The egg is tucked safely into one of the curves of the dragon’s skeleton. It’s melon-sized but looks tiny in comparison to the full-grown one. The surface is mostly a soft tan, with sparks of red, orange, and green so brilliant it almost hurts to look at. Light plays over the surface with the familiarity of an old friend. When there were still scales and sinew there, it would have been snug against the dragon’s heartbeat.

The same enchantment that protects the books despite the lack of glass in the windows must have sheltered this little room from the elements for centuries. If you couldn’t protect your baby or entrust it to anyone else, I can hardly think of a better hiding place than this rooftop.

“I won’t fit in there.” When Raze finally speaks, it takes me a moment to figure out what he means. He leans to me, pointing. “The ribs are all locked together. I won’t fit through those spaces.” He pauses, letting me work it out for myself, before finishing. “But you might.”

I pull away, recoiling at the thought. “So you want me to climb in that skeleton like a kid playing in a tree house.”

He barely manages to bite back the start of a frustrated sigh. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I don’t think there’s another way.”

“Doesn’t it feel...disrespectful, somehow?” Even as a pile of bones, the dragon commands awe. It radiates magic. I’ve been around tame dragons my whole life, but tame dragons don’t get to this size. They don’t breathe fire.

They don’t curl up on a rooftop to die, protectively wrapped around their only heir.

But this isn’t an ordinary dragon. It’s a firedrake—at least, it was. Which makes its small, glittering egg a treasure of incalculable value. What would someone pay for the last living firedrake?

Raze voices the same thought. “Wouldn’t it be more disrespectful to leave it here and never give it the chance to really live? Or to leave empty-handed?”

The memory of Isolde’s voice rings in my ears. You can’t mean you want to stay tied down for the rest of your life.

“Empty-handed?” I repeat, head buzzing. “I... There must be more. There must be something. That’s...that’s just an egg.”

“And this is just a library!” His voice rings on the stone, in the hollows where the dragon’s eyes once were. “It’s not a fortress or a treasury. We could spend weeks looking, but this is it, Iselia. We’re not going to make something better appear just by wishing for it.”

My mind races. “We...we could gather the scrolls. You said they’re enchanted. Maybe they have spells. Enchantments people would pay for. We’ll collect as many as we can and—”

Raze shakes his head. “Waste of time. Maybe they’re worth something, maybe they’re not, but there’s no way to find buyers for that kind of thing without Leira’s help. In our hands, it’s just a bunch of old, dusty paper. This—” he gestures, and there’s a light in his eyes “—this is actually worth something.”