Read Chapter 9: Forbidden Library

The restricted library occupied the oldest part of the Academy, a circular tower that jutted from the east wing like a broken tooth. Elara had circled it three times in the dark before finding what she sought—a service entrance half-hidden behind a tangle of climbing roses, its lock old and rusted but functional.

She knelt, wedging the thin blade of her farrier's knife between the hasp and the wood. The metal groaned. Her palms slicked with sweat.

“You're late.”

Elara nearly dropped the knife. She spun, pressing her back against the cold stone, and found Kael leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The forge light had done something to his eyes—they caught the moon and held it, making him look older than the boy she'd grown up beside.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

“Watching you break into the library.” He pushed off the wall, boots silent on the gravel. “Which is foolish. Even for you.”

“Kael, please. I can't explain.”

“Don't need you to.” He looked at the damaged lock, then at her. “I owe you a life-debt, Elara. You remembered that. I haven't forgotten it either.”

He reached past her, producing a length of wire from his belt, and worked it into the lock with practiced ease. Three seconds later, the mechanism clicked open.

“You know your way around locks now?” she asked.

“Blacksmithing's not all horseshoes.” He nudged the door open a crack, then paused. “Whatever you're hunting here—it got Sir Aldric killed, didn't it?”

The name sent a cold ripple down her spine. “I don't know if he's dead.”

“North's a mean country. Man goes missing out there, it's rarely a welcoming party.” Kael's jaw tightened. “Find what you need. But if it goes wrong, you don't know me, and I don't know you.”

He was gone before she could thank him, swallowed by shadow, leaving only the whisper of his retreating steps. Elara slipped through the door and closed it behind her.

The air inside was dry and ancient, carrying layers of dust that puffed beneath her boots. Moonlight filtered through high, grimy windows, painting silver stripes across row after row of shelved volumes. Somewhere above her, something shifted—a settling of old bones, or perhaps just the building breathing.

She checked her bearings. The restricted section sat at the tower's heart, a circular reading room guarded by a locked iron grate. The gap between the bars was narrow, but she was small from years of crawling into stalls and under carriages. She sucked in her breath and twisted sideways, feeling the cold iron scrape her ribs through her tunic.

On the other side, the books glowed faintly in the dark. Not with magic—with age and care, their spines gilded with fading gold.

Elara moved to the index cabinet first, flipping through cards until she found the cross-reference: *Draconic Health, Vulnerability of*. She followed the numbers deeper into the stacks, trailing one finger along leather-bound spines until her nail caught on a cracked label.

*Treatise on the Blight of 1174.*

She pulled it free and carried it to a reading table where the moon fell brightest.

The book was heavier than it looked. Its pages were brittle, the ink fading to a dusty brown. She turned carefully, scanning for key words. *Fever. Lethargy. Wilting of the flame.* All symptoms she'd seen in the mews. But the opening chapters described disease spreads, herd quarantines, and poultices—common healer's work. Nothing the Academy wouldn't already know.

Halfway through, the handwriting changed.

The same text, but the margins were dense with annotations in a different hand, newer and sharp-edged. Paragraphs had been underlined with something dark and deliberate, as if the reader had been working through the arguments with a blade.

Elara paused at a section headed *FALSE MALADIES*.

The original author wrote: *When dragons sicken without cause, the careful observer must first examine the obvious, then the invisible. What is not consumed is still ingested. What touches the skin still enters the blood.*

The margin annotation was slashed in with angry strokes: *She knew. They burned her for it.*

Elara's stomach turned cold. She read on.

*The draconic hide, for all its legend, remains permeable to base metals. For centuries, riders have regarded their mounts as impervious—yet the simplest mineral compounds, introduced through daily contact, can accumulate like stones in a riverbed. The creature does not sicken all at once. It sickens slowly, each day a grain of sand, until one morning the river runs dry.*

Mineral compounds. Daily contact. Her eyes flew back to the underlined passages and the furious margin note beneath it.

