Page 434 of Kingdoms of Night

She didn’t know how to get him to help her. She’d never had an assistant before and hadn’t ever wanted one. But something about Rowan made her think there were options for them. She could find a place for him somewhere, or maybe it was just that she liked having company.

He didn’t seem to mind when she talked too much. And after the first week, he started asking his own questions. She hadn’t expected him to be so curious about dragons.

At first, she worried he was planning on using this information against them. He’d been so dead set that her kind were monsters, she wouldn’t be surprised if he were planning some sort of attack. But then she realized he was genuine about wanting to know more about the dragons and everything about them.

So finally, after a few weeks of having him help clean out her cave, sending him on errands to talk with other dragons so she never had to leave the crystals, and even making him get dinner for her every night, Tanis decided he could actually help her.

She waited for him to arrive the next morning with her nose in the air and her neck stretched imperiously high.

Rowan froze in the cave entrance at the sight of her, the armful of heavy fruit in his hands suddenly squeezed with pressure. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You said the elves know how to use magic?”

“We do.” He stepped into her cave a few feet and then placed the fruit on the ground. “Better than witches.”

He’d said that before, but she knew how much of a claim that was. Witches were renowned, even among her own people. They were the ones who knew how to cast spells, some even powerful enough to trap a dragon. Rowan claimed to be stronger than that. And though such a claim made her nervous, it also made her wonder if he could connect with the crystals that held their people’s memories.

“If you’re so certain of that, then I want to see how powerful you are.” She lowered her neck and moved to the back of the cave. “Come with me.”

“What are we doing?” He didn’t hesitate, though. Rowan followed her with a trust that made her heart flutter.

Stupid thing. She had too much work to do for any fondness to grow. This elf could prove to be entirely wrong, and then they both had wasted time.

“I will be disappointed if you’ve lied to me,” she grumbled as they reached the glowing crystals. “But if you are telling the truth...”

She was rushing him. Just being around the crystals often mesmerized his kind, and she’d forgotten how stunning they were up close. These were purple crystals, the ones that her own kind shared their memory in. Amethyst dragons were the keepers of their history and all the memories within those crystals would show every living thing which had happened to the dragons.

As far as she knew, there weren’t any other creatures who could link to their memories. Now, she had reason to wonder if that was the truth.

The jagged crystal edges jutted up from the ground. Some of them were as tall as Rowan, and their faint light cast his features into shadow as he walked up to one. Rowan lifted a hand, but then hesitated before he touched it.

“What are they?”

“Just crystals.” Tanis laid her head down on the ground next to him so they could speak without her towering over him. “We found out a long time ago that these crystals grow naturally all throughout Dracomaquia and in some places around Umbra. They are capable of holding our memories inside of them.”

“How do you put the memories there?” He dropped his hand and circled the crystal, carefully picking his steps. He must not want to step on any of the crystals, although they were more than strong enough to hold his weight.

His curiosity pleased her. Tanis did her best not to smile, since that expression seemed to scare him. “There is a bit of magic in our kind, namely in how we pass knowledge to our young ones. We heat the crystals with our fire and with that, the memories are added into the stones. The children unlock it simply by being near. They can watch the memories if they have time, which most children do. In a dire circumstance, a dragonling could consume the magic inside of it and then the memories would be as if they are their own. But that is dangerous. It ages a dragon beyond their time.”

She didn’t know what would happen to a dragonling who did that. No one had ever had to absorb the memories in her lifetime.

“So...” He paused on the other side of the crystal and looked at her through it. His image was watery and shifting with the light. “What do you want me to do?”

“Memories are slippery. They are very similar to currents of water that bend and flow around each other. Unfortunately, that also makes them rather easy to merge together. If that happens, both of those memories are tainted. They aren’t the truth, but some fictional version of history. Amethyst dragons spend their lives ensuring that doesn’t happen.”

But there weren’t many of her kind left. Amethyst children were hard to raise, and most of the time they were sickly. Tanis and the dragons like her weren’t built to fight or forage. They were made to be softer creatures, those who upheld the past and all those who came before.

His eyes widened at her words. “So that’s why you’re so tired all the time. There aren’t enough of you to do all the work?”

She shook her head. “Dracomaquia is a safe home for all dragonkind. We have been lucky to live here for such a long time without an attack or any loss for our people. But there are few like me, and I fear we will lose our history because of it.”

And what a nightmare that would be. There was so much good to the dragons, but there had been so much wrong as well. All the wrinkles their kind had gotten away from would come back. Because, as she had seen in the crystals before, if history was forgotten, then it would repeat.

“You want me to help?” Rowan’s voice sounded surprised. “Why me?”

“You seemed like you wanted to,” she replied. But that wasn’t entirely it, and she should tell him the truth. “You seem interested in the dragons as well. You aren’t tolerating me when I talk about our history or how we came to be. You’re actually interested in what I have to say.”

He met her gaze, and she knew he felt the same strange connection. She was certain it came from their shared passion in history, likely something he hadn’t been aware he was interested in until coming here.

---