Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,45

butter and a dish of gooseberry jam, Fiora’s very least favorite. Clearly Mrs. Pittel hadn’t forgiven him for his callous indifference to the rabbit situation.

The rabbits. Fiora winced and tossed the bit of toast onto the dish with a sad clunk and spatter of scorched crumbs. He had certainly laughed enough over those bloody rabbits the night before. Deven had laughed too. It didn’t really rid Fiora of the suspicion he’d acted the fool.

At last Fiora rose from the little table by the fireplace in his bedchamber and languidly began to dress. He’d already bathed; that had been priority number one, the moment he’d stopped vomiting. His long hair hung limp and damp, as unenthused as the rest of him. A shirt, trousers, and a pair of slippers were all he could manage, and he slouched downstairs to the study, meaning to be enervated and dull there for a while, just for a change.

Really, he longed for the peace, quiet, and cool of his river barge, from which he could trail his wing tips and long tail in the water, and possibly even dabble his clawed toes over the side. For whatever reason, fish didn’t recognize him as a predator; they swam up and peeked at him curiously, their own scales flashing in the moonlight. But it was the middle of the day, and not the time to go out and about in his other form.

The first thing he saw as he walked through the study door was a battered old trunk sitting on a chair beside his desk.

He approached it on tiptoe, as if it would be startled away by his approach. A plain, canvas-covered wooden box with brass hasps, it was hardly something likely to interest a dragon — except that Fiora knew what was in it, and he was hardly an ordinary dragon.

Fiora’s fingers twitched with the desire to explore its contents. Books. And not just any books: Deven’s books. To Fiora, a book collection was a map of a person’s soul, the physical manifestation of the roads a mind had taken as it wandered through all the collected knowledge and fantasy of the world. What paths had Deven taken? What led him off the main roads and into those fascinating cul-de-sacs to be found between the pages of a lesser-known work, or a tale of simple whimsy?

They weren’t his books. He had no right. He stopped by the trunk and caressed its lid, his fingertips trailing over the lock.

If it was locked, Fiora told himself, he would leave it be. That would be his compromise between his better nature and…the much larger, other part of his nature. Deven would lock the trunk if he didn’t want anyone to look inside, wouldn’t he?

Fiora recognized that for the rationalization it was, but he couldn’t help himself. He pressed down on the lock.

And it popped open under his trembling fingers.

The lid swung up with a creak to reveal two score or so volumes, all packed in neatly and organized by size, in order to fit as many as possible without wrecking them. Most people might have thought that care was unnecessary, given how many of the books had torn or missing covers, scratches, frayed bindings, or terribly bent corners. Several were scorched, as if they’d been rescued from a fire.

Deven’s careful storage of his tatty old books touched Fiora down to the most draconic part of his soul. His vision blurred, and he dashed away a few drops from below his eyes. These books had been collected with love.

They had been hoarded, in fact.

Fiora slammed the lid shut and clicked the latch again, hating himself for his weakness. How dare he disturb another man’s treasure? Among dragons, a breach of decency like that would make him a pariah, and rightfully so. Gold could be stolen, spent, tricked out of someone else’s vault, or won in a game of cards — with or without cheating — and no one would blink. (Except for those few, ultra-traditional dragons who still lived in caves and slept on their piles of precious metals. Ugh. What the sodding hell was wrong with using some of it to buy a decent mattress, for God’s sake?)

But a dragon’s true hoard was the product of love. Obsessive, jealous, often violent love, but love all the same. It transcended monetary value. It was sacred.

Suddenly driven to view his own, Fiora left the study and returned to his bedroom. He needed to see it. To touch it, and inhale