The Red Dragon of Oxford
Wings over Albion Book 1
Joy Lynn Fielding
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Red Dragon of Oxford
Copyright © 2023 Joy Lynn Fielding. All rights reserved.
Cover art by Miblart
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Coming soon
Other books by Joy Lynn Fielding
Chapter One
MARK
My fingers were clumsy with cold as I locked my bicycle to the lamp-post. I’d dreamed of coming to Oxford for years and had always promised myself that, on my first day, I’d watch the sunrise from Port Meadow. It had looked so romantic in photos, but the October morning had an unexpectedly brisk bite this close to the river.
The ancient common stretched for acres, the Isis winding lazily through the meadow and reflecting the first streaks of red in the sky. Low-lying mist clung to wet grass, thinning and finally evaporating at waist height. The dawn light slowly increased until I could see shaggy ponies grazing along the river bank and the dragon in the middle of the meadow.
Wait, what?
I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my jumper before replacing them. It didn’t help. A dark red dragon was curled up like a dog, its snout under its tail, wings folded against its back. In Port Meadow, Oxford. In the twenty-first century.
It was too big to be a student prank or art installation. Embarrassingly long seconds later, I realised—of course, this was Oxford. Some movie or show was always filming in the city. Reaching for my phone, I swore when it wasn't there. I’d been only half-awake when I’d got dressed but to forget my phone? Incomprehensible at any time and unforgivable right now.
The heavy dew soaked through my trainers and my feet got colder and wetter with every step towards the dragon. As the sun cleared the horizon, light glinted off its scales as if they were metallic. This was a seriously good model.
What the hell? The thing was breathing. Primal fear lifted the hairs on my neck until my brain kicked in. For God's sake, Mark, it's not a dragon. Dragons aren't real.
But there was no film crew in sight. Nothing except the ponies and a few cows lumbering through the mist. The model had a clear area around it as if the mist didn’t want to touch it. As I got closer, I understood why. The heat it was throwing out felt amazing after my cycle ride in the coldness of pre-dawn.
This was what a dragon should look like. Not a wingless wyrm but something noble and magnificent. And big. Larger than an elephant though smaller than a house, and it was beautiful. The long neck was curled gracefully and the tail with an arrow-tip end was draped over a nose that had nostrils almost big enough for me to fit my fist into. It looked to be asleep.
As I squelched up to it in soggy trainers, the dragon opened its eyes. The iris was golden and the pupil a black, vertical line.
I think by then I knew it wasn’t a model. “Are you real?” It slipped out in a whisper. I don’t know why I said it. Dragons couldn’t talk.
Are you?
I jumped and spun around, looking for the source of the voice. This was definitely a student prank. They’d be filming me, and for the rest of my time at Oxford, everyone would laugh at my gullibility.
But I was alone in the meadow. With the dragon.
Well? It was the same male voice, deep and a little impatient now, and I realised…it was sounding in my head.
Okay, it was official. Mark Stevens had lost it. They’d find me naked, riding one of the ponies through the river and swearing I was leading an army against invading dragons, but at least I’d get the help I so evidently needed.
“I don’t know anymore,” I confessed. This must be a dream while waiting for the alarm for Port Meadow.
The dragon huffed, making me jump again—this dream was playing havoc with my nerves—and a wisp of smoke drifted from its nostrils. Its claws were long, so dark red they were practically black, and digging tensely into the wet grass. I imagined that monstrous mouth opening, spewing flames, and I swallowed.
“Well, nice to meet you,” I said, because I’d been well brought up. “I’d better be going.”
Backing away, I noticed something black dripping down its side. When I craned my neck to see what it was, a cord was wrapped so tightly around the creature’s right wing that it had cut into its flesh, and the wound was bleeding.
“Can I—what can I do to help you?” Oxford must have been under the impression I was intelligent when they admitted me as a research student. If only they knew the truth. But I couldn’t leave
any animal in pain. It’s how we’d ended up with five cats and a three-legged gerbil when I was growing up.
The dragon looked at me so hard that I swear it knew every thing I’d ever done, every thought I’d ever had. Considering it spoke into my mind, it probably did.
“What is that?” I squinted at the wire.
Some wanker left their fishing line in the river, and I swam into it.
I didn’t know which was more startling—that dragons swam or that they said wanker.
“I could try to unwind it,” I offered. “If you want.”
I want.
“Well, okay, then.” I edged towards him. “I’m, um, going to have to climb your leg to reach it.”
He didn't sear me into ash. Instead, he extended his front leg, and I stared at it helplessly. I’d climbed trees in my time, but this was a scaly surface with no handholds. The longer I looked, the more impossible it seemed.
The dragon’s deep huff sounded like my old boss when someone was particularly inept. Get back. I’ll lie down.
Determinedly not pointing out that he was already lying down, because I wasn’t that stupid, I gave him space to lie on his side. Using the equivalent of his elbow on the leg on the ground, I clambered onto his other leg and crawled onto his moving, breathing body. His scales were hard and warm and thankfully had no sharp edges. A scent like bonfires on a November evening clung to him. Smoky and surprisingly pleasant.
Be careful of my blood.
It was so freaky how his voice was in my head. “Sorry?”
It’ll burn you.
With renewed caution, I surveyed the wing. The thin cable was wound brutally tight around it and my gorge rose at the sight of a hook sticking into the dragon.
