"Yes, my lord."
"So, you mean to say, that the pages cannot be found."
"Yes, my lord."
"My own mother."
Marcus's jaw worked like he was chewing glass.
"What is it, Anahita. What does the Dragon do to these people. That my own mother — married into this house, bedded by my father, carried me — would rather ruin her own mind than let a single thread of its knowledge be used against some dragon she's never even met!
"What kinds of loyalty is that, Anahita. What hold. What thing does that creature inspire in women. In some stupid men like those three boys. In its own bloodline descendants.
"That my mother, Anahita, my mother, a Heavenchild by marriage for thirty years, would choose the slow demolition of her own faculties over the betrayal of that Dragon she has not even ever spoken to in all years of his existence."
Anahita said nothing.
She had heard this rant before. In different rooms, different decades. The same poison dressed as philosophy.
