I was right where I needed to be.
Don't ask.
Naked, sated, half-slick with sweat and whatever infernal fluids Gregory exudes when he's in a good mood. My thigh draped over a leg that could've belonged to a satyr with better hygiene. One arm folded under me, the other tracing lazy circles on the patch of scaled chest not covered in runes or goat hair.
His heart beat slow. Measured. Sinister.
"You know," I murmured, "if my mother could see me now…"
"She'd ask where I got such fine taste in lovers?" he offered, grinning.
"She'd light a candle and slap the demon out of me."
I flicked his nipple, got a satisfied growl in response. He smelled like musk, smoke, and old oaths. It was vile. I couldn't get enough.
He shifted under me, just a little. Enough to suggest we weren't entirely done, if I was feeling athletic. I wasn't.
"Saya," he whispered, that awful silky voice sliding straight between my thighs, "how do you feel about making some money?"
I snorted. "Gerald already offered six pence for my soul. Said I was half-used and going out of style."
"Gerald is a pawnshop imp with a foot fetish. I'm talking real money."
I propped myself up on one elbow and narrowed my eyes. "This the part where you offer me a deal, seduce me again, and then conveniently forget to pay up?"
"I already seduced you. Thoroughly."
"Mm. Debate's still open."
He rolled onto his side, his fingers brushing a trail from my waist to just below my bellybutton, the bastard. I bit back a sound. His breath hit my ear like velvet blasphemy.
"Forget your cheap soul. Forget the goat."
"You still owe me that goat," I hissed.
"Saya," he said, serious now. "You want gold? Silks? Enough coin to buy that tavern you keep getting banned from?"
I blinked. That was a lot of coin.
He kissed the side of my neck, just once. Just enough to cloud the warning bells clanging in my skull.
"My book," he said. "It's been stolen."
"Oh no," I deadpanned. "Let me put my panties back on and we'll file a police report."
"Not just a book. My book. The Lexicon of Akheron. Bound in skin. Inked in sorrow. Cursed beyond reason."
"You keep that next to your bed or under your pillow?"
"It's warded to kill anyone who reads it. First page is runed. One glance and—poof. Brains dribbling out your nose."
I raised an eyebrow. "And you want me to fetch it?"
"Exactly."
"You do remember I can't read, right?"
"Which is exactly why you'll survive."
I laughed. "You're actually serious."
"Deadly. The book's in the Library of Urveth. Locked up. Guarded. Warded. Untouched."
"And you can't go in?"
"Cursed me six decades ago. Something about... inappropriate fondling of a nun statue. Long story."
I flopped back onto his chest. "So let me get this straight. You want me to sneak into a death-trapped sanctum, steal a cursed, soul-warping demon grimoire, and deliver it to you like it's a bakery order?"
"Yes."
"And what do I get if I come back in one piece?"
"Ten thousand gold sovereigns."
I blinked.
"That's a made-up number."
"It's demon money. It spends."
"You'll give me all of it?"
"Cross my horns."
"No tricks?"
"Saya, darling. I'm naked, I'm post-coital, and I'm not lying to your face."
"That's literally when you lie the best."
He cupped my face, mock-reverent. "Will you do it?"
I sighed.
"I'm going to regret this."
"But with better clothes."
I groaned into his chest. "Fine. But I want a bonus."
"What kind?"
"If I live through this—I want the goat. A real one. Healthy. Virginal. With a ribbon."
He purred. "Done."
"And next time, you go on top. I'm chafed."
***
The Dragon looked like he'd just swallowed a porcupine backwards.
"You made a deal with a demon."
I winced. "Technically? A hellspawn. There's nuance."
"Saya. You made a deal. With a devil-in-the-making. A demonic entity."
"Bit rich coming from a demonic creature himself," I muttered.
"Precisely! I know my kin." He paced, tail twitching like a drunk metronome. "We cheat. We lie. Especially to mortals. Even very corrupt ones."
"I'm not corrupt," I said, stretching like a cat and admiring the sunlight on my thighs. "I'm resourceful."
"He still owes you a goat, Saya."
I waved a hand. "Forget the goat."
He stopped pacing. Turned. Squinted.
"What did he promise you?"
I told him the amount.
The Dragon quivered. Like physically. His wings fluttered. A low, reverent whine escaped his throat like he was being shown the gilded gates of heaven.
"Saya," he whispered. "Please don't do this to me. You know I'm addicted to gold. You know my best judgement gets... suspended when you dangle that many zeroes in front of me."
I shrugged. "Then consider this an exposure therapy session."
"Gregory will cheat you."
I shrugged again.
"Gregory will cheat me."
"Probably."
"Gregory once sold his own mother to a warlock for a bathtub full of opium."
"She hated baths," I said.
"Saya, your entire relationship with that spawn of hell is based on how articulate his tail is."
I paused.
"And other appendages," he added with a snarl.
I arched a brow. "You are being vulgar."
"I am being correct."
I flopped back onto the rolled-up blanket we used as a travel pillow and stared at the sky. "Look, I'm not saying Gregory is trustworthy. I'm saying he's consistent."
"Consistently untrustworthy."
"Exactly. That's something I can work with."
The Dragon groaned and threw himself into a dramatic sprawl beside me, tail twitching like he wanted to strangle someone with it.
"When this goes to hell—and it will—don't come crying to me."
"I won't," I said sweetly. "I'll come laughing. With bags full of gold."
He sighed. "And maybe, if we're very lucky, one goat."
"So here's the plan," I said, mouth full of fig.
The Dragon didn't look up. Just kept grooming a scale with the weariness of someone already regretting being part of the conversation.