“This is going to hurt,” I warned him. Seizing the hook, I worked it out from beneath his scales.
His resulting deep breath sent a plume of smoke from his nostrils and almost threw me off his side. But I’d done gymnastics as a kid. I knew how to balance.
Starting at the hook end, I unwound the wire from around his wing, careful to avoid the blood that flowed as a result. It looked like stainless steel, explaining why it hadn’t broken when something this size had swum into it. I threw the line to the ground and gracelessly slid down the dragon’s side on my arse, landing with an oof at the bottom.
Stand back.
Clambering to my feet, I gave the dragon space to stand and stretch his wings. Translucent red membrane stretched between either bone or cartilage, and they were massive.
He was beautiful like nothing I’d ever seen.
His head loomed before me, his huge golden eyes level with my face. Thank you, he said in my head. Now get back.
The urgency in his voice had me retreating swiftly. Not swiftly enough, because I was knocked flat on my back by the powerful downdraught from his wings. The meadow was growing lighter by the minute, and he wanted to get away unseen. It was a supposition on my part, but there had to be a reason people don’t know dragons exist.
I sat up and watched him for as long as I could. His first movements were ungainly, his wings heaving his bulk into the air through sheer, raw power. Once he gained height, that changed, and he became a beautiful, streamlined creature in his element. Eventually, he was lost against the red of the rising sun.
Once he'd gone, the world was just the way it had always been, with no sign to show what had just happened. A train was rumbling past, and a couple of ducks started squabbling on the river, splashing and quacking.
Bald patches of earth were scattered amidst the lush grass where the dragon had been. Like Dragon Hill near Uffington, where Saint George was supposed to have slain the dragon. Locals said the bare spots on the hill where nothing would ever grow were from the dragon’s blood.
Flopping onto my back in the wet grass, I laughed hysterically.
RUFUS
There was an intruder. I knew it the instant I opened my front door, and my dragon stirred, ready to flame.
The scents of toast and coffee floated down the hallway. “Nate?” I stalked towards the kitchen.
Of course it would be Nate. No one else ever visited, and no burglar would make themselves breakfast. But until I had eyes on him, I couldn’t relax. Adrenaline was still fizzing through me from my stupidity and the unimaginable thought that, after God knew how many centuries of secrecy, Rufus Mortimer had blown the existence of dragons wide open.
When Bim got to hear about it, I’d be lucky if he charred me to a crisp. More likely, he’d peel off my hide a scale at a time before staking me out on a remote mountainside and inviting every dragon in the country to engage in some target practice. It was a common complaint that they didn’t get to flame anything these days. Or so Nate told me. None of them ever spoke to me, so I wouldn’t know.
“Hey, Rufus.” Nate appeared in the kitchen doorway, slouching against the doorframe in his inimitable way. But he swiftly straightened and strode down the long hall to meet me halfway. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Had a bit of an accident,” I confessed because he’d obviously smelled the blood. “It’s okay.”
“Let me see.”
Big brothers were a pain in the arse, always knowing best, always bossing everyone around, but my big brother? He made me feel safe. So I sat at the kitchen table and slid off my leather jacket and shirt. Crap. That was more blood than I was expecting to see.
His breathing took on a deliberate quality, as if he was keeping it controlled and steady so he didn’t bite my head off. “What happened?”
I had to tell him. He’d worm it out of me, one way or another. He always did. “Caught my wing in some fishing line in the river at Port Meadow.”
He retrieved the first aid kit from the cabinet. “What the hell were you doing so close to town? You know you shouldn’t be.”
I knew that. But nothing compared to swooping over Oxford, seeing the spires and quadrangles and streets that I walked in the daytime from a different angle. Seeing it all as if it were mine. I only did it on the darkest nights, when no one could spot me. It was typical of my bad decisions that I’d taken a quick dip in the river last
night, building up speed underwater before hitting that damn line. Flying had been out of the question after that.
“Oh, shit, Rufus—that’s deep.” He pressed a gauze pad onto my shoulder, and I winced as pain stabbed through me.
“It’ll heal,” I said through clenched teeth. Dragons healed fast, even in human form.
“You were bloody lucky not to lose your wing.”
If not for that small blond human, who’d smelled of fear and determination, I might have. I’d tried to rip the wire off with my teeth, but no matter how far I stretched, I couldn’t reach those crucial last few inches. I’d been working myself up to shifting when the human had arrived, so quiet I hadn’t heard him till the last minute. The reason I was reluctant to shift had been the fear of what that wire might do to my wing as I changed shape. His showing up had been disastrous but also miraculous.
Nate stuck a dressing on the wound and herded me to my favourite bookroom, the one with a large leather sofa where I could curl up and read all day.
There was no point fighting Nate. And I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to do anything except pull a blanket over my head and pretend that the events of the past few hours hadn’t happened. “I should go to work,” I protested half-heartedly.
“You should get better first,” he said. “Don’t want to risk bleeding on the books, do you?”
Hell, no. I swept a paranoid gaze at the shelves lining the walls of the room before realising how unlikely it was that blood from my bandaged wound would leap across six feet of space and damage one of my books.
When Nate left, I let the presence of my books soothe me, until I remembered that a human had seen me, the concern in his hazel eyes magnified by his glasses as he’d looked at me bleeding all over the place. God, I’d be dead meat when the others found out.