*Not the disease. The cure. They called it a lie because the truth was inconvenient.*

She flipped forward, searching for the annotation's source. Near the back of the book, someone had pasted in a hand-copied fragment, the writing shaky—as if transcribed from memory:

*In the workshops of the north, they call it wyvern's dust. A common ore, cheap and plentiful. Used for nothing but hardening leather. It leaves no trace on the skin. But the dragon who wears it, carries it. Feeds on it. The dragon whose saddle is cured with it will lose its flame within the season. Its bond will gray. Its strength will fade, then fail.*

*The dragon does not leave when its bond breaks. It lingers, confused, loyal to a creature that is slowly killing it.*

Elara's hands trembled. She turned the final page.

There, pasted in neat, exacting letters—a fragment of what looked like a personal letter, the seal stamped with the Academy's crest:

*The compound is found in all standard-issue saddlery. Replace at cost of three thousand gold marks per annum. Or accept attrition at the current rate. You have my recommendation.*

The signature had been inked out, but the handwriting matched the margin annotations.

She sat back. Her breath came shallow, scraping against her ribs.

The Academy's own equipment. The saddles. The leather that every rider touched, every day, every flight. The dragons were being poisoned by their tack, slowly and deliberately, and the Academy knew it. They'd known it for years.

And Cedric had asked her to train with him. To spar. To learn the sword.

Those drills would require a saddle. A standard-issue saddle, freshly cured. She could practically feel the leather against Ignis's hide, the slow seep of poison into his scales.

She slammed the book shut. The sound cracked through the silent library like a whip.

"What have you found?"

The voice came from the shadows near the iron grate. Elara's heart lurched into her throat. She shoved the book under her tunic, pressed flat against her stomach, and turned slowly.

Cedric stood in the gap between two shelves, arms crossed, his riding boots gleaming in the moonlight. There was no mockery on his face now—only a sharp watchfulness that made him look older, harder.

"Following you," he said, when she didn't answer. "You're better at sneaking than I expected, but not good enough."

"You risked waking the Archivist."

"The Archivist is drunk by this hour. I made sure." He stepped closer. "What did you find?"

Elara hesitated. The alliance was fragile, still untested. But he'd spared her in the ring when the crowd had been baying for blood. And his father's dragon had disappeared in the night, taken from the mews without farewell.

"The saddles," she said slowly. "The standard-issue leather. It's cured with a mineral compound that slowly kills dragons."

Cedric's expression didn't change. For a long moment, he simply stood there, taking in her words. Then, very quietly, he said, "My father's saddle came from the same issue room as everyone else's."

"It's not everyone. It's the bonders. The strongest dragons." She pulled the book from her tunic and held it out. "Someone figured it out years ago. They wrote it down, and someone else tried to bury it."

He took the book, flipping to the underlined margin note. The moon lit the page white, and his eyes traced the angry annotation twice before he looked up.

"This signature," he said, tapping the inked-out patch. "We make wax for the Academy seal. Do you know what's in the wax?"

She shook her head.

"Tallow, resin, and a blue mineral dust they call wyvern's ash—it makes the seal crack so it can't be forged." He looked at the book's cover. "But the wax they use in the restricted library archives is different. It never hardens all the way. It stays pliable, so the pages don't tear."

He pressed his thumb to the inked-out signature and peeled—a thin, waxy layer lifting from the page. Underneath, the ink bled clear and legible.

A name. *Baron Voss.*

Elara read it twice before the meaning settled.

Lady Voss. The Academy's head administrator. The woman who'd called the dragon sickness an outbreak and ordered riders evacuated.

The woman who knew exactly what the saddles did, because she'd signed the recommendation to keep using them.

"What do we do?" Elara whispered.

Cedric's jaw worked. He didn't look at her. He looked at the book, at the margins, at everything that had been hidden in the dark for years.

"We don't tell anyone the truth," he said. "We tell them exactly what she'd least expect."

"And what's that?"

He met her eyes. "We give her a cure. Whether it works or not."