"I go to the Library of Urveth," I continued. "Infiltrate it. Enlist as a padawan-in-training. They let me into the sanctum. I borrow the book. Puff. I'm out. Easy."
He rolled his eyes so hard I swear I heard the sockets click.
"First of all," he drawled, "you can barely read capital letters. And only in vulgar Seebulban demotic. That book is in High Runic."
"Exactly," I beamed. "Death runes can't kill you if you can't read them perfectly."
"That's not how wards work."
"It is now."
"And the deacon-librarians?" he snapped. "You think they'll accept a padawan who can't read anything?"
I licked fig juice off my thumb. "Will they not? Even a very... promiscuous one?"
His tail spasmed. "You're going to seduce your way into a holy order of celibate archivists?"
"Celibate? Sweetie, you haven't seen the size of their scroll racks."
He growled.
I sighed. "Okay. Fine. New twist. What if a certain harlot padawan arrives with a letter of reference… in High Draconic?"
There was a beat.
A long one.
"You want me," he said slowly, "to forge a letter."
"Not forge." I smiled, all teeth. "Write an honest one."
He stared.
I fluttered my lashes.
He shuddered.
"Saya, I have committed many sins in my time. Arson. Hoarding. Public poetry. But I will not sully the purity of High Draconic with a fabricated character endorsement for a half-literate nymphomaniac with a theft problem."
I pouted.
He looked away.
I pouted harder.
He groaned. "Fine. But I'm not lying."
"You won't have to," I grinned. "Just emphasize my talents. Flexible morals. Excellent memory for faces. Strong interpersonal skills."
"You once tried to seduce a monk by quoting a soup recipe."
"And it worked, didn't it?"
***
"Quill ready?" I asked.
The Dragon squinted. "Saya, this is a terrible idea."
"Exactly. That's why we have to do it quickly. Now. Start with: To the Custodians of the Inner Sanctum of the Great Library of Urveth…"
"Ugh. Fine." He dipped the quill and scrawled.
"I, Dragon of the Sixth Circle, Scribe of the Verdant Flame, do hereby present this humble letter on behalf of one Saya of the Seebulban line—"
"You don't have a line."
"Shh. —initiated in the forgotten arts of the Temple of the Whispering Tongue—"
"That's not a real temple."
"It had incense and screaming. Close enough."
"You're trying to con the most literate order in the known world."
"Let me work."
"—who, though young in years, has displayed a rare and sacred instinct for the deeper mysteries: the unspoken glyph, the echo of lost tongues, the rune that reveals itself only to the intuitive soul…"
He groaned like someone passing a kidney stone. "What does that even mean?"
"It means I can't read, but it sounds mystical. Now write: Her approach to sacred texts is unclouded by the arrogance of modern academia. She receives knowledge not through rote memorization, but through divine resonance and instinct."
"Saya, this is high-grade snake oil."
"Exactly. The good stuff."
He muttered something about damnation.
"She has demonstrated exceptional sensitivity to the latent hum of cursed relics and an uncanny resistance to sigilic backlash—"
"Because you're illiterate, not immune!"
"Details. Finish with: It is my firm belief that, in the right setting, her talents will blossom further, to the benefit of any institution lucky enough to harbor her."
He paused. "That's almost convincing."
"Sign it."
"I should sign it 'May the gods have mercy.'"
"Sign it with your full title. In draconic. With that fancy tail curl."
He did. Grumbling. The parchment practically radiated unearned credibility.
"They're going to let you in," he said darkly. "And I'm going to be complicit in desecrating an ancient institution."
I beamed. "Look at us. Academic criminals."
***
I had never been this... clothed in my life.
Swaddled in layers of linen, head to toe. Veiled like a penitent. Robed like a pilgrim. My only flesh showing was between the toes of the cursed wooden clogs I'd carved with a spoon and a bad attitude.
Sacred symbols—of my own bold invention—were inked all over the cloth. Some based on half-remembered brothel wards. Others on spice merchant sigils. One of them might've been a fertility glyph. Honestly, hard to say.
Still, I looked the part. I had the scroll. The walk. The wide-eyed reverence. I even wore glasses. No lenses, of course—just the frames. Made me look smarter. Or at least more breakable.
I stood at the gate of the Sanctum Library of Urveth, south of the Redwall Mountains and west of the Inner Sea. A holy temple of knowledge. A fortress of sacred text. A beacon of reason and purity.
And they knew.
Gods help me, they knew.
The deacon-librarians didn't say a word. But I felt it. The air shifted. There was a tremor in the theurgic field, like a faint vibration between the holy pillars. A long, awkward silence stretched out like a hymn held too long.
They sniffed. I swear to all the old gods, they sniffed.
One clutched his rosary of carved runes tighter.
Another averted his gaze, cheeks pinking behind his veil.
I gave them my most innocent bow, deeply reverent. The veil dipped. So did their collective composure.
I knew then and there that the sacred wards of the library had sensed me. Not as a seeker of divine truth.
But as a walking, talking, sweating libido storm wrapped in poorly laundered linen.
"Name?" one of them finally asked, voice cracking slightly.
"Saya," I said softly. "Initiate scholar. With a letter of high draconic reference from my... spiritual sponsor."
They unrolled the parchment. One read. One gasped. One crossed himself.
"We, ah... do not typically accept new padawans mid-season…"
"But exceptions can be made," the older one said quickly, elbowing him.
They ushered me in with the caution of priests handling an oiled-up succubus. I shuffled forward, clogs squeaking in pious rhythm, hips swaying despite my best attempts to walk like a stiff modest acolyte.
Somewhere behind me, a candle flickered out.
A ward stone cracked.
And I thought to myself: Well then. We're off to a good start.