I curled up on the sofa and closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep. In my dreams, I wasn’t such a colossal screw-up. In reality, I’d single-handedly revealed the existence of dragons to the world. It wasn’t just my forthcoming untimely end that haunted me but the knowledge that, for as long as there were books, my name would be written in history as the one who betrayed the dragons.
Chapter Two
MARK
The rest of the day passed in a blur of activity. I didn’t forget about the dragon—I mean, who would?—but so many other things demanded my attention that I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
A meeting with my supervisor to talk about initial steps was followed by a tour of the college, given by one of the third-year research students. Mortimer College isn’t a particularly well-known Oxford college, but it’s just as beautiful as the others, with golden sandstone buildings set around quadrangles connected by archways. The oldest parts of the college date from the fifteenth century. Each time I climbed the old, winding staircase to my room, I grinned. It was everything I’d thought Oxford would be.
After lunch with the other new postgraduate students, we were ushered to the grandeur of the Bodleian Library, where we had to swear an oath never to set the place on fire. The knowledge that I could ask for any book published in the UK since 1610 to be delivered to my desk blew my mind.
We’d been kept so busy that, by the time evening arrived, I’d hardly met my fellow new students. We hadn't had a chance to do more than exchange names over the lunch table. It had been impossible to get more than a word in edgeways because Callum— the research student in whose forceful wake we’d been trailing all day —liked the sound of his own voice.
That wasn’t fair. He was enthusiastic and wanted to make sure we knew everything there was to know about Mortimer College. He also liked the sound of his own voice. On the plus side, he was kind of cute, with dark curly hair, bright blue eyes, and dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. Unfortunately, he was about five years younger than me and had probably gone straight into research after his master’s degree. Cute as he was, I didn’t think we’d have much in common. While not having anything in common might not matter to most, I was a bit straitlaced that way. Or so Llewellyn had told me with a sneer when I’d proposed meeting for drinks after we’d hooked up. After that, I’d never suggested it to anyone again. I’d had a fair bit of casual sex at university but in the years since, every waking hour had been spent at work, earning the money to pay for this
doctorate because I hadn’t managed to get a grant and there was no way I was taking another government loan. The ones for my previous degrees were already going to take the rest of my life to pay back. I hoped Oxford would be an opportunity to meet new people and maybe someone who—well, it sounded daft calling them a boyfriend now I was getting on for thirty, but I wanted someone to share my life with.
After the day’s whirlwind of form-filling, rule-reading, cardissuing and Callum’s dimpled smile, I was sitting at the desk in my room and trying to concentrate on the literature review that Professor Weber had told me to start. Sod that. Closing my eyes, I relived the moment I’d found a big red dragon in Port Meadow.
If I told anyone, they’d think I was delusional. Why the hell hadn’t I had my phone? Not that having it would have made any difference because everyone would think I was simply a master at Photoshop. But although I couldn’t tell people, I knew it had happened. I’d experienced something amazing. I hugged the secret to myself. More than anything, I wanted to see him again.
Eventually, I forced myself to stop recreating every instant of my encounter. My work was waiting. Along with my room key, I’d been given a card to the college library, which was accessible twentyfour hours a day.
“Make the most of the peace. Once the undergrads are back, the place will be filled with them having essay crises because they haven’t done a stroke of work until twelve hours before their next tutorial,” Callum had told us about the library.
Mortimer had opened its doors to postgraduates a few days before the undergraduates, and it was a relief to be able to find my feet without crowds of other students. The quad was deserted as I crossed it, its turf manicured within an inch of its life. My footsteps echoed through the empty cloisters, which led to the oldest parts of the college, the library and the chapel.
The library was so picturesque I was surprised it was still the college library and hadn’t been turned into a conference banqueting hall. That was where most places seemed to make their money these days, shoving the students into a modern building to read their books. Tall stained-glass windows and the high stone arch of the doorway added to the impression of height. Its mellow stonework glowed softly in the night-time lighting along the path. I’d seen
gargoyles on the roofline that morning, scowling and grimacing at us as if we were trespassing on their property, but they were now lost in the darkness.
Lamplight through the windows cast kaleidoscopic patterns onto the old stone flagstones. I thought of the thousands of students before me who’d pushed open the oak door to the building and hoped I would live up to their reputation.
In more recent times, a small lobby area had been partitioned off from the rest of the building. It contained a loo, a lift and a curving staircase up to the first floor. Beyond them, the inner sanctum beckoned me through glass doors with the college crest etched into them.
Callum had taken us in earlier and grinned at our awe. In design and scale, the building was more like a church than a library. Bookshelves marched in rows on either side of the long room, stretching up to the ceiling, and large desks with old-fashioned reading lamps were arranged in the centre. To my delight, an iron spiral staircase in the far corner led to the upper reading room.
The librarian hadn’t been in when Callum had knocked on his office door. He usually did an induction tour, though I didn’t know what more was needed than showing us how to access the catalogue and standing back. In the librarian’s absence, Callum showed us the silent room, where no electronics were allowed, and Mortimer College’s pride and joy—the mediaeval illuminated book known as the Rosea. It had somehow survived the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries and had been on display here for the last few centuries.
Right now, I wasn’t interested in it sitting in its glass case at the end of the cavernous, deserted library. I wanted to start work. When signing my acceptance of the library’s rules, I’d been delighted to discover I was allowed to keep books for however long I needed, unless someone else requested them. Having located the books I wanted, I scanned my library card and began to process the pile.
