She smiled. “I’m glad it worked, and so efficiently. Yes, I need your help with something and thought you could save me the time of looking.”
A forced chuckle fell from Clark’s mouth as he took Sophia’s hand and allowed her to haul him up to his feet. “You don’t seem to have any difficulty finding things, or me, in this case.”
Sophia nearly threw Clark into the air when she lifted him to his feet, forgetting how light he was. Unlike the other dragonriders she was used to sparring with, who were all muscle, Clark was rather skinny and hunched over most of the time, making him close to her short height. However, where Clark was weak in strength, he was strong in knowledge. Sophia’s brother had to be one of the smartest people she knew, and that was saying quite a lot since she knew the brightest in the world.
“Are you all right?” Sophia looked her brother over when he was on his feet.
He pressed his starched suit down as if it had been wrinkled in the ordeal, although it looked as flawless as when he probably ironed it that morning. Clark couldn’t be any more different from the T-shirt and jeans-wearing Liv. They were complete opposites, and for that, Sophia was grateful that they had each other.
Liv made Clark cut loose and eat ice cream in bed, and Clark reminded Liv that she couldn’t leave the empty container on the floor afterward or they’d attract ants. Sophia was the luckiest of the three because she had the best sister and brother that anyone could ask for. She might have lost her parents and Ian and Reese, but she was still so rich in life, and she never wanted to forget that. At the end of the day, it wasn’t about what someone lost, but about how much they loved that which they had.
“I’m fine.” The crease between Clark’s eyes deepened as he looked Sophia over. “Are you? Is this about the Council?”
Sophia blinked at him. “What about the Council?”
“Their request for your attendance at today’s meeting,” he said with surprise as if he thought she was already aware of this.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t aware that they’d paged me.”
“Oh, so that’s not what this is about then?”
Sophia folded her arms over her chest. “Let me guess. The Council is pissed about all the trouble the Rogue Riders are making?”
Clark nodded solemnly. “I’m sure you can reassure them that it’s all under control.”
“I can lie,” Sophia joked, which didn’t get a laugh from her brother whereas Liv would have thought it was funny.
“Beaufonts don’t lie,” he warned, his tone punishing.
“Of course I won’t.” The playfulness disappeared from her tone. “I don’t think I have much to offer that will make the Council feel better. The Dragon Elite aren’t lying down, that’s for sure. That’s why I’m here. I need your help with filling in the history, and since you pretty much memorized the Forgotten Archives, I thought you could save me the trouble of doing the research.”
Clark perked up. Now Sophia was speaking his language. Talking about books was how Clark kept himself calm. It was his Prozac. “Yes, I’ve read through the Forgotten Archives a few times. What can I help you with?”
Sophia sighed with relief. “Oh, good. I thought so. You see, I think the best way to keep the dragonriders from repeating history is to figure out what went wrong in the past. It should be recorded in the Complete History of Dragonriders, but there’s a lag on the information.”
“Lag?” Clark didn’t follow her casual jargon. Sophia almost laughed while thinking of Lunis trying to use his hip lingo on her brother.
“Yeah, the history of what happened to the rest of the demon dragonriders after Thad Reinhart hasn’t been recorded, not in its entirety,” Sophia explained. “I’m not sure why I’m looking for the information, but I thought it could be helpful. I have this sick feeling that we, the Dragon Elite and Rogue Riders nearly killed each other to extinction. If that’s the case, then we’re quickly heading back down that same path, and I have to turn us around before it’s too late.”
Clark’s gaze slid to the side with an uncertain expression on his face. “You don’t know that part of history?”
Sophia blinked at him, not expecting the question. “No. Not even Hiker knows because the Dragon Elite were stuck inside the Gullington after the Great War when mortals couldn’t see magic anymore. We know that some demon dragonriders left after Thad Reinhart went into hiding too, but when things went back to normal, almost all of them had disappeared. I want to figure out what happened.” A thought occurred to her that made her mouth pop open with shock. “Oh, could the demon dragonriders have gone after each other? I know that Thad used some for experiments when trying to fix his dragon, Ember. That doesn’t account for all the rest. There would have been a lot—at least a dozen or so.”
“Thad Reinhart didn’t have much respect for his own,” Clark said through a long, heavy breath. “However, he’s not what nearly brought the demon dragonriders and dragonriders in general to extinction.” He gave her a grave expression, reluctance heavy on his face. “It was the House of Seven.”
Chapter Eight
Speechless. Sophia felt like he’d punched her in the throat. She’d expected to learn the many horrible things her own had done to each other, nearly sending the dragonriders into extinction. What she hadn’t expected was for the betrayal to come from the House—also one of her own.
Sophia found a chair nearby, suddenly feeling lightheaded, and sat in the sturdy straight-back. She hadn’t remembered seeing the chair there a moment before but was grateful for its sudden appearance and the fact that it supported her when she felt sick to her stomach from the spinning library and news from Clark.
“Tell me what happened,” Sophia urged when she’d collected herself.
Clark nodded, taking a seat opposite of Sophia’s that also wasn’t there moments prior. He was still pale and appeared as uneasy as her. “It’s a dark part of history. Well, darker. We as magicians don’t have a lot of positives in the last few hundred years. Not until Liv came to the House did things start to turn around, and now we’re not writing such a bleak history anymore.”
Sophia smiled, swallowed, and enjoyed the first piece of good news so far. “I’m grateful for that. It only takes one to change things.”
“Unfortunately, that’s true on both sides,” Clark stated darkly. “It was the one known as the God Magician who was responsible for slaughtering many of the remaining demon dragonriders.”
“Talon Sinclair,” Sophia gasped, remembering when Liv and the others had to battle the oldest remaining magician who had done so much to take over the House and tried to extinguish mortals. Apparently, he’d tried to get rid of the dragonriders too.
“That’s right,” Clark affirmed. “From what I learned from the Forgotten Archives, which aren’t complete but rather pockets of our history, the dragonriders were divided. It’s good to note that when a race is separated like that, either by choice or force or by views, it’s easy to break them up further and get rid of them.”