Page 26 of Deven and the Dragon
“‘Quicker than a thought,’ as you recall,” Andrei quoted. Andrei knew every word of the curse as well as Fiora did. “Not only was Mr. Clifton perfectly well last night, but he assured me that nothing of the kind had taken place. Since his protestations seemed sincere, and his state of health confirmed his story, I chose to believe him.”
Fiora’s nausea intensified to the point of pain. Deven and Andrei hadtalkedabout it? Talked about whether or not Deven and Fiora had…oh,fuck. Fiora’s face burned and his hands shook. Oh, God, he was never drinking again.
And then the obvious knocked him over the head like a paving stone.
“When?” he demanded, lowering his hands and glaring at Andrei out of no-doubt bloodshot eyes. “When did you talk to Deven last night?”
Andrei’s look was somewhere between pitying and grimly amused. “When he carried you to bed like a sack of ale-soaked potatoes, my lord.”
Carried him. To bed. Because he had, apparently, drunk himself into unconsciousness.
Deven had carried him to bed. Not in the way Fiora might possibly wish Deven — no, wishsomeonewould, but simply because he had no choice but to haul him around after he proved he couldn’t hold his liquor. An obligation. An annoyance. A drunken, giggling, stupid burden.
His esophagus tingled as bile began to rise up again. The image of a heap of sodden, ale-soaked potatoes, squishy and disgusting, appeared in Fiora’s mind’s eye.
“Ohhh,” he moaned, and sprinted for the bath again.
Chapter Twelve
It took twohours and a whole pot of coffee for Fiora to begin to feel like himself again. He only toyed with the toast Andrei had sent for from the kitchen along with the coffee; it was presented stone cold, with only half a pat of butter and a dish of gooseberry jam, Fiora’s very least favorite. Clearly Mrs. Pittel hadn’t forgiven him for his callous indifference to the rabbit situation.
The rabbits. Fiora winced and tossed the bit of toast onto the dish with a sad clunk and spatter of scorched crumbs. He had certainly laughed enough over those bloody rabbits the night before. Deven had laughed too. It didn’t really rid Fiora of the suspicion he’d acted the fool.
At last Fiora rose from the little table by the fireplace in his bedchamber and languidly began to dress. He’d already bathed; that had been priority number one, the moment he’d stopped vomiting. His long hair hung limp and damp, as unenthused as the rest of him. A shirt, trousers, and a pair of slippers were all he could manage, and he slouched downstairs to the study, meaning to be enervated and dull there for a while, just for a change.
Really, he longed for the peace, quiet, and cool of his river barge, from which he could trail his wing tips and long tail in the water, and possibly even dabble his clawed toes over the side. For whatever reason, fish didn’t recognize him as a predator; they swam up and peeked at him curiously, their own scales flashing in the moonlight. But it was the middle of the day, and not the time to go out and about in his other form.
The first thing he saw as he walked through the study door was a battered old trunk sitting on a chair beside his desk.
He approached it on tiptoe, as if it would be startled away by his approach. A plain, canvas-covered wooden box with brass hasps, it was hardly something likely to interest a dragon — except that Fiora knew what was in it, and he was hardly an ordinary dragon.
Fiora’s fingers twitched with the desire to explore its contents. Books. And not just any books:Deven’sbooks. To Fiora, a book collection was a map of a person’s soul, the physical manifestation of the roads a mind had taken as it wandered through all the collected knowledge and fantasy of the world. What paths had Deven taken? What led him off the main roads and into those fascinating cul-de-sacs to be found between the pages of a lesser-known work, or a tale of simple whimsy?
They weren’t his books. He had no right. He stopped by the trunk and caressed its lid, his fingertips trailing over the lock.
If it was locked, Fiora told himself, he would leave it be. That would be his compromise between his better nature and…the much larger, other part of his nature. Deven would lock the trunk if he didn’t want anyone to look inside, wouldn’t he?
Fiora recognized that for the rationalization it was, but he couldn’t help himself. He pressed down on the lock.
And it popped open under his trembling fingers.
The lid swung up with a creak to reveal two score or so volumes, all packed in neatly and organized by size, in order to fit as many as possible without wrecking them. Most people might have thought that care was unnecessary, given how many of the books had torn or missing covers, scratches, frayed bindings, or terribly bent corners. Several were scorched, as if they’d been rescued from a fire.
Deven’s careful storage of his tatty old books touched Fiora down to the most draconic part of his soul. His vision blurred, and he dashed away a few drops from below his eyes. These books had been collected with love.
They had been hoarded, in fact.
Fiora slammed the lid shut and clicked the latch again, hating himself for his weakness. How dare he disturb another man’s treasure? Among dragons, a breach of decency like that would make him a pariah, and rightfully so. Gold could be stolen, spent, tricked out of someone else’s vault, or won in a game of cards — with or without cheating — and no one would blink. (Except for those few, ultra-traditional dragons who still lived in caves and slept on their piles of precious metals. Ugh. What the sodding hell was wrong with using some of it to buy a decent mattress, for God’s sake?)
But a dragon’s true hoard was the product of love. Obsessive, jealous, often violent love, but love all the same. It transcended monetary value. It wassacred.
Suddenly driven to view his own, Fiora left the study and returned to his bedroom. He needed to see it. To touch it, and inhale the scent of it. The hidden door in the back wall of his dressing room looked like just a wall to any other eyes, but to Fiora’s sight it glowed faintly, with the glyphs of his father’s careful warding gleaming gold. Carefully, Fiora transformed only one of his fingers, allowing it to become a long, wickedly curved claw. He pricked the opposite palm and watched until a bead of blood welled up, and then he pressed his hand to the door.
It slid open silently, and Fiora slipped through.
The room beyond didn’t exist in the physical space of the castle; it went wherever the warding spells went, contained within their magic. It could be merged with a real space, should Fiora feel comfortable enough to have the room that held his hoard be physically locatable, but for now, this was safest. This was best.
And while Fiora was too large in his dragon form to access the door, the room itself was a vaulted, cavernous space, more than sufficient to hold him comfortably in either form he chose to take.