“You can’t take those.” The voice was deep, male, and came from very close behind me.
I spun around, heart hammering. The guy standing there was big—broad-shouldered, and muscular as if he worked out. His blue shirt pulled slightly over his chest, reinforcing his build. Rich brown hair fell past his shoulders, and his eyes were a velvety brown in a
face that left me breathless. His jaw was defined, his nose straight with slightly flared nostrils, and the firm line of disapproval his lips were pressed into failed to hide their sensuality. He belonged in Hollywood, not an Oxford library.
He was so close to me that it was intimidating. Moving back a few steps gave me the opportunity to take in all of him, and he was well worth it. The softest-looking faded jeans I’d ever seen outlined thick muscled thighs that had come straight out of my dreams. Callum was cute. This guy, though. This guy had me wanting to go to my knees for him. I was practically drooling.
Unfortunately, he was glaring at me and showed no sign of bending me over the nearest table and having his way with me.
I wrenched my mind back to the fact he’d said something to me. “Sorry, what?”
“You can’t take those books.”
“I’m a research student.” I tore my eyes away from his face long enough to thrust my library card at him. “I was told I could take up to twenty books out at once.”
“Well, you can’t.”
“It says so in the library rules. I live in college, so I wouldn’t have far to come if I got an alert saying someone else wanted them.”
“I don’t care. That’s too many books to take out of here.”
“Okay.” The intensity in him was something else, and I backed down. “How many am I allowed to take?”
He glanced over them. “Four,” he said, and it sounded reluctant.
My face must have shown my incredulity because he pointed out, “You can only read one at a time.”
Anger stirred in me. These weren’t novels, to be read one after another. They needed to be compared and cross-referenced as they were read. It was why I’d applied to Mortimer in the first place—the college’s collection of scarcely remembered German theologians was unrivalled and precisely what I needed for my dissertation.
“Who are you?” It finally occurred to me to ask. If he was just another research student throwing his weight around with the newbies, I’d tell him where to go. Surely he couldn’t be a tutor because he was only about thirty.
“The librarian.”
Holy crap, and I’d tried to argue the rules with him. “Good to meet you,” I said weakly and tried to smile at him. “I’m Mark Stevens.”
He nodded and folded his arms. His shirt’s valiant attempt to cope with his movement resulted in acres of silky material clinging to his muscles. I was staring again.
“Sorry, I don’t know your name,” I said, when it was clear he wasn’t going to speak. He was still watching me as if to check I only took four books.
“Rufus Mortimer.”
“Like the college!” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was better than telling him I wanted to lick him.
He looked unimpressed. “Choose your four books. I’ll replace the others.”
The guy was kind of a prick, though I wasn’t sure what he could have said to my comment.
Once I'd found the four texts I most wanted, he gathered the remaining books into his arms. “Don’t forget to scan them,” he said as he moved away. “And don’t keep them long. They belong here.”
Until he said that, it hadn’t dawned on me that there was a way to keep access to all twenty books. And so many more. “I could have them all out on my desk if I stayed in here?”
“Of course.”
The way he said that nagged at me. It reminded me of something, but I didn’t know what. “In that case, please don’t shelve them,” I said. “I’m going to get my stuff from my room and work here.”
“Okay,” he said, but he didn’t put them down. He watched me leave, holding the books close, cradling them like they were his babies.
Everyone said there were eccentric people at Oxford, but they were supposed to be the academics. Or, as they were called at Oxford, the dons. Not the librarian. And why was he working at ten pm? Callum had said the library office was only open from nine to five. Looking like that, the guy should be getting ready to go clubbing. Or maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe he had a husband or wife waiting for him at home. Looking like that, he definitely had someone. Probably a few someones.
Even if he didn’t, there hadn’t been a flicker of interest in him towards me. Why should there be? I’m not ugly, exactly, but that’s as good as it gets. On the slender side, average height, with fair hair that flops around and won’t stay where it’s told, and I’ve got my mum’s nose—big and a bit of a beak.
I’d work in the library till the librarian left, and then I’d be able to take out as many books as I wanted. It wasn’t as if he’d be in his office all night. Hot people always had plans. I’d just have to wait.
RUFUS
I never thought I’d see my small blond human again, but here he was, in my college, in my library. Not quite as small as I remembered and still with that fierce sense of determination.
He’d been so absorbed in what he was doing that he hadn’t noticed I was watching him. His face was full of concentration, his jaw as stubborn while he deciphered the mystery of the check-out desk as it had been when working out how to scale my side. His hair shone very blond in the artificial light, flopping down over his forehead until, with an exasperated sigh, he pushed it back. Narrow shoulders, narrow hips, delicate wrist bones—he looked fragile, especially compared to a big, lumbering dragon like me, but strong. So strong, with a laser focus on what he was doing that meant he’d always achieve what he wanted.
He had nice hands. Long, graceful fingers, and he was handling my books with due care and respect. Then I saw just how many he was handling, how many he had stacked up at the check-out desk, and I forgot everything else in my need to guard them.
The spirit that blazed through his hazel eyes when I spoke to him was everything I’d seen this morning and more. Give him a cause to fight for, and he’d tear the world apart for it. His cause didn’t, apparently, include taking my books out of my library. He knew better than to try and steal a dragon’s treasure from under his nose.
