AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re a ward of the king?” Aylia asked, looking completely shocked.
“Ward?” I asked.
“She’s considered one of his kids. She’s treated as such,” Aylia explained.
“Like a princess?”
“Pretty much,” Coral said. “So go ahead, keep going against me. You’ll be the only one to suffer for it.”
I scrunched up my nose in disgust. He was a lecherous old man, creepy to the tenth degree. If he was always trying to make me bond with him, then there was no telling how he was with other people my age.
“You spread your legs out for him?” I asked, unable to stop it.
That seemed like the only reason he’d have a ward at his age. And he definitely sexualized people as young as Coral and me. I gagged a little bit at the thought.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Coral asked, looking genuinely disgusted. “Not everyone needs to spread their legs and fuck someone to gain power.” She stalked away from me, leaving me a bit confused.
So he wasn’t a complete predator then. It was just with me.
That didn’t sit well with me at all. It meant he wouldn’t lose interest in me once someone else came into the picture. I was truly trapped here with the king slowly circling around me like a predator stalking his prey. He was just waiting for the right time to pounce.
“Rayna?” Aylia asked, sensing that I was spiraling out of control again.
I always felt like I was losing control over everything since becoming a rider. It was like all my choices were taken away from me, and everything that could go wrong had.
I glanced in the doorway just in time to see Captain Corniz walk by with Tanja at his side. It seemed more often than not that they were trying to help us. The guys even said the captain tried to warn them to escape, but we botched that, not completely understanding his intentions. And Tanja was always warning me that if we kept up with our attitude and fought back so publicly, we’d only cause more trouble and put ourselves in more danger.
Were they really on our side? Were we not as alone as I felt?
Maybe we’d be able to at least have one more chance if I could talk to the captain alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cornering the captain to have a private word with him proved impossible over the next couple of days. At least Coral was leaving me alone, for now. We didn’t get any time to ourselves until the weekend. Aylia was more than happy to drag me to the library to find any information we could on the legend Aylia told me about the rider with more than one dragon mate.
If I couldn’t talk to the captain, I could at least dig into the texts in the library. As we walked into the massive library, I realized we were about to dig in a haystack for a needle, and it wasn’t going to be fun. I liked reading, but I was a casual reader.
“Holy shit,” I said, looking all around us.
It was shelves on top of shelves of books everywhere. Like most of the academy, things were bigger, including the desks and chairs. There were even couches and sofas sprinkled around the room, most of them already claimed by others. I looked up at the domed ceiling, the very top was some kind of glass-looking mosaic that allowed light to come in through the stained colors. It painted a picture of dragons and riders flying through the sky.
It was rather breathtaking, especially as it was lit by the sun.
“Come on,” Aylia said. “I doubt we’ll find something here. We need to find the more uncommon books. All these books on the first floor have been well read at this point. If it were in any of these texts, it’d be known.”
She did make a good point. I let her drag me up and up, going to the third level, where there were less people and less shelves.
“These are history books that aren’t needed for classes,” Aylia whispered, looking around until she found a free table that tucked us away from everyone. “All these texts are lesser read, if at all. We can’t get higher than this until we advance through our lessons, but this is a good spot to start, I think. If we can find even a whisper of the legend, then we’re on the right track and maybe we’ll be able to find more texts after that.”
“So we find the needle now, and once we’re familiar with what that needle looks like, we’ll be able to find more?” Aylia just stared at me, my analogy going over her head. I sighed. “The book will give us a clue into what kind of books we should be searching for.”
“Yes, that,” she said. “I’ll look through the shelves closest to us. You can start further back and we can work our way to the middle.”
“So I get to do all the walking?” I asked, trying to tease her.
She smiled. “I like doing the least amount of work.”
“And I don’t?” I raised an eyebrow.
