Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,28
Lord Fiora, and he couldn’t follow Andrei or the servants around hoping to catch one of them in the act of taking their master his meals.
Which left finding a vantage point and waiting for a large dragon to either fly away from or fly into one of the towers.
Deven trudged all the way through the rose garden, at the end of which a high stone wall divided it from a section with a maze and a lot of very ugly statues. Climbing it wasn’t a challenge, with all of its poky hand- and footholds, and after a few moments Deven was seated cross-legged on the top, with a perfect view of Marlow Castle lit by the waxing moon.
He wished he’d brought a picnic, or at least a bottle of wine. Or someone to get drunk with, come to that.
A soft breeze brushed over him, rustling the roses. Otherwise, silence reigned. Deven was too far from the castle to hear any of the servants in the kitchen, and not close enough to the woods beyond the grounds to hear any wildlife.
Hours passed, slowly, as the moon passed overhead and began to sink down behind the castle, bisected by the spire on one of the turrets.
Bed began to sound like the best thing in the world. Deven shifted for the hundredth time, relieving the pressure on his tailbone by cramming one of his ankles painfully against the stone beneath him.
And then his breath caught. There, silhouetted against a silvery swath of cloud — a long spiky tail, and bat-like wings, and an elegant curved body. A dragon. Lord Fiora, winging his way home, turning in swooping circles and growing nearer with every pass. God, but he was beautiful. How were all Lord Fiora’s servants not outside every night, trying to catch a glimpse of him? For a moment Deven forgot why he was there. Nothing mattered but the dragon sliding through the air like a piece of the dark night sky brought to magnificent life.
But then Lord Fiora banked sharply for his landing, and Deven froze, not moving so much as a finger. He had no idea if dragons had unusually keen eyesight, but it would make sense if they did. Any movement below might draw Lord Fiora’s attention. As Deven watched, hardly daring to breathe, Lord Fiora circled the turret at the front of the castle on the left, and then disappeared onto its top.
As soon as he was out of sight, Deven scrambled down and ran back to the castle. If anyone came looking for him, he’d be ensconced in his favorite chair in the library, nose buried in a book, and not spying on the lord of the castle at all, no, not one bit.
He’d barely tugged his trousers up before footsteps warned him of Andrei’s approach. Fiora did the last button as Andrei rounded the corner at the top of the stairs.
“My lord, we have a problem,” Andrei said abruptly. “Someone in the castle has been spying on you. And I don’t mean Deven. Someone has given him information that no one ought to have.”
“Not possible,” Fiora said, without even thinking about it. He didn’t need to. Every one of his staff had come with him from home, following him with the utmost loyalty. Not to mention, he paid them extravagantly. No bribe could compete.
And there was the small matter of all of their families being still at home, under the generally benevolent reign of Fiora’s parents. No one in Fiora’s household would risk earning the ire of the elder dragons, not when that benevolence could turn fiery so quickly.
Besides, they were loyal. Fiora would stake his life on it.
“It may not be possible, but I believe it all the same,” Andrei said grimly. “Deven told me over dinner about his utter fascination with old, odd, and even damaged books. How much he likes them, more, in fact, than he likes new ones.” Andrei paused a moment to let that sink in. “Books are, dare I say, an unusual interest for a man of Deven’s age and station in life, not to mention the type of books he claims to prefer. So unusual that I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence. My lord, he knows. And God only knows what else he knows, if he knows that.”
Fiora leaned back against the parapet, his whirling head making the unraveling of Andrei’s syntax a bit of a challenge. He was never at his quickest after a long flight. Flying brought peace