A secret library?
She didn’t need a secret library. She needed a secret wayout.
Still, she’d found a passageway. Now that she knew what to look for, she could find others.
Roa stepped between the shelves, wanting to cut across to the passage she’d come through. But the shelves reallywerelabyrinthine. They kept turning her about. She hit two dead ends before finding herself in the very middle of the room.
A circular ebony table was set with eleven chairs and stacked with books, inkwells, and quills. Roa looked past it, turning in circles, studying the twisting shelves.
Which way was out? They all looked the same.
Just pick one.
Stepping into the rows and rows of tomes, she turned the corner and stopped sharp.
There, leaning with his back to the shelf, was the king.
His knee was bent, his arms were crossed, and the back of his head rested against the spines, as if deep in thought.
At the sight of her, Dax’s arms fell to his sides and his foot lowered to the floor. His gaze flickered over her, eyes wide with surprise. “What in all the skies are you doing here?”
“Me?” she squeaked. “Aren’tyousupposed to be in a meeting?”
A sudden sound made them both freeze: the softsnickofa door latch, followed by voices. Dax pushed away from the shelves. Roa’s heart clanged in her chest.
“He replacedallof them?” someone said in the distance. “Can he do that?”
“He made a scrublander queen against our advice. He’s the dragon king. He can do what he wants.”
She recognized those voices. They belonged to the council.
“But how did he find out?”
“Obviously she told him.”
Dax reached for her wrist.
Roa panicked, twisted away, and fled back through the shelves, trying to find her way out before the voices found their way in, trapping her here. But the farther she went, the closer they came, until there was only a single shelf between her and one of the men.
“Who do you think cut his throat and left him to die? Her? Or the king?”
Roa ducked down. Between the top of the tomes and the bottom of the shelf ledge, she could see the silks of their clothes.
Suddenly, from behind her, Dax grabbed Roa hard around the waist, clamping a hand over her mouth and hauling her back with him.
Stunned by his strength, Roa didn’t fight. Dax held on, carrying her now as he doubled back to that ebony table, then down another twisting aisle that culminated in a dead end.
That’s where he dropped her, running frustrated fingers through his curls as he stared at the shelf blocking his way. As if he’d expected something else.
Roa was about to run, when a voice came down the aisle connecting their dead end to the center of this maze.
“Her new guards are loyal. I doubt they can be bought.”
She heard the slow scrape of chairs. Heard them all sit down at the table.
Trapped. She was trapped.
Fear twisted in her belly. Roa backed up, straight into Dax. He reached for her wrist—gently this time—and tapped the bone with his thumb. Twice.
