He huffs a laugh. “I didn’t try to do anything. I was out here. Maybe you’re going mad, Storm?”
I place my hands on my hips. That stupid nickname again. “You sent someone to kill me, you fucking asshole!”
He steps right up to me, his eyes flashing with silver fire. “Keep calling me an asshole and see what happens to little brats who run their mouths at kings, Storm.”
My heart is racing as I realise I’ve just insulted a king, a very powerful king who could easily kill me, and I just decided I wanted to live. I shake my head, stepping away. “Cowards aren’t worth my time.” I don’t look at his reaction before I turn my back on him and run.
I am done with royals and their stupid games that I’ve played for years. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to deal with anyone right now. Where I’m running doesn’t matter, but my feet take off, and the sound of Ziven’s laughter haunts me like a ghost. I hear Daegan shouting after me, begging me to stop, and I hear many people shouting my name, but I just ignore them as I run to the steps. I just run and run, tears blurring my vision, and I can barely see through them.
When I finally stop, I notice that I’m in the library, at the door. Stepping to the side, I place my back on the wall, sliding down, burying my face in my knees before I start to cry in sobs. “Fucking coward,” I whisper to myself. I ran from him and called him the coward? I’m such a hypocrite. Everything I’ve held back—my friend dying, escaping the prison of my life, and being trapped in here, a deadly test and nearly being killed—seems to hit me at the same time, and I can’t breathe through my sobs. I must look like a complete coward to them, and a crazy person for shouting insults at Ziven. He is going to kill me, and at this point, I might deserve it.
“Most people run from the king, and you should really try to be kinder to yourself,” a soft voice echoes. I look up to see a slim man smiling at me. Was I talking out loud? He’s a strange-looking man with a bit of a crooked face, curly light blond hair, red at the tips, almost like how my hair turns into black at the ends, and high ears pointing out of his soft locks. This fae has got kind brown eyes though, and there isn’t an inch of judgment in them. He sits on the floor, cross-legged with his sunset orange cloak splayed around him, smiling casually at me like we are friends. I look around, expecting people to be staring, but they aren’t. There are several fae here, but they seem to be minding their own business, pushing carts or carrying books. But not this stranger.
He sat with me on the floor, in a strange suit under a thick orange cloak. He is wearing a vest that has painted books all over it, so many titles written in gold. Why is this man sitting with me, the crying mess? “King Ziven terrifies most people, and you just stood up to him in front of everybody. You should be extremely proud of yourself for not only surviving the first day of the Decidere without any training to do so, while everyone else here has trained their entire lives for it, but you also stood up to him when he was clearly in the wrong. Not many have survived doing either of those.”
I harshly wipe my tears from my cheeks. “I keep hearing that word survive. Does it really matter if you survive if you’re completely and utterly broken?”
“I think surviving is all the broken can do until they learn to thrive.” I like that answer and the man who is sweetly smiling at me. “Which I suspect you will if you give yourself half a chance.”
Chance? I don’t think I’ve ever paused to give myself one. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped at all.
“Besides all this,” he continues, “I should tell you my name. Introductions are always important, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve had the chance to meet someone new. My name is Mazzis. I am king of what is left of the Dawn Dynasty, though I don’t like the title king, nor do I use it or ever wear a crown. There are few of my people left these days, and we are a neutral dynasty of friends. We are survivors, like everyone here.”
“I still can’t believe this place exists,” I whisper. “Or that I just saw a dragon. A real, alive dragon!” I shake my head. “If my mother knew about this place, about the dragons and people here, she would tell me you are a chance for a better world. She told me she has always dreamed of a world where I was born free.”
“Free.” When he smiles, he reveals a crooked tooth that has a crack in it, and it’s been filled with gold. “I hope to meet your mother one day, when freedom is no longer a dream. I am not a rider, and I cannot help you much with the Decidere. I am the only one of my family who didn’t feel a call to the dragons, and I am no fighter. I run the library, and my calling was always to the pages of a book. My parents were horrified by that.” He laughs to himself, picking at a bit of dirt on the ground. “No one actually has any claim to the books in here. They belong to the entire race of the fae, to the people poor or rich, powerful or not, as all books should be. I run the day-to-day of here in the library, and I would give my life to protect these books.” He leans back. “I’m afraid I know you, Story, as everyone else does here. Catherine came in here not an hour and a half ago, raving about you, telling me all about how you’d love to be a librarian here before she mentioned she had successfully done the first day of the Decidere. I’d be honoured to offer you a job in the day. Come when you wish, there are always things to be organised, dusting to be done, books to be sorted. I cannot offer you gold—”
“A book or two to read. Not to keep, but to read. That’s all the payment I could ever want,” I interrupt. “And thank you so much.”
He huffs a laugh as he climbs to his feet. “Working here is usually a punishment. You need not thank me. Not many offer to do this job, which is quite alright. The other jobs, like harvesting food, cleaning the drinking water under the heat, training for the army and learning the ancient ways of our powers, are paid and more interesting jobs to most. Whereas I can offer you nothing. If you change your mind, that is quite—”
“You offer me a lot. Books…well, they were controlled where I grew up, and they were nearly all the same. I think they were written by the same vampyre, and they are only about the same controlled subjects,” I explain. “These books are old, not new, and I can’t wait to try to read every single one.”
