Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,46
the scent of it. The hidden door in the back wall of his dressing room looked like just a wall to any other eyes, but to Fiora’s sight it glowed faintly, with the glyphs of his father’s careful warding gleaming gold. Carefully, Fiora transformed only one of his fingers, allowing it to become a long, wickedly curved claw. He pricked the opposite palm and watched until a bead of blood welled up, and then he pressed his hand to the door.
It slid open silently, and Fiora slipped through.
The room beyond didn’t exist in the physical space of the castle; it went wherever the warding spells went, contained within their magic. It could be merged with a real space, should Fiora feel comfortable enough to have the room that held his hoard be physically locatable, but for now, this was safest. This was best.
And while Fiora was too large in his dragon form to access the door, the room itself was a vaulted, cavernous space, more than sufficient to hold him comfortably in either form he chose to take.
Fiora’s hoard was better adapted to be appreciated in his human shape, though. Shelves lined the walls, each shelf filled with the books Fiora loved the most. He approached the nearest shelf and trailed his fingers over the spines. This shelf held fourteen different copies of The Blue Company, the story of a young scholar who went to war and returned a hardened soldier, nearly losing his lady-love in the process. All of them, save the one Fiora had bought brand-new to read for the first time, had been discarded: left on rubbish-heaps or in the backs of second-hand shops, dropped in the bath and water-stained past repair, torn or covered in spilled ink or chewed by a hound.
Fiora had saved them all, bringing them here. They had the same words within them, didn’t they? The same wonder, the same suspense, the same craft that had gone into their creation.
He loved them all equally.
Wandering on, Fiora said hello to Sanguine Captain (eleven copies, all but two missing their covers), A Concise Dictionary of Scientific Properties (in nine volumes, and he had seven different partial sets), and The Three Swordsmen (a perennial favorite; Fiora had read each of his copies more than once).
It soothed him, as it always did, calming the beating of his heart and easing the remains of his headache.
And then he heard a noise. He tensed, ready to lash out with his claws at a moment’s notice.
Footsteps, coming from his bedroom. And then a loud, almost panicked, “Fiora?” That was Deven’s voice.
Fiora rushed to the door and back into his dressing room, the door vanishing behind him. He snatched a coat off a hook — oh, sod it, not that coat, it made him look boxy. He flung it to the floor and grabbed a better one.
Swallowing hard, Fiora went to the dressing-room door to face his shame.
Waiting until a reasonable hour to go in search of Fiora caused nearly physical pain. Was Fiora brooding over his coffee, hating Deven’s guts? Was he preparing to throw Deven out of the castle? Did he think Deven had taken advantage of him, as Andrei had suspected the night before?
Had Deven put his burgeoning desire to make Fiora happy over his chance to save Peter’s life?
It was that last that tortured Deven the most, as he wandered through the castle grounds for most of the morning. The roses were in full, glorious bloom, with bees and butterflies darting from flower to flower in buzzing ecstasy. Birds sang; the sun shone.
Deven scowled at all of it.
He detoured past the temple statue, climbing up to retrieve his coat and the bottles. It was tempting to open one of the two remaining ales and drink it straight down, but it had been sitting in the sun for hours. That would be simply begging for a headache, and he needed every bit of clarity he could cling to if he meant to face Fiora.
It was midday before Deven returned to the castle. He caught Fred in the hall and begged him to slip into the kitchen and fetch Deven a bit of bread and cheese; he thought it wise to heed Fiora’s warning about Mrs. Pittel’s anger, and avoid his regularly-served meals for a day or two. Once she’d cooled down, Deven would find a way to talk her round and win her forgiveness — provided he was still in the castle, anyway.
He took his food up to