Hidden Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon Book 7) by Genevieve Jack (best book club books .txt) 📕

once their homeland, stood gray and bare, a skeleton forest of ash and scorched timber.

She reached for his hand, and he did not deny her.

“I’m so sorry Dianthe. I wish I could have saved you from this,” he said. “I wish I could have saved them from this.”

For a long time they watched the approaching squalor in silence. Until, it seemed, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Her hand slipped from his, and she turned so that her back was to the shore.

“Me too,” she whispered, her voice raw with emotion. “Promise me you’ll make her pay.”

He wasn’t sure if by “her” she meant Eleanor or Aborella or both. It didn’t matter. He intended to make them both pay, along with every member of the Obsidian Guard who’d participated in the burning. “I promise.”

Chapter Ten

The vision rushed through Aborella like a wave, starting in her stomach and rolling up her body until her lashes fluttered and her eyes rolled back in her head. Five spheres formed in her mind’s eye—cobalt, emerald, flame red, royal purple, and gold. The spheres overlapped and the scene changed. They morphed into a key. The key was fed to a dragon. The dragon turned into a book. A golden book.

With a gasp, Aborella snapped out of it, blinking away what remained of the vision. Immediately she regretted it. Her vision was a much happier place than the room she was in. Eleanor had imprisoned her in a hidden stone chamber behind the palace library and adjacent to her ritual room. Although the empress had extolled how virtuous she was for moving Aborella there from the dungeons, the truth was this room was far crueler than the dark death she’d experienced in the bowels of the mountain. Here she did not have the comfort of the sounds of other prisoners. No whispers came through walls in the night. She was alone. Utterly alone. And she was chained, manacled to the wall by the waist with enchanted metal unbreakable by any spell she had tattooed into her skin.

Eleanor was wise to bind her by the waist. If it had been her arm, she would have surely severed it off to escape. Fairies lived to feel the sun on their skin. It strengthened their natural magic and made them feel alive. This room was designed with only one window. A rectangle to let in a shaft of light each day. Compared to the dungeon, which had no windows, it might have been better. Only Aborella’s chains were not long enough to allow her to reach the light, and the angle of the window and the direction of the sun meant the light never reached her.

It was torture, to be sure. She could see the light but never feel it on her skin. Every day had become like a small death. Sometimes she’d dream about feeling the sun, only to wake in darkness and then watch as that teasing patch of warmth moved across the stone just out of her reach.

Ironic that Eleanor had claimed this room was her reward for telling the truth that the Treasure of Paragon had fled to Aeaea. The heirs and their mates had passed right through Eleanor and Ransom’s fingers, as Aborella had hoped they would. She’d known where Raven and Gabriel had been taking little Charlie for weeks before she’d told Eleanor, and by then it was too late for the empress to organize a proper attempt at reeling in her children. Faced with limited time, she’d gone after them herself and failed.

Aborella smiled. The eight living children were together now and protected by the goddess Circe herself. She’d seen it, and her visions were never wrong.

The heavy wood-and-metal door creaked open on its hinges, sending a wave of anxiety through her. Every day was the same. Tired and hungry, Aborella would withstand Eleanor’s aggressive questions about her visions and carefully lie about what she saw. Only the longer she was starved and mistreated, the harder it became to do so convincingly. She just didn’t have the energy.

Eleanor strode in, dressed in head-to-toe black. Gone was her usual gown, replaced by formfitting pants and a blouse with large puffy sleeves. The outfit exaggerated her skeletal frame and made her look like the angel of death. She’d lost more weight. And she was alone today.

Aborella wondered what had happened to Ransom. Had he finally realized that everyone who aligned with Eleanor eventually ended up in a box, whether it was a coffin or a prison? Or maybe Eleanor had already grown tired of him and his heart sat on the shelf in her ritual room, next to Marius’s and Brynhoff’s.

“Good morning, Aborella. Are you prepared to be cooperative today, or am I going to need to find your motivation?”

“I only wish to help you,” Aborella said. “Although it is difficult when I am so weak.”

“You are strong enough. Tell me, what you have seen?” Eleanor picked at the side of her nail.

“I haven’t seen anything, Empress. I’m too weak. Without proper meals and light, I am not strong enough to see.”

Eleanor’s scowl twisted into something truly horrifying. “Don’t play games, Aborella. If I gave you what you wanted, you’d only use your magic to break free. I’ve known you for decades. I know how you think.”

“But—”

“My spies saw a boat land in Serenity Harbor. It might have come from Aeaea. Four strangers disembarked, two males and two females. My man tried to follow them, but he lost them in the stink of that wretched beach colony.”

“The people of Everfield had to go somewhere after you burned all their homes.” Aborella hugged her knees to her chest and rested her head on them, wrapping herself in her wings.

“They should come to me! Paragon would provide them with lovely homes if they swore their allegiance to the rightful ruler of the five kingdoms.” Eleanor bared her teeth in an ugly grin. “It is only a matter of time before they fall—before all