Page 68 of Taste of Thorns
I shake my head. “You know I can’t.”
“I don’t want to be apart from you, Thorne,” she says. “Not after that.”
“Then I have an idea,” I venture, “only, you’re going to need to put some clothes on.”
She smiles wickedly, then slips inside the dark room, returning a moment later in pants and a sweater.
“Are we going to stay up talking all night?” she asks.
“Nope, I’m going to show you something. Follow me.”
Once she’s wrapped up in a coat, I lead her out of our tower, along the academy pathways towards the Great Hall. The academy is dark and silent. The ground is covered in snow and above us the stars shine brightly. We wind around to the back of the hall, its stained glass windows dark tonight, stopping outside an old oak door. The wood is gnarled, the handle made from rusted iron.
“We’re going through there?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, “down to the old dungeons. They’re the only thing that remains of the old castle.”
“Erm, if you’re taking me to see torture equipment and chained-up prisoners,” she says, “that isn’t the best choice for a date. Although I have been on worse.”
“The jerk from Slate?” She nods. “They haven’t kept prisoners down here for hundreds and hundreds of years. But I could arrange for them to make an exception for him.”
She laughs – a sound that has that muscle in my chest fluttering.
“So why are we going down there?” she asks, not sounding like she likes the idea of descending into old dungeons in the middle of the night.
“Trust me,” I say, turning the handle and pushing open the door. The stone staircase that lies beyond descends downwardsin a spiral, the middle of each step bowed where many pairs of feet have worn the stone away over the years. Then we’re walking out into the huge cavernous space that lies directly beneath the academy’s Great Hall.
Flaming torches burn in brackets on the walls and high above us in the vaulted ceiling, making the polished stone walls shine.
She gasps.
“You said a dungeon, this wasn’t … it’s beautiful. I had no idea this existed.”
I motion for her to follow me across the grand space to the far wall.
“This is what I wanted to show you, Briony.”
In front of us lies a skeleton, yellow in the firelight, as long as the width of the cavernous space, as tall as the high ceiling. A huge skull sits at its crown, its eye sockets black like my eyes, a long tail curling around a complete rib cage.
“A dragon,” she murmurs, her gaze racing all over the form.
“Yes,” I say. “Danfoed, the last known dragon.”
“It’s huge.”
“Yeah, I did warn you that they grow pretty big.”
“I knew they were big, but not this big.”
“Danfoed was known to be a giant,” I say. “Blaze might not grow quite this huge.”
“Still,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief as she walks the length of the dragon, halting by its long talons, so big they reach up to her waist.
I stand back, watching as she strides up and down the dragon skeleton, examining and studying every part of him. Then I call out to her.
“Briony, there’s something else I wanted you to see.”
She follows me over to a wooden display case tucked into the corner. Behind its glass rests an old leather saddle with a huge harness and reins.