He frowns. “Awful. The vampyres have taken much from us, but I believe the books might be one of the worst.” I take his offered hand. When I’m standing, he gives me an orange silk tissue from his suit pocket. I smile as I wipe my eyes and nose until they are dry. “We will discuss more about the books outside this mansion when you’ve had a less eventful day. I believe someone’s waiting for you.”
Daegan. I don’t need to look to know he is waiting there. I can almost sense it and I’m not sure I like that. “Thank you. Can I come tomorrow?”
“Yes, sweet Story. Now go and rest. You deserve it after winning, and congratulations. I’m very glad I’m the first one to say that to you. Keep the tissue.”
“Thank you.” I watch him walk away into the library to the books that are apparently his home. Daegan doesn’t come to me; he simply waits at the end of the arched tunnel for me to walk to him. He is smiling so brightly that I can’t help but smile back.
“Congratulations.” He opens his arms. I don’t know at what point we got used to hugging, but he pulls me straight to him when I step close, and I find myself not caring too much as I hug him back. He smells like crisp sunlight and cinnamon cakes he must have eaten earlier…safe. He will keep me safe but I can’t trust him completely. “I’m sorry about Ziven. I didn’t know he’d be sending one of his own in this year, or I would have warned you to keep away. He didn’t place any of his people’s names in the selection, but he has never followed the rules set out. Are you okay?”
“I survived,” I mutter as we begin to walk back to his apartment area. “I think he might have done me a favour. By pushing me down there, I found more pillars, and it wasn’t a rush. I was out of the way of the dragon that came up and burnt people.”
“You were lucky, and he was trying to kill you. He didn’t do you any favours,” Daegan all but snarls, and I pause as a shiver snakes down my spine. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, he can be—”
“Frustrating?” I arch an eyebrow at him. “I’ve known him a day and I would label him that, among many other things.”
“Yes, I heard.” He grins at me. “Hearing you call him out for his behaviour was the best thing I’ve seen in years.” We both laugh together, even if I feel like I’ve poked a bear. “But really, are you alright? Do you need a healing bath?”
“I’m healed,” I explain. “Do you know what happens in there, because—”
“We don’t talk about our own personal trials within there. The dragons, they decide the trials based on what they see in our souls, what they deem we need to become the strongest version of ourselves, and they take offence if you talk about it,” he quickly tells me. “I forget you don’t know this.”
“Your dragon…erm—”
“Odemis. I became a rider after five Sundays, five in the Decidere. The trials were some of the hardest days of my entire existence, and I am lucky to have Odemis. I would take you to meet him, but only riders are allowed in the deepest caves where the dragons fly and breed. Some of them can be seen from one place, and it was where I was going to take you so you weren’t so shocked at the sight of a dragon for the first time.”
He opens a door for me, and I slide through. It smells delicious in here, and I glance at the massive rows of tables in the room we have entered as my stomach begins to pang with hunger. Daegan leads me to a small table at the side, and there are plates of food in the middle. Meats, cheeses, milk in bottles, steamed vegetables and white cakes with frosting curled on the top. How do they get all of this? Daegan must read my expression. “On the top floors of the mansion, there are massive greenhouses, and below there are stables full of goats, cows, and chickens. They were here when we were trapped, and it keeps us all well fed. I will show you around when you’ve rested.”
“Lucky,” I murmur. “How did you get trapped in here? I mean, what is the story?”
He frowns at the food. “You might be the key to getting us out, but none of us knows how we got trapped in here. It was our ancestors, and the story of it all got warped over the five hundred years we have been in here. I couldn’t tell you what is true and what isn’t.”
I use a spoon to scoop some food onto my plate, my stomach hurting from not eating. “That’s a shame.” When he hasn’t spoken in a while, I change the subject. “I don’t think I want to go down there again after seeing a dragon today. I’m pretty sure I’m still absolutely fucking terrified of them, and the idea of riding on the back of one of them makes me want to pass out.”
His lips twitch. “I’m pretty sure I’m still absolutely fucking terrified of them, and every rider is and should be.” He eats a chunk of cheese, washing it down with milk. “They are terrifying, wild creatures, but they consider riders as their own, their family, and they will die for you. I would die to protect Odemis.” He looks up at one of the dragon statues that are in the corners of the room. “Being a dragon rider makes you feel like you’re a deity, powerful and protected.”
I’ve never felt or been those things. I can’t imagine what that would even be like. “I wasn’t expecting them to look like they are made of stone and crusted over like that. I don’t know why I expect them to be like creatures, blood creatures.” The books I read…they were never covered in stone like that. In the picture I saw, they were, well, it was a drawing, but they looked smooth on the outside.
“We all change in five hundred years, change to survive,” he begins, leaning back. “Talking of change, Ziven will take you to his apartments tomorrow evening for three nights. He vowed to our leaders in the meeting you’d not be killed or seriously harmed, but watch your back. He is not your friend.”
No, he is my enemy, and I’ve learnt to always watch my back around dangerous men.
Chapter Eight