As I watched him fruitlessly pulling at the door before realising he needed to push it open, I didn’t want him to leave. He belonged here, with my books. Shaking my head, I tried to dispel the dragon instincts that were for some reason so strong tonight.
I dragged my gaze away from the door. He said he’d be back. He didn’t need to find me waiting for him just where he’d left me. Even I
knew that was a bit weird. So I walked over to a nearby desk to set the books down before checking my phone.
I’d done so throughout the day, watching for Google alerts about dragons, but so far there’d been nothing. Nate had noticed. Nate noticed everything. He'd rolled his eyes and believed me when I said I was waiting for a particular rare text to come up at auction. I couldn’t tell him what I’d done. Nate would never betray me, but if Bim found out he knew and hadn’t told the family, he’d share my sentence.
It wasn’t as if telling my family would change anything. They were all scrupulously careful to stay away from humans when in dragon form. I was the only one stupid enough to get caught— because you’re not a real dragon echoed in my head—so I didn’t need to warn the others. It would only hasten my punishment.
I was lost in gloomy anticipation of my fate when Mark Stevens returned, slightly breathless and holding a laptop, notepad and some pens. No sign of a dangerous bottle of ink or those sticky highlight flags so many of the students thought they could use on my books. But he did have a bottle of water, and that overrode my pleasure at seeing him again.
“That’s not allowed in here.” Swooping in, I plucked it from his awkward grasp where he was trying to hold onto everything.
He dumped his armful on the desk and glared at me, pushing his glasses back more firmly on his nose. “It says in the rules—”
“I make the rules. It’s not allowed.” If he couldn’t work out how to open a door, I didn’t trust he’d manage to control a water bottle. “I’ll put it in the lobby. You can drink it out there.”
Indignation turned his cheeks pink, but I wasn’t shifting. I mean I wasn’t moving my stated position. Obviously, I wasn’t shifting—I might damage some of my books.
The bottle safely in the lobby, I returned to my office, leaving the door conspicuously open. If he thought I'd gone home, he'd probably try to sneak out with more than four books. It looked as though I was in for a long night.
About half past one in the morning, Mark Stevens started making frequent trips to the shelves opposite my office. His other books had nothing to do with gender studies, so his determined inspection of that section was improbable. He was checking if I was
still here. He was waiting for me to leave so he could sneak out with some of my books.
Wrath rose in me. However warmly I’d thought of him earlier, he was a thief.
Then he sighed and crossed the floor to knock on my door. “Is it all right if I leave my books out on the desk for tomorrow?”
A polite thief, at least. He hung through the doorway, his hair floppy and messy, pushing his glasses back up his nose—why didn’t he get a pair that fitted him properly?—and looking ready to drop with tiredness.
“It’s fine out of term time, but you can’t do it when the undergraduates are here. There aren’t enough desks to go around if they all decide to do some work. Hell might freeze over one day.”
His lips lifted slightly. “Thanks.”
I remembered how he’d been that morning, concerned and determined to help me and not a thief. He was pale, his eyes were heavy with tiredness, and I felt what Nate must feel all the time—I wanted to protect him.
“You should get some sleep. You’ve had a long day.”
He swung back from where he’d been turning away, eyebrows raised, and I cursed silently as I realised what I’d said. “I mean, the first day of induction is always intense.”
“Oh,” he said, and blinked, almost swaying where he stood. He must have been up for twenty hours straight.
I leaned against the doorjamb and watched him packing away his things. His slight clumsiness from earlier had turned into movements so loose he was in imminent danger of dropping his laptop.
When he was ready to go, I held the door open and passed him the untouched water bottle. “Thanks,” he said, surprised, and I found myself watching him plod across the quad until he turned through the arch and out of my sight.
Once he’d gone, I had nothing to distract me from my most disastrous screw-up in my long and illustrious history of screw-ups. I prowled the empty library. It didn’t comfort me in its usual way. For all I knew, this was the last time I’d be here. Surely when Mark Stevens woke up tomorrow morning, he’d post online his account of meeting a red dragon in Oxford, and then my life, such as it was, would be over. I hoped Nate wouldn’t be too upset.
The Rosea beckoned me, the way it always did. Its open pages displayed a beautiful red dragon curled around the letter O. The deep crimson of his scales was fresh and vibrant despite the age of the book. I’d decided years ago that he was called Rodney. He looked like a Rodney.
Theologians and historians had spent centuries guessing the significance of the dragon around the letter O. So far as I was aware, they’d never approached consensus on the matter, or on the white dragon that guarded the letter A at the beginning of the book.
I wished we dragons hadn’t lost touch with our roots. We had no real records of our past and culture, too intent on making money and guarding it from others to bother with anything that wasn’t economically profitable. We were so far divorced from our own history that we didn’t even know if dragons or humans had written the book, though whoever had illustrated it knew dragons.
The way the book called to me led me to think it was draconic in origin. Its beauty held me transfixed. The text—which I probably knew off by heart from all the times I’d read a facsimile—was rendered in tiny, even calligraphy, and exquisitely illustrated panels were scattered throughout its pages. The Rosea was the embodiment of what a book should be.
