Page 22 of Dragon’s Ending

I dumped the pile on the other end of the table, sending up more clouds of dust. Berstow barely concealed his wince, but by the time I’d hitched my hip on the table and started to go through the books, he was lost once more in his work. His pen had somehow found its way into his mouth as he read, and every now and then he’d drag it out to mutter something and scribble furiously on the notepad by his side. It was distracting.

Especially when combined with the way he’d thrust his other hand through his hair until it stood up in uneven tufts that looked far too debauched for someone usually so composed.

Eventually, I realised I probably should stop studying him and look at the books beside me instead. They turned out to be a mixture of marriage settlements and records of estate income and expenditure. Then I found something that was actually interesting—a book containing the list of dragons’ treasures, carefully accounted for after their deaths. According to age-old custom, one tenth of their treasure was always buried with them.

Almost automatically, I stroked the ring on my right hand as I read. It’d been designed as a wedding ring, with a band of emeralds enclosed in gold, but I didn’t care about its purpose. The purity of the emeralds chosen for this ring had meant I’d had no choice once I saw it. I’d had to own it. I wore it always, a reminder of the rest of my treasure, so carefully hidden in my room. I trusted that my father wouldn’t take it—some things were simply unthinkable to dragons—but it still didn’t feel safe, not when his shadow stretched across every part of this house.

The entries very swiftly resolved into a clear pattern. Our family had a predisposition for gold, it appeared, but there were a few outliers who’d treasured precious stones and other metals. No emeralds, though, and I wondered if that had come from my mother’s side of the family.

I glanced up at one point, aware of a shift in the room, and found Berstow watching me. What might have been the beginning of a smile was tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Found something interesting?” he asked.

I shrugged. My go-to of a dismissive answer wouldn’t work because he’d obviously caught me deep in some dusty old record and loving it. “How d’you want these ordering when some span centuries and others only cover a few years?”

He sucked on that pen again as he thought. “Separate the estate records from personal ones first, then keep anything legal or genealogical apart from the financial material. We’ll sort chronologically within those categories later.”

Deciding to ignore that ‘we’ because I was only amusing myself here for a while—couldn’t imagine anything more tedious than spending days combing through old family trees—I began to work my way through the pile of papers.

It soon became clear the record of treasures was by far the most interesting, and I wanted to ask why he was doing this. What could he possibly find in these that made him look so animated as he read through page after page of cramped, monotonous handwriting? But he was evidently lost in a different century, so I kept my opinions to myself and sorted the papers into stacks. Probably not neat enough for Berstow’s standards, but if he wanted military precision, he could do it himself.

BEN

I’d known it was Dominic entering the room, even though I had my back to him. There was something unique about the way my dragon reacted to him. Not as if he were a threat exactly, but a very definite awareness of his presence. Plus, there was a part of me that had been almost expecting him again after yesterday, when he’d seemed unable to leave me alone. He was like a very big, very annoying bluebottle fly, who had an entire house to choose from but decided to gravitate to me. And each time I thought he’d finally settled and I could relax, he’d be moving again, restless and aggravating.

To my surprise, he’d been less disruptive today. And now, he was actually absorbed in what he was reading, which was unexpected, to put it mildly. I tore my gaze from his face when my phone sounded.

A text from Evelyn in her usual style, bullet-pointed and direct.

I looked up from the phone to find Dominic watching me, an eyebrow raised questioningly in a kind of entitlement that should have been annoying. If it’d just been Mum checking on the status of my bedding, I’d have told him it was none of his business. As it was, it kind of was his business.

“My head of family, Evelyn,” I told him. “She wants me to mark up a Google Earth screenshot of the castle, showing which wall the markings are on. Guess she’s looking for orientation, because that might tell us something more about their purpose.” I checked her second bullet point. “She wants me to go back and study them in moonlight, too.”

“You ever think she’s watched too much Lord of the Rings?” Dominic asked, setting his book aside and prowling around the room. For no reason other than he didn’t seem to like to be still for too long.

He wasn’t being serious, but neither was he going to put himself at a disadvantage by asking why and betraying his ignorance. Instead, he’d elicit the information by being annoying, and I wondered where he’d learned to do that. Whether he was just fundamentally irritating, getting his kicks from provoking people, or if it was something he’d learned to try and get information out of Rhodri.

Regardless, he was the one who’d shown me the markings in the first place, so it seemed right to tell him.

“She wants me to look at them in dragon form, in case there’s anything there that dragon eyesight picks up which human doesn’t.” Except she didn’t say that—it was implicit in the moonlight wording. We still never used the d-word in writing, in case humans ever stumbled across it. “Sort of like the whole red dragon thing, I guess,” I added.

He stilled for an instant, his hand on the bookcase tightening before he turned away and looked out of the window. A little too carelessly.

“The whole red dragon thing.” His words were mocking. He wanted me to say something, that was clear. Maybe he didn’t know what I was talking about?

No, he had to know. Rhodri hoarded information like it was his treasure, jealous and acquisitive, but Dominic was his son. I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t have been told, so I was careful in how I said it. I didn’t want his scorn for stating the blindingly obvious.

“It seems as if we were the only dragon family to keep the memory alive of red dragons’ ability to read hidden writings. At least, Evelyn said everyone was shocked when she told them about it at the Moot last year.” The Moot which every head of family had attended. Rhodri had been there. He knew. Surely he’d have told Dominic.

He was silent in a way that felt dangerous suddenly, and when he turned on his heel to look at me, I could see why. His dragon was visible in his eyes, gold irises flaring, dark pupils narrowing to vertical slits. My own dragon stirred, ready to defend from attack. But it seemed his fury wasn’t aimed at me, and it was gone again as swiftly as it came, swallowed by the usual deep brown of his eyes.

“No one else remembers this, and your lot just happens to know,” he said, an undertone in his voice that I couldn’t quite read. “Red dragons are rare enough as it is. Get yourself one who’ll say whatever you want, when there are no others around who can contradict it, and you can make records say anything you like.”

His eyes were narrowed on my face. “Such as that the Berstows, whoever the fuck they are, are the real leaders of the dragons. You’ll be trying to take the Mortimers’ place next.”

I couldn’t tell if he believed what he was saying or if he was just trying to get a reaction out of me.

His gaze stayed fixed on mine, sharp and challenging, waiting for something. And I realised there’d been a question in there, buried under the accusation.