one will come snooping around after it. It should be safe.”

Remy walked up to the table, gazing down at the mess of documents, scrolls, and crumpled balls of paper scattered across it. Unlike most people in Cutthroat Wedge, Remy knew how to read; his mother had taught him before she died. Though it was extremely difficult to make out anything on the papers; they were either faded or so messily scrawled the actual words were illegible.

Remy picked up a piece of paper that had been ripped in half and squinted as he tried reading the first line, though he could only make out every other word.

Ship…hidden…dragon…island…?

“What is all this?” he wondered.

Bart looked over and grimaced. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot you actually know how to read.” He walked up and swept a hand over the table, gathering most of the papers to him. “It’s nothing,” he told Remy, snatching the torn note from the boy’s hands. “An old project of mine from years ago. It’s none of your concern, lad. Forget you saw it.”

Remy stepped back, watching Bart gather the rest of the papers, hastily fold them in half, and tuck them into the waist of his trousers. He wondered if Bart would hide them away somewhere, because now he was curious. What had Bart been writing about dragons and hidden ships? Were these stories he’d made up, or true accounts?

Suddenly, Storm perked up, his tail tip slapping excitedly against Remy’s neck. With a chirp, he leaped off his shoulders and darted toward the cave wall, pouncing on something beneath a rock. Remy watched as a bright green centipede scuttled away from the stones and crawled up the cavern walls before vanishing into a crack. Storm hissed, scrabbling at the hole the insect had vanished into with teeth and tiny claws, to no avail.

Bart grimaced. “Right, the creature is hungry. Wait here, I must have something left over from yesterday.”

He vanished down the tunnel and reappeared a few minutes later with a blanket and a pair of Silas specials: barbecued rat and frog on a stick. “Oy, dragon,” Bart called, holding up one of the skewers. “Here you go.”

He tossed the kabobs to the ground, and Storm pounced on them immediately, tiny growls coming from his muzzle as he tore into the meat. “Also, here,” Bart said, handing Remy a heel of hard brown bread. “You look like you need it. I got it this morning from Ferus, so it should be mostly good.”

“Thanks,” Remy muttered. His stomach growled, but he hesitated. Bart was nearly as skinny as him, and elderly on top of it all. He didn’t want to take the old man’s food if he didn’t have anything else. “What about you?”

Bart snorted and held up a bottle. “I have all I need right here. Now…” He frowned and lowered his arm, watching Storm devour every piece of the rat skewer, even the tail. “Since I appear to have gone sky-mad and agreed to help hide this beast, at great cost to myself, we are going to sit down and you are going to tell me something.”

He spread the blanket on the floor and lowered himself onto it with a groan. “Ah, the old knees aren’t what they used to be,” he muttered, gesturing for Remy to sit as well. Remy sank into a cross-legged seat on the corner, and Bart sighed. “All right, lad,” he said. “So tell me what happened last night. I want to know how you actually stumbled across this dragon. From the beginning.”

Remy told him. Starting with the night of the spell storm and seeing the silhouette of a dragon through the clouds, followed by Jhearos’s sky ship. Hearing the boom of cannon fire that followed, and then seeing something flutter from the sky into the pool. At this point in the story, Storm crawled into his lap, curled into a ball, and tucked his head under his wings. At first, Remy thought he had gone to sleep, until a shiver racked the dragon’s body and he began trilling softly. Almost like he was crying.

“Storm and I spent the night in the drainpipe after that,” Remy finished, stroking the dragon’s fluffy mane. “I didn’t know Jhaeros was looking for him, too. I thought he was after the big dragon.”

Bart shook his head. “I’m not sure where Jhaeros managed to find a wild dragon,” he murmured, “but I suppose that doesn’t matter now. What matters is how we’re going to keep this creature out of his clutches. And us from being skewered by his men.”

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