Page 18 of Charming the Dragon
“I wasn’t angry.”
“Are you sure? You glared the entire time I did karaoke with Lucien.”
He shrugged but said nothing else.
Hayley huffed. “I invited you to join us, but you declined. You had your chance.”
“I don’t do karaoke.”
“So you say. But you never did tell me what you do for fun.”
“This and that.”
She wanted to growl, but restrained herself. “You’re impossible, you know?”
“A little.”
Too tired to try anymore, Hayley merely took in Stonefire’s great hall in the distance. It reminded her of a medieval hall, taller than it was wide, and made of stone. According to Kai and Bram, there were a series of rooms and passages beneath it.
Since it was related to work, she dared to ask, “Just how many floors are below ground?”
“Four, as far as I know. In addition to the areas used for emergency evacuations, there are some secret hallways and passages, ones every teenager tries to find but rarely does.”
“Hmm, no doubt they’re looking for places to snog.”
“Maybe. But there’s some glory in it too. One boy found a new secret room about thirty years ago, and to this day, people still clap him on the back about it.”
“What’s his name? Maybe I’ll have to ask him some questions.”
“Why? Are you out to be the first human to find a new secret room or passage?”
“Perhaps. Not for the glory, but there could always be more records or artifacts waiting to help us understand dragon-shifter history better.”
He grunted. “Now you sound like that human archaeologist. What’s his name? Oh, that’s right—Max Holbrook.”
Hayley nodded. “I attended one of his lectures in London, and it was fascinating. But I’d only want the records, though. He could study anything else, provided Bram gave his permission.”
“Even if you found some records, any old ones would be hard to read, maybe even completely illegible. Especially if they’re written in the dragon language of Mersae.”
“Ah, but that’s where you come in. Last night, someone mentioned you helped scan the old texts from the library and created a program to read the nearly illegible parts. That’s brilliant and should be a huge asset for our project.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I created the program as a favor for my stepmum.”
Hayley studied Nathan’s profile, trying to read him. But he definitely wasn’t one of those men who preened and reveled in praise, which was yet another layer to the dragonman.
She was thinking of how to understand him better—for their working relationship, of course—when they reached the giant main door to the great hall. And once they stepped inside, into the main open space, she twirled around to take in the ceiling and all the tapestries on the walls.
The arched structure of the ceiling was stunning, and the faded but still pretty colors of the woven art pieces made Hayley want to study them for days. From a quick glance, she noted dragons in the air fighting other dragons, dragons holding a gathering with humans, and lots of other scenes with only dragons or a combination of dragon and human forms. Onecaught her eye, though. It had a dragon bowing its head and a human woman laying her forehead against the snout. “Who are they?”
She gestured, and Nathan’s gaze followed. He said, “Legend says those two were the first human and dragon-shifter mates on Stonefire, over a thousand years ago.”
“And? Was it a love match? A political alliance that turned into more? Was she kidnapped and forced to mate him?”
Nathan’s gaze never moved from the tapestry. “No one knows for sure. Any records from that time have never been found. But the romantics say it was a political alliance between a local king offering his daughter to the dragon leader of Stonefire. They were strangers at first, but eventually fell in love and had more children than was normal, given medical science at the time.”
“Normal being?”
“One or two. The story goes they had ten.”
