Page 107 of Edge of the Wild

Amelia blinked, and shook her head – but the sight before her didn’t change. She reached out, tentatively, and touched the skull, expecting, hoping, to feel clay, or starched paper, some evidence that this was all a hoax. But she knew the texture of old bone, and these were real.

“Come,” Connor said, turning, and she was helpless but to follow.

Malcolm gripped her shoulder as they walked, but kept silent, all his protests dried up.

In a deeper, smaller den, they found another skeleton, one large as the elephant’s, but longer, shaped differently. And the skull…

Horse, she thought at first, but, no, it was too large. Long, tapered horns sprouted from the wide end of the wedge, and the jaws tapered down to a smooth, narrow snout. The torchlight glimmered onteeth. Not the broad, flat molars of a horse – or of any herbivore – but onfangs. Serrated, wicked, meat-eating teeth as long as her whole hand.

“Go on,” Connor said.

When she touched it, she felt the unmistakeable texture of true bone.

It wasn’t until she spoke that she realized she was shaking all over; it manifested in her voice, an unsteady quaver. “This isn’t real.”

“Yes, it is,” Connor said, almost gently. “But deny it if you must.” He cleared dust and cobwebs from a natural shelf of rock and sat, torch propped negligently on one shoulder, its light licking up the cave wall. “Would you like for me to explain?”

She ground her teeth, wanting to refuse – this was madness! – but ultimately jerked a nod.

He nodded, too, as though he’d expected the answer. “Generations of kings have been lying to the people of Aquitainia – I still consider a lie by omission an outright lie, mind you. They kept the truth from us, from all of us: that dragons exist, and have so since recorded history. The water-drakes in the sea, and the cold-drakes of the North, and the fire-drakes, here in the woodlands and wilds of the South. Once upon a time, the Drake family name was Boswell, back when the Northmen first retreated, and the South began to form something like a country. And the Boswells better than anyone, could make friends with the wild drakes that roamed these lands. They tamed them. They rode them. Call it magic, call it spiritualism, call it something of the blood – some of the old clerics used to say that the Boswells were born of dragons, that they could turn into them, if they wished. But that was a lot of rot.”

She snorted, though her head was spinning. “Like this?”

He chuckled, and gestured toward the skeleton lying beside them. “Whatever you think of me, you can’t dismissthat.”

“Who told you all this? The wild men?” Malcolm asking, tilting his head mockingly back the way from which they’d come.

“As a matter of fact, I read about it – and then consulted a very old, very demented clergyman at the capital.” He went on to expound on his summer spent in Aquitaine, when he was only sixteen. On getting lost in the labyrinthine library complex, wandering, searching, more interested in seeing how far he could get than actually studying – and finally stumbling upon a room with a key in its lock, and the door standing cracked open. He’d found the clergyman inside at a table, perched precariously on a stool, in stained robes, his white beard trailing over the parchments spread before him, lips moving as he struggled to read through rheumy eyes. “I don’t even think he knew where he was, or what year it was,” Connor said. “He kept calling met ‘Teddy.’ He was ancient, and he was babbling, and he asked if I could help him search for something. I was bored, and curious so I did. And the whole place was a treasure-trove of secrets. I called that room the Dragon Library.”

“If the crown wanted it kept secret from everyone, why preserve all those old documents?” Amelia asked.

He gave a rueful grin. “Because nothing as powerful as a dragon could beforgotten. They’d helped to win the first war with the Sels, and I imagine king after king after priest after minister thought it best to keep records of that kind of weapon. Just in case any more were ever found. Just in case they needed a miracle.”

“If that’s true,” Malcolm said, “why not search them out when the Sels first attacked back in the spring?”

“I imagine they did. We’ve found a few corpses wearing Crownland armor.”

“And you think dragons ate them?”

“No. Just lions, or bears. One had stepped in a bear trap and broke his neck, poor sod. No, the forest got them, because Crownlanders have forgotten how treacherous the Inglewood can be, once you stray off the road. And the dragons were asleep, I told you. If the crown was looking for them, they never found them.

“But I did.” This was last was said with a triumphant, smirking grin.

It was a bit of a shame, Amelia thought, fleetingly, that she hadn’t thought much of him when she was younger and he was still a lord.

Then again, she’d always preferred a bit of rough to all that ballroom polish.

“You found the cave.” The longer they’d talked, the more the shock had begun to wear off; it was a relief to feel her practicality returning. “How does one wake a dragon? Knock? Throw a deer carcass down the hole?”

“No.” He snorted and then grew serious. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid.” He reached into a pocket amidst his rough clothes, and then tossed something to her.

She just got her hands up in time to catch it, and whatever it was – hard, smooth,heavy– the moment it touched her, a sharp prickling went shooting up both arms, a nearly-painful flash of feeling and numbness, both, like when she clipped her elbow on a wall. She hissed in shock. Her fingersburned.

“Lia,” Malcolm said, with alarm.

But whatever it was, she refused to drop it. As quick as it had flared, the burning subsided, so it only felt as if she held a warm mug of tea. She opened her hands and looked down – to see the torchlight flickering across a smooth, flawless, egg-shaped bit of red stone. Its color was even, and brilliant, and after a moment, she realized it wasn’t a stone at all – but aruby.

“Holy gods,” she murmured. “Where did you find this?”

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