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 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.”

  “” 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 book. 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 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 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 .”

  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 one. Healthy. Virginal. With a ribbon.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He purred. “Done.”

  “And next time, 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 . There’s nuance.”

  “Saya. You made a deal. With a devil-in-the-making. A entity.”

  “Bit rich coming from a demonic creature ,” I muttered.

  “Precisely! I know my kin.” He paced, tail twitching like a drunk metronome. “We cheat. We lie. Especially to mortals. Even corrupt ones.”

  “I’m not corrupt,” I said, stretching like a cat and admiring the sunlight on my thighs. “I’m .”

  “He still owes you a , 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 to gold. You know my best judgement gets... 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 .”

  “Probably.”

  “Gregory once sold his 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 his tail is.”

  I paused.

  “And other appendages,” he added with a snarl.

  I arched a brow. “You are being .”

  “I am being .”

  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 —don’t come crying to me.”

  “I won’t,” I said sweetly. “I’ll come . With bags full of gold.”

  He sighed. “And maybe, if we’re very lucky, 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 .”

  “Exactly,” I beamed. “Death runes can’t kill you if you can’t read them perfectly.”

  “That’s how wards work.”

  “It is now.”

  “And the deacon-librarians?” he snapped. “You think they’ll accept a padawan who can’t read ?”

  I licked fig juice off my thumb. “Will they not? Even a very... 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 … in High Draconic?”

  There was a beat.

  A long one.

  “You want ,” he said slowly, “to forge a letter.”

  “Not ” 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 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 , 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 . Now. Start with: ”

  “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. —”

  “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.”

  “”

  He groaned like someone passing a kidney stone. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means I can’t read, but it sounds Now write: ”

  “Saya, this is high-grade snake oil.”

  “Exactly. The good stuff.”

  He muttered something about damnation.

  “—”

  “Because you’re , not immune!”

  “Details. Finish with: ”

  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... 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 .

  The deacon-librarians didn’t say a word. But I 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 .

  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 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: