“’Twas true,” he affirmed.
“Okay, fine.” She shifted around to face him again. “I did not live then, but I can tell you that today’s Luigsech descendant who becomes an ancestral archivist is expected to keep the general history of many things from all time periods.” Having sidestepped that topic as best she could, she hurried on. “As for why I was chosen, I studied at the feet of a very old Luigsech aunt alongside the family’s oldest blood-daughter named Gale. She had a photographic memory. She was expected to be the next family historian. I was to have been her assistant.”
“What do ya mean by photographic memory?” Daegan leaned back and crossed his ankles.
“It means that Gale could recall anythin’ she ever heard or saw after just one time. She needed no promptin’.”
“With such a gift, why would she need your help?”
He hadn’t asked that in an insulting way, but the question still stung. “If you consider the information accumulated over more than two thousand years, you would realize that no one can pass along every tiny bit of information. She had a natural gift for memory and I have a natural gift for research. We would have made a great team.”
The kind of memory Gale had would have been a nice gift, too, but Casidhe would not trade her power of translating any text.
Still, she’d worked her butt off to keep up with so much information over the years.
“Why is Gale not here now?” Daegan asked.
Casidhe hadn’t talked about this in years and wouldn’t now if she had another choice. Pushing past the lump in her throat, she explained, “Gale had an insatiable curiosity about everythin’. While huntin’ a plant in the mountains, a deadly viper bit her. She panicked and ran. By the time her family found her, she was very sick and died a day later.”
“’Tis terrible to lose a child.”
She paused, surprised by the honesty in his voice.
He asked, “What about the other daughters?”
“The next one in line was too young to be expected to just step into Gale’s shoes, plus she became withdrawn when her sister died. The whole family had a tough time. I was thirteen and Gale was my best friend as much as a foster sister.” Casidhe’s voice trailed off. She cleared her throat, determined to get this all out. “Their elderly aunt passed away in her sleep six months later. I think her heart never recovered from losin’ the niece she’d spent most of her last ten years tutorin’. It was all heartbreakin’.”
Emotion flooded her at recalling that horrible time.
Gale had been her lifeline, Casidhe’s only shield against the deep loneliness of being an outsider.
She and the Luigsechs had been living in Herrick’s castle back then. He’d told Casidhe to continue the Luigsech legacy of being a historian of the dragon history from there on. Fenella’s Connell squire family filled in spots of history where Casidhe had not received all the details from the Luigsech aunt.
When Daegan didn’t badger her for more, she opened her eyes and lifted her head with pride for the position she’d been given. “Everyone agreed I would become the new family historian. I was honored to be handed the duty.”
“What do ya know of the Treoirs?”
Shaking off her melancholy, she went back on alert. “Why? Don’t you know your own history?”
He leveled her with a look that warned she tipped his patience in the wrong direction. Large fingers on one hand tapped slowly on the chair arm. “To be honest, no. I was captured before my da died and his castle fell in the Dragani War. He and I were doin’ all we could to discover who was pittin’ dragon houses against one another.”
Slicing a narrowed look at him, she said, “So your red dragon had nothin’ to do with startin’ the Dragani War?”
Fury darkened his gaze and made her want to squirm.
“No. Is that what ya were told, Luigsech?” Suspicion in his voice warned she was back on bad footing again.
Just great. Now he was going to push her even more on the Treoirs.
But he didn’t. Daegan stood quickly and changed the subject. “We waste time. Ya should be huntin’ the grimoire.”
“Wait a minute, buster. I answered your questions.” She made no move to stand and start researching. “That should be enough for you to stop accusin’ me of bein’ a poser. If you know so much, why don’t you know where to hunt for the grimoire volumes?”
He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, which did nothing to lessen the tension in the air. “The grimoire was created, discovered, broken into three volumes, and hidden many years before my birth. I had never heard of its existence until recently. If I had all that information, I would not be here.”
She frowned, surprised the grimoire origins went back that far.
“Ya waste time,” Daegan groused again.
“So do you,” she tossed back at him. “Now it’s your turn to produce information on Fenella. That was the deal. At the moment, you don’t seem to be holdin’ up your end. Where is Quinn and why hasn’t he gotten back to you by now?”
“Quinn had to travel to Atlanta to speak with our people.”
Her lips parted. “Atlanta? As in the United States?”
Daegan nodded.
She fought off an attack of longing. Quinn hadn’t been gone long enough to fly back. He either teleported or someone else teleported him. She’d love to have that ability and visit other places, the US, maybe even a South Pacific island.
He said, “Ya must allow Quinn a bit of time to gain answers.”
She knew a delay tactic when she heard one. “Why should I believe anythin’ you say?”
Chapter 5
Daegan forced himself to not snap at Luigsech. Why should she believe him? Because he’d told her his true identity.
Sharing that had been no small thing.
She lifted that pert chin with her stubborn look, the challenging one he saw more often than not.
Still he had a difficult time holding on to his anger while the lass had shared how she’d ended up taking over as the new squire for the Treoir history. He was not Storm, a living lie detector, but he’d heard truth in her words.
If only a niggling feeling that she hid something important did not continue to peck at him.
When she leaned her elbow on her desk to prop her head, golden-red hair picked up small fragments of light from the late day dancing through the village outside the centre.
She had a young and innocent look about her, but he would not confuse that with being naïve.
More reason to not trust a word out of her mouth he could not verify. Now that she realized Quinn might be a while responding, he had to push her back to the task at hand.
Instead of replying to why she should trust him, he asked, “How do ya plan to find the grimoire?”
Her gaze moved away from him.
Had that been to delay hunting the book or to sift through her thoughts for an explanation?
While he waited, he sent another message out to his second-in-command. Tristan, if ya hear me call back. Just speak to me.
Nothing again.
She grudgingly began explaining, “I may have to dig through a lot of books to find a startin’ point. Sometimes I may find nothin’ more than a tiny speck of information linked to a time period, historical event, or geographical area where the grimoire was believed lost. From there, I keep diggin’.”