Page 21 of Mountain of Dragons and Sacrifice

My breath caught in my chest, and I couldn’t have said why I was so arrested in that moment, a heat spreading up my arm from his touch. Perhaps it was the balm, doing strange things to my head.

The moment was broken as my stomach twisted, then let out a rumble.

His mouth curving with a smile, Evander finished with my left hand and waved to my right. I fumbled to switch the candle between my hands, nearly dropping it. At least the balm had soaked into my skin, not nearly as greasy as I would have expected.

He quickly spread the balm over my other hand before he capped the tin, dropped it into his pocket, and cleaned his fingers on a rag that he also added to his pocket.

While I stood there, still befuddled and blinking, he reached into his pocket again, this time pulling out what looked like a gyro, except the bread was pink, the cheese was green, and the various lettuce-like leaves were shades of purple. At least the seasoned meat appeared more or less normal in color.

He plunked the food into my hand. “Skipping meals isn’t healthy. Life always looks less daunting on a full stomach.”

I stared at the gyro in my hand, not sure if I wanted to eat food that had been riding around in his pocket for who knew how long. There didn’t appear to be any lint or fabric threads clinging to the gyro, nor was it smushed the way I would have expected of something that had been in a pocket.

Evander pulled a gyro of his own from his pocket, biting into it without hesitation. Why he was keeping food in his pocket, I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask.

Well, if he wasn’t bothered by eating his pocket gyro, then I wouldn’t be either.

I took a tentative bite. The flavors burst across my tongue, far sweeter than anything we had back home, though the spiced meat tasted a lot like lamb. The filling threatened to gush out of the pocket formed from the pink flatbread, and I had to juggle the gyro and the candle to wipe my face with the back of my hand.

Evander waved with his gyro at the tunnel stretching before us. “Ready to keep exploring?”

I nodded, my mouth too stuffed with food to reply.

Evander fell into step beside me as we walked and ate, his brown hair appearing darker in the candlelight, a hint of scruff shadowing his square jaw.

I tore my gaze away from him and forced myself to study the walls, ceiling, and floor as we walked, searching for hidden doors or nooks or anything that looked remotely like a clue to what was going on.

Yet everything remained blank stone. If there was a hidden door to the dragon’s dungeon, would I even be able to see it? In this place of magic wardrobes, unnaturally vibrant food, and lurking dragons, how could I trust my eyes or my senses?

Evander polished off two gyros and was on his third by the time the tunnel gave a gentle curve and ended in a single wooden door set into the stone.

Was this it? What else could be at the end of this long, spooky tunnel besides a dungeon?

With shaking fingers, I rested my hand on the latch, and I glanced over my shoulder. Would Evander stop me?

He stood there, stuffing the last of his gyro in his mouth and chewing the bite as if he wanted to get through it before I opened the door. Yet he remained where he was, making no move to forbid me from opening this door.

Heart pounding, my hands shaking so much the candlelight bounced around the walls, I tightened my grip on the latch and tugged.

The door swung open so easily that I stumbled backwards. Instead of tumbling to the floor, I fell against a warm chest, one of Evander’s hands lightly gripping my elbow while his other plucked the candle from my fingers before I could drop it.

My feet scrabbled against the stone as I tried to regain my balance. Evander steadied me, not letting go until I finally stood on my own two feet again.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, not looking at him as my face burned.

Trying to regain my dignity, I faced the open door. The light of the candle fell a few feet within, illuminating what looked like a pile of scrolls.

A weight sank in my chest. After the door had opened so easily, I should have known this couldn’t be the entrance to a dungeon.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around, even if I had the dragon’s steward peering over my shoulder the whole time.

I edged through the doorway, Evander following with the candle, and stared at the space around me.

The room stretched farther than the dim candlelight pierced, the edges blurring from gray into black. Piles of loose parchments, bound books, and half-wound scrolls were strewn across the floor in the immediate vicinity of the door. Beyond that, the mess of parchment was tamed into crates, set on shelves, or stashed in cubbies. Except for a patch near the door, everything was coated in a layer of dust, which appeared to grow thicker at the edges of the room.

“It doesn’t appear that the magical cleaning works for this part of the mountain.” I tiptoed around the jumble near the door.

“This is just a store room. No reason it needs to be clean.” Evander stuck his hand into his pocket, fished around for a moment, and withdrew what appeared to be a handful of loose parchments. He dumped them onto the mess.

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