With so little knowledge of our past, there was no way of knowing if the red dragon in the book was a real historical figure, though the white one couldn’t be. There was no such thing as a white dragon. Dragons came in gold, copper, blue, green, grey or black. Then there were the rare, despised, red ones.
One of the only tales that survived from the old days was that red dragons were weaker than the others. As the only red dragon in my generation, I’d certainly proved that to be true. I often wished I could speak to Rodney and ask him about it. But wishing wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change the colour of my hide, and it wouldn’t undo what I’d done that morning.
“Goodnight, Rodney,” I said at last to the picture, feeling as if I was leaving my only friend. Turning off the lights, I went home.
Chapter Three
MARK
Port Meadow was just as cold as the previous morning. When the sun rose, it became clear my dragon wasn’t there. The fiercest creature in sight was a pony who snorted at me and stamped her foot.
Using the length of loo roll I’d brought with me for the purpose, I carefully picked up the fishing line and hook and put it into a plastic bag where the dragon blood couldn’t burn anyone. I’d throw it away back at college. It hadn’t occurred to me the previous day to take it with me. In my defence, I’d been thinking more about talking to a dragon than littering a beauty spot.
As I turned away, something glinted red in the grass. The dragon scale appeared dark red as I picked it up, but when I turned it in my fingers, it changed shade, refracting the rising sun. Apart from my dragon, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was far smaller than the scales I’d crawled over on his side. From his foot, perhaps? I hoped I hadn’t dislodged it with my scrambling. Or perhaps dragons moulted. No, that couldn’t be right because we’d find scales everywhere and people would wonder where they came from. Maybe they were like snakes and shed their skins. That was an awesome thought—I’d love to have a dragon skin.
But then I caught sight of the bare patches of earth where his blood had dripped and found myself worrying. I hoped he was okay.
Cold wetness wicked up my jeans from the dew as I walked back to my bike, unable to stop touching the scale in my pocket. It was a tangible reminder of the most magical and surreal moment of my life.
Back at college, I changed into dry jeans and searched again online for any mention of dragons in the real world. Frustrated when I found nothing, because surely I couldn’t be the only person ever to have seen one, I gave it up as a bad job and went to hall for breakfast. There I was, saying hall as if I was a real Oxford student. I was, of course, but Oxford has its own language and most of it was incomprehensible to me. I went to the local school and an equally normal university. PPE meant nothing to me when Callum mentioned it, despite our last two prime ministers and half of the
government having an Oxford PPE degree (Philosophy, Politics and Economics, in case you’re wondering).
Rose, the talkative and friendly lady who cleaned my room every day, was called a scout, not a housekeeper. Callum had informed us that you didn’t arrive at or leave Oxford University—you came up or went down. Unless you were kicked out, in which case you were sent down. That last one made some sense to me because it was the same language used when someone was sent to prison at the end of a trial. But the rest of it sounded as if it had been invented purely to exclude people not in the know. I mean, a scout? Where the hell would that come from?
Despite feeling out of my depth every time I encountered yet another mysterious Oxford phrase, there was something thrilling about walking through an old arch and up a stone staircase to reach the dining hall, otherwise known as hall. Dark wood panelling lined the walls, showing off oil paintings of college principals going back to the founding of the college.
Hall was almost filled with long tables set out in rows. They were for the undergraduates, and research students had a table that crossed them horizontally. Its position mirrored that of High Table, which, I kid you not, was up on a dais. The previous night, all the dons had been served by waitstaff in black and white uniforms and had used what looked like real silver cutlery. That was after they had paraded in and we had to stand in acknowledgement until the principal bade us be seated. In Latin.
“We’re in purgatory,” Callum had said, as we’d obediently sat once more. “We’re neither one thing nor the other, which is why we get a table that doesn’t match anyone else’s.”
Approaching our purgatorial table for breakfast, I saw he was already here, looking alarmingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for this time in the morning. Some other students who I didn’t recognise were at the far end of the table. The new students were grouped around Callum. I slid in next to the woman with dark hair, Jeannie Tsang, murmuring good morning. She smiled at me and then returned her attention to Callum, who was holding court.
“I’ll introduce you to Rufus Mortimer this morning. Whatever you do, stay on his good side. A good librarian is worth their weight in gold, and Rufus is a legend in Oxford. Well, so far as a librarian can be.” He grinned, dimples flashing, but I hadn’t missed the
derision in his voice on the word librarian. “If he can’t find you the book you want, then it doesn’t exist. It’s worth putting up with the guy even though he’s a bit special, if you know what I mean.”
Adele and Hadiza laughed nervously. My brows drew down, and Jeannie beside me concentrated fiercely on her plate. It didn’t matter how good-looking Callum might be—he was obviously a prick. The research students who already knew him were sitting at the other end of the table. That should have given me a clue.
All twelve of us assembled at ten o’clock as ordered, and Callum led us into the library, though I didn’t know why he had to be there. Rufus Mortimer came out of his office to meet us. His hair was in a loose half-bun and his shirt today was green, made of the same silkylooking material that clung so nicely to his muscles. Adele’s lips parted as she gazed at him. Yeah, he was hot. There was no doubt about that. He was also ridiculously possessive of his books as she’d no doubt find out.
He studied each of us closely enough to find us in a crowd if we ran off with one of his precious texts. His brown eyes lingered on me a moment longer than all the others, and I wasn’t sure whether to preen that he remembered me or be alarmed that he thought I looked like the book-stealing sort.
