Dragon Fey - Mara DragonClaw (best free ebook reader .txt) 📗

“Who told you that you were 13?”

“Calea, my foster mother did!”

“Well that explains it.”

“That explains what?”

“Why you think you're 13 instead of 14.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Hm, I don’t know…”

“Jack!”

“Well all right. Fourteen years ago we gave you to the council. We had a couple of spies for about two years that kept an eye on you, they reported that for a year the head elder did lots of experiments on you to see what our weakness was,” Jack shuddered, “After a year of not finding anything, they decided to give up. You were much too valuable as leverage to just give back, so they introduced you to into their society as a deformed child who was unwanted by her anonymous parents. Your foster mother was told that you were a newborn, for who would hang on to a child like that for a year if they weren’t going to hang on to it always? She counted the years from there, hence, 13.”

“Wow…”

“I also know because I’m 15 and you're  a year younger than me,” he smirked at her.

“Um… Can I say something?” Jynx had just been standing there silently as Aria and Jack talked back and forth to each other.

Both jack and Aria looked away from each other to Jynx simultaneously in a way that really freaked him out and said, also simultaneously, “Um... Ya?”

“Well… I… Uh…”

“Just tell us already Jynx,” Jack was being his usual jerk self.

“Aria can sleep in my room,” he blushed, but as always Aria had no idea why.

“Aww, Jynx,” Jack mocked his twin and winked.

“Thank you Jynx, I’m lucky to have you as a brother. You know, I think when you two split Jack got all the jerk qualities and you got the gentlemanly ones,” she hugged Jynx and stuck her tongue out at Jack.

Jack and Jynx guided Aria through the house and up a couple of sweeping stair cases, “I thought that only one staircase in a house was supposed to be the grand staircase,” Aria said as she reached the top of the third sweeping case of stairs.

“There is only one. These are nothing,” Jack said as he reached the top a little after Aria. At least Jynx and Aria could half fly, Jack had to walk the whole thing. Aria started to feel sorry for him, but when she realised what was going on inside her head she quickly shook it off and set off after Jynx down the next purple hallway.

After three more flights of stair and twelve more hallways, Jynx stopped in front of a door carved with what Aria thought looked a lot like shadow lilies, “Here,” he took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock. The locking mechanism clicked quietly as he turn it, and swung the door open to reveal a dark room. Jack stayed outside, but Aria and Jyn walked into the darkened room, Aria closing the door behind her and sticking her tongue out at Jack a final time, “Iluminie,” Jynx whispered quietly as if he didn’t want anyone to hear and the lights came on, blinding Aria in a similar fashion to the lights of the city after she had come out of the dark cave.

She blinked away the spots in her eyes and looked around the room, “Whoa…”

“You like it?”

“Uh, ya.”

“Thanks,” Jynx walked out into the center of his enormous room and looked around it lovingly.

It was large, maybe 50 inches across. And it was circulare, the walls curving in and meeting at the ceiling in a large dome. The walls were painted black, uncharacteristic from the rest of the purple house. Well, the parts of the walls that were visible anyway. Almost the entire thing was lined with 10 inch bookshelves filled with books of all different thicknesses and colors. on the far side of the room, in a break in the book shelves, there was an ebony bed big enough for three people. Tables with piles of books on them were placed sporadically around the room, and a closest was set into the wall not far from the bed.

Jynx walked over to the closest and rummaged around in it, “You can have the bed, I’ll take the floor,” he pulled out a purple bed roll, the only thing besides the books in the whole room that had any color to it.

“No, this is your room Jynx! You take the bed, I can sleep on the floor just fine.”

“No, until you get your own room you are a guest, and guests don’t sleep on the floor,” he insisted as he started to roll out the bed roll in between two tables filled with particularly think looking books with titles that Aria couldn’t quite make out because the were so faded.

Aria looked at how ridiculously big the bed was, “Why don’t we both just sleep in the bed? It isn’t like there isn’t enough room.”

“A boy and a girl in the same bed? That wouldn’t be proper!” He continued to set up the bed roll, pushing aside a couple of books that had fallen on the floor at some earlier point in time.

“Jynx, we are related. You are my brother, and I am your sister. There is nothing improper about sleeping in a bed together. Especially when the bed is so big! Jynx, if I stay on one side, and you stay on the other, we won’t touch each other all night no matter how much we move around,” she was starting to think that maybe Jynx had gotten more of the gentlemanly half than was healthy.

“Well…”

“Jynx! It isn’t that big a deal!”

“No,” he said firmly, “I will take the floor and you will take the bed, and that is final!” he said and stood up so fast that he knocked a stack of about seven books off the table nearest him. They fell to the ground with a rather loud noise that made Aria jump.

“Jynx? Are you okay?”

“Ya, I’m fine. I think one might have landed on my foot though.”

Aria laughed, “Here, let me help you,” she walked over to where Jynx was trying to stack the heavy books back up onto the table.

“No, no. I can do this by myself thank you very much,” he took a book right out of Aria’s hands and set it down on the table with what seemed almost like a panicked force that another stack of eight books that was also on the table fell over onto Jynx’s hand, “Ow!” He pulled his hand out from under the pile of books and shook it back and forth and sucking air in through his teeth. He mumbled a few incomprehensible words and sighed in relief, “Now please, Aria, take the bed and get some sleep. I can handle this, it really isn’t that bad.”

Aria looked at him suspiciously but eventually  gave up and went over to the bed. She gingerly sat down on it as a test and sank down about 1/12  of an inch into the mattress. Wow. How does he sleep on this? Aria took off her boots and carefully laid all the way down. She didn’t have anything to change into so she decided to sleep in her regular clothes. Her other option was a lot more awkward.

She didn’t sleep under the covers, it just didn’t seem right to even though Jynx wasn’t in the bed with her. She layed there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, Jynx had fallen silent over where he lay on the floor. Aria sighed and closed her eyes, That is what I call a long day…

Publication Date: 12-29-2015

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