Chapter 9: No More Secrets
“THE LAST few passages seem as if they were written rather… hastily,” Randall said, a little sneer curled on his lips. He was flipping through my Grimoire down in the labs of Castle Freesias, and it was the first time he’d spoken in almost ten minutes. I had been trying not to fidget as I stood on the other side of the large wooden table, tracing my fingers along the runes and arcane symbols carved into its surface. “Did you just complete these yesterday?”
“Maybe?” I said, refusing to be embarrassed. What I’d written certainly hadn’t been my best work, but I’d been distracted by the star dragon’s visit and the implications behind it. The star dragon had repeatedly insisted that it had no favorites, but then always did something to contradict that. And unless it was doing something similar for Myrin—which I highly doubted—then it would seem I had at least one god on my side.
Too bad I thought it was kind of an idiot.
But then it was a dragon, and all the dragons I’d met so far had been idiots.
But lesbian dragons. Who were mated.
I couldn’t fucking wait to learn their names.
They were going to be something amazing, like Adalinda and Chumana, and they were going to want to help me because they’d think I was an adorable twink they wanted to love and protect for the rest of their days. I so had this.
“I’ve been… busy,” I said because Randall looked like he was waiting for more.
“Have you now.”
“Yes?” I asked. Or said. I didn’t know. I was starting to squirm a little. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s been a prophecy, and I’ve been kind of wrapped up in that.”
“You spent weeks traveling to the desert.” He flipped toward the beginning of the Grimoire. I hoped he would ignore the RYAN FOXHEART IS SO DREAMY written in purple ink. I knew I wanted to ignore it. And this whole conversation. Forever. “You could have spent time updating it then.”
And he had a point. But then Ryan and I had never had sex on sand before and spent most nights trying it out, coming to the conclusion that yes, sand did get everywhere if you let it. “Um, I was performing… experiments? For science.”
“For science,” he repeated. “Tell me. What was the purpose of these experiments?”
“Uhh… friction. Yes. It was about force and friction.”
“Your hypothesis before you began?”
“That it… would… hurt?”
“And the results.”
“It… did?”
Randall sighed. “You’re terrible at this, you know that, right?”
“Very much aware,” I said.
He closed my Grimoire and rested his hand on the blank cover. I glanced over his shoulder to see his own on a bookshelf behind him, the binding made of a dark stone. Ever since I’d been given my blank Grimoire at the age of fifteen, I’d been told that one day, I’d need to bind it, and that the binding would come from the skin of a fallen enemy defeated in battle or a material hard-won in the face of adversity. Randall’s was made of basalt—hardened lava—taken from an erupting volcano, which I was sure counted as a material hard-won. There was another book next to it, the binding done in glittering green scales, and even though I knew who it’d probably belonged to, I couldn’t find the courage to open my mouth and ask.
“Do you know why I’ve brought you here?” he asked me, looking down at his gnarled hand on top of my Grimoire.
“You’re concerned,” I said slowly. “About me. And my magic.”
He nodded. “I am. More than you probably know.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you even care?”
“Is that so hard to believe? That I could care about you?”
“A little. We don’t… have that kind of relationship.”
“Only because I don’t indulge you as Morgan does.”
“Morgan is my friend.”