Page 34 of Mochas and Minotaurs

Gigi was already out of bed, and I was disappointed I didn’t get to wake up with her in my arms today. I found an extra toothbrush laid out for me in the bathroom. By the time I stepped back out into the living room, she was already on the phone with a glass and window repair company haggling for a good deal to get the work done together.

As she called her employees to let them know not to come in and updated her store hours online, I sent a message to Declan to let him know what had happened.

His first reaction? “The mirrors!” Which had been my reaction.

“Don’t worry, I saved them.”

“Thank fuck! Because I donotwant to put those up again. I’m glad you’re alright, man.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve got something for you to look at while you wait for them to fix those windows,” Declan said. “You’ll have to sign into the University of Darlington library portal with my alumni account, but I have it saved.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see. You can’t miss it.”

He hung up and sent me the link and sign-in credentials.

Curious, I went to the website and signed in. At first, I was confused. What was I supposed to see? I clicked around and eventually made it to a section labeledDigital References.

There it was:Rencontre Avec un Minotaur.Or at least, a scanned version of it, on a temporary digital loan from the once-secret Université de Magie in Paris.

“Whatcha got there?” Gigi asked.

“Declan found the book.” I showed her my screen. “Someone scanned it. He borrowed it digitally from Paris’s University of Magic.”

“You mean the one that vehemently claimed they didn’t exist when The Wall first fell?”

“That’s the one.”

“While you read up on that, I’m going to brainstorm what Arcane might be after.”

“Want some company?” I asked.

Somehow, returning to my mostly empty apartment felt rather…well, empty. Also, it felt like a dragon could appear from nowhere at any moment and drag me to my fate. Being around her calmed me, and I was able to think. And should that actually happen and I lost my freedom today, I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.

“Yeah, I’d love some company.”

I quickly ran over to my apartment to grab a change of clothes and my laptop and returned to find Gigi on the couch deep in thought, with a project in hand and yarn in her lap. Triscuit was out playing with another smaller ball of yarn.

I sat down on the couch next to her, but the couch dipped, interrupting her…knitting? I didn’t think that was done with a hook, though. I moved to the opposite end of the couch instead and stuck my hoof out so that it touched her foot. There. We were still touching.

I loaded the page onto my laptop and started reading.

The book was smut and very little else. Though I was pretty damn sure by the end of it that one of my female ancestors had most definitely written it. For one, the descriptions of the maze had been nearly identical to the ones my mother had given me. Not to mention, the agreement was basically the same.

And that had only made it worse because, in essence, I’d just read breeding smut written by my great-great-grandmother, and that was just fucking wrong on so many levels.

“Still no name for the dragon?” Gigi asked.

“No. She only refers to it asle Dragon,which is exactly how Elise refers to him. I don’t think the women he contracted ever knew or cared. In the book, Jeanne, the main character, was originally born into the good life, but her father had gambled away everything, and her mother died of consumption. She was forced into a life of prostitution to survive when the dragon approached her. Elise was in a similar situation. Started out with some money but fell on bad times with no one else in her life.”

“And the promise of being able to live that way again was enough incentive to take the bait.” Griselda nodded.

“Yeah. Too bad there’s nothing useful in here. What a waste of my morning. This fucking sucks.”

The moment the words came out of my mouth, Gigi’s eyes grew round, and she made a zip-it motion with her fingers across her lips.

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