Page 30 of The Lost Prince
I turned and stared out the window, wondering what she’d been looking at.
Ah, there it was.
The dragon sat perched just above the window, glaring down, only its silhouette visible as it sat on the dome above me. It seemed to get a little bigger every year. Or perhaps that was just my imagination.
I raised my hand in a small wave.
Its head tilted to the side, much like the queen’s had.
With a roar and a huff, it jumped off the dome and flew away.
Too much excitement for one night, that was for sure, though highly informative. I had new things to research, and deeper mysteries to unravel.
I thought of the ritual drawing sitting on my desk and sighed. It would have to be tabled for now.
Something much sinister was brewing.
* * *
“Z! There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
M burst into the archives loudly, running by my table so fast I had to slap a hand down on my parchments, lest they fly away in his frenzied air current like dust in the wind.
“What?” I bit shortly at him, irritated at the interruption. The article I was reading was difficult to decipher and in the old language. If I lost concentration now, I’d have to start over from the beginning of the manuscript to make everything—
“Pergainsa berry pie today!”
My quill twitched in my fingertips, and I almost dropped it. There were very few people I tempered my irritation toward. While M was usually one of them, right now I was having trouble finding a reason.
“You interrupted my studies for pie?” Derision dripped from my voice.
As usual, he ignored the tone that would have had the other boys scattering like frightened birds.
“You like pergainsa pie,” he insisted stubbornly and succinctly.
Well, he had me there. The berry didn’t grow naturally in this environment, and had to be grown painstakingly in a special greenhouse deep within the palace. There weren’t a lot available, so when they were, I always got some for myself.
And M knew that.
“Fine. I like pergainsa pie,” I grumbled back at him, stacking my notes and tucking everything away neatly. Just like my room back in the dormitories, this table in the archives was mine.
Sighing, I glanced toward the large, glass windows overlooking the artists’ quarter. I’d never been outside the walls of the palace and had never felt much of a need to. Though as my rituals grew, I might have to venture outside to find a more appropriate space in which to perform them.
Glass windows made little sense with a raging dragon on the loose, though my research had uncovered a little known fact: the massive dome and walls that protected the kingdom weren’t built because of the dragon. They were built to keep other kingdoms from comingin.
The manuscripts had said so, and the dates of the construction predated any mentions of a dragon.
So why build it, then? I hadn’t figured that part out yet, but I had massive tomes of old records I hadn’t even brushed the dust off yet.
It would take decades to unearth all the kingdom’s secrets.
“Coming? You know B will make himself sick eating it all just to piss you off.”
I snorted, turning back toward M and standing. My joints popped as I stretched, hours of being hunched over my desk making themselves known in every ache and pulled muscle.
“Fire above! Is that the dragon?”
The awe in M’s voice reminded me that most people weren’t allowed in the archives, let alone lay eyes on the dragon, ever. The dome kept it out of sight of most people, but there were minimal spots in the palace where you could spot it, since the palace was on the edge of the dome and had a few turrets that stuck out, not completely covered. The Fireguards let M pass into the archives as he wanted because of me.