The tour he gave was much more thorough than Callum’s. He ensured we were comfortable using the catalogue and showed us how to request a book from the bookstacks that filled a basement below where we were standing. Then he took us to the end of the library and the Rosea.
Adele’s lips parted once more because, holy hell, he was stupidly hot anyway, but when he started talking about the old book, it was as if he came alive. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he told us how the book had been brought to the college by Roger Mortimer, the college’s founder. A mixture of myth and legend, Celtic Christianity and history, it remained an object of fascination to researchers around the globe.
“The case is climate-controlled, so you can’t open it these days.” The little moue of sadness he made had me wanting to kiss it off his face. His mouth was very mobile, the corners of his lips twisting up or down depending on what he was talking about. What was wrong with me? I should be concentrating on my doctorate and the resources he could provide.
Whatever was wrong with me had affected Adele and Hadiza too—the three of us were staring at his lips as though entranced. Thank God he didn’t seem to notice in his enthusiasm for the book. “A facsimile’s available if you want to read it. The dodgy Latin’s from the original, by the way.”
Like I’d know it was dodgy. Like I’d be able to read Latin. Still, I nodded as if I’d be prepared to put up with dodgy Latin to read his precious book. He didn’t get to see my carefully judged response because Callum was making like the world’s most annoying sheepdog and herding us away from the world’s hottest librarian.
“One more thing,” Rufus Mortimer said, and we all turned obediently. The delighted man who’d just been sharing the joys of his precious Latin text had disappeared. Now he was as terrifyingly intense as he’d been the previous night. “No food. No drinks. No bottles of ink. If you fold down the corner of a page or break a spine, you’re barred. Forever.”
Wow. I didn’t know he’d have the power to do that. His eyes burned with warning as they rested on each of us in turn.
“Right then. Thanks, Rufus,” Callum said, and shepherded us away.
“Bit draconian, isn’t he?” Tim asked us all as we walked through the sunlit quad behind Callum.
I didn’t know why I felt the need to defend the librarian when he’d been so strict with me, but I hadn’t liked the tone in Callum’s voice when he’d spoken to him. “Were you intending to dog-ear library books?” I asked Tim.
“Well, I’m certainly not now,” Tim said, a grin on his freckled face. “What’s your specialism? I’m stochastic models of fluid dynamics, though I’m still bottoming out details.”
Most of those words meant nothing to me. “Theology of the early German Enlightenment.” I dumbed it down as much as I could, wishing he’d done the same for me. Then it hit me that perhaps he had.
The floodgates opened among the group and we shared the things that drove us, that kept us awake at night wondering. Adele was a historian and Jeannie something to do with maths.
Before we got too deep into conversation, Callum was organising us again. “You’ve got induction lectures this afternoon. Individual timetables will be in your email. This evening, drinks in
the MCR. Saturday, once the freshers are up, will be matriculation. You’ll need to be at the Sheldonian at eleven. Wear your gown, mortar board and sub fusc.”
Was I supposed to understand that? For a moment, I was tempted to sneak away from the group of ducklings and head back to the sanctuary of the library. Rufus Mortimer might be a little intense, but at least he didn’t show off by constantly using terms no normal person would know. Then I remembered his comment about dodgy Latin and realised he’d have to be clever and well-educated to be an Oxford librarian. Maybe it was me who was the odd one out here, pretending to be something I wasn’t.
I heaved an uncertain sigh and clutched the scale in my pocket. I could do this. They wouldn’t have offered me a place if I couldn’t, would they? The scale was smooth and hard in my fingers, and it seemed to warm slightly as if to reassure me. Now all I had to do was believe it.
RUFUS
Shortly after the postgraduates’ tour, I got a text from Nate. Family meeting 6pm.
Not me? I sent back, desperately hoping that he’d sent me the notification by accident.
Yeah you. Nate wasn’t the best at texting, but that was short even for him. Could he know about my screw-up in Port Meadow?
Oh, God. Bim must have found out what I’d done. My presence hadn't been required at family meetings since I’d told Bim I wanted to study librarianship rather than finance or business. I wasn’t even in the family WhatsApp. Bim hadn’t approved of my choice to become a librarian, but he hadn’t stopped me because no one wanted a red dragon involved in the family business. Not since the last red dragon, Great-Uncle Thaddeus, had turned his back on banking in his forties to move to Oxford and collect books. That lack of commitment to shiny precious metals is a weakness that surfaces occasionally in our family. It goes with the red hide.
Uncle Thaddeus’s choice had hardened the family’s disdain for red dragons into utter derision. They saw his decision as the ultimate betrayal, and it was all because he was red. I couldn’t hold it against him, though. How could I, when he’d given me and Nate a home after the car accident had taken Mum and Dad? If anything, I was
thankful the family didn’t want me. It meant I was always on the outside, not really belonging, but that fact gave me the freedom to be amongst my books rather than poring over numbers in the City.
I closed the library office early, and then I roamed around my home, unwilling to leave because I didn’t think I’d be coming back. Google still had nothing about a dragon in Oxford, but it was a hell of a coincidence that I was being summoned to my first family meeting in almost fourteen years so soon after my disaster.
I slipped the first edition of On the Origin of Species into my backpack. It shouldn’t leave the others, but it was a comfort to have one of my books with me. Through strangely blurry eyes, I took one last look around at the bookshelves, so peaceful and replete, and pulled the door closed behind me.
Even on a bike, the traffic in London sucked. At last, I reached the motorbike parking bay just up the road from Bim’s and walked down the South Kensington street, traffic fumes clogging my nose. Everything about the area screamed wealth—the cleanliness of the wide pavement and the Georgian mansions with their rows of Doric columns, pedimented porticoes and fancy cornices. Conspicuous consumption that had crossed the line into excess so far back it couldn’t remember there’d ever been a line. Along with enough money to indulge myself in whatever first editions I wanted, Nate and I had inherited a big house in one of the most sought-after areas in Oxford, but it was much more modest than these. It was home.
The wide stone steps up to the door were horribly familiar. Nate and I had briefly lived with Bim after the car crash before Uncle Thaddeus rescued us, taking us to live with him in his book-filled house in Oxford.
My reflection in the glossy black door made me wince. Hair past my shoulders, leather jacket and faded jeans… If Bim hadn’t been going to kill me before, he would now in case any of the neighbours had seen such a pleb coming to call on him.
Before my fingers touched the polished brass knocker, Sutton opened the door. He was as imperturbable as ever when he stood back and welcomed me in. He took my jacket with no sign of distaste, though his face spasmed as I unbuckled my biker boots and left them towering in all their road grime next to everyone else's footwear.
Multiple identical pairs of black lace-up hand-made leather shoes were interspersed with expensive-looking stilettos. Oh well. Once the family screw-up, always the family screw-up.
“The family is gathering in the drawing room, sir,” Sutton said. Like a man on death row, I squared my shoulders and advanced through the door he held open for me.
I was the last to arrive. Small groups of my family were standing, talking intently, while others lounged on sofas and chairs. I tried to slide in quietly, but I was noticed. Every eye in the room seemed trained on me, and none of them were friendly.
“Been a while, Rufus.” Alec, one of my older cousins, crossed the room to me, not hiding the contempt on his face as he looked me up and down. “Haven’t changed, I see.”
I nodded at him but didn’t say anything. Whatever I said would give him a way to attack. He hadn’t changed either. He was still the smarmy git with slicked-back hair that made him look like a stereotypical finance bro.
Alec curled his lip in disgust at my lack of response and moved away, leaving me to lean against the nearest wall and survey the gathering. Every adult member of the immediate family was here, bringing the number present to almost thirty. Uncles, aunts, and cousins. So many damn cousins, every one of whom had made my life a misery when I was a kid.
I wedged my backpack more securely between my feet, knowing I wasn’t completely alone because I had one of my books with me. Though now I thought about it, Darwin wasn’t the best choice I could have made. Bim was about to reveal to them all that some organisms were too stupid to live.
“Hey.” Nate leaned against the wall beside me, bumping my shoulder with his. “You okay?”
My grandfather strode into the room before I could answer. Abimelech Mortimer—Bim to his grandchildren but only when there was no chance he was in earshot—was a man who believed his power had no limits. He might look like a member of the British establishment, with his Savile Row suit, upright carriage and white hair, but when you met his eyes, that was when you knew. He was all dragon.
The room fell silent as he stalked to the armchair by the fireplace. He was wearing shoes, of course. A not-so-subtle power
play. Those who’d been lounging in their seats straightened and those who’d been standing took a seat. I followed Nate to a small sofa that no one else had claimed.
Bim’s power was absolute. The Mortimers were the foremost dragon family in the U.K. and had been for centuries, ever since they’d emerged triumphant from a series of bloody battles with the other dragons. Dragon families were settled in all of the major centres of commerce, but the obscene riches of the City of London belonged to the Mortimers alone. So it went without saying that the head of the Mortimer family was a dragon of unimaginable wealth and power. He’d got there by birth, and he’d stayed there by ferocity, ruthlessness and cunning. No one in the family would dream of disobeying him.
Bim’s eyes quartered the room, resting for an uncomfortably long three seconds on my face. Not a muscle moved to betray his thoughts. I held my breath, waiting for him to tell everyone what I’d done and what my punishment would be.
“You’ve doubtless heard that Charles managed to miss his bank getting hacked last week.” Disdain dripped from Bim's words as he addressed us all.
I gulped in a breath, only realising it sounded like a sob when Nate slid a concerned glance at me. Perhaps this wasn’t about me after all.
Uncle Charles was rigid where he sat beside Aunt Bridget. “With respect, Father—”
“Was or was not your bank hacked? And is, or is it not, your bank?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Until you find a way to recoup the one point eight million that went missing before you finally noticed the suspicious transactions, I am holding you responsible.”
Charles subsided, his knuckles white where he was gripping Bridget’s hand.
“Cyber attacks happen and, when banks are complacent, sometimes they’re successful. But there’s been a marked increase in these over the last month, including a briefly successful attempt to gain access to Amanda’s brokerage accounts.”
Aunt Amanda sat as tall and composed as ever, apparently unconcerned that she might be the next recipient of Bim’s withering
judgement.
“I’ve been speaking to colleagues in the City.” His gaze swept over each of us in turn to punctuate his next words. “Not one financial institution owned by humans has experienced this increased level of activity.”
The realisation hit everyone, evident in the slight movements, the licked lips and the glances between them.
Bim’s voice held a deep, threatening undertone. “The Mortimer family is under attack.”
