Baby From Frost by Ashe Moon
2
Raka
The shrill squeakfrom my cart’s one bad wheel turned the heads of irritated scholars as I passed by. I kept my chin up and didn’t give them the slightest bit of acknowledgment, pausing only to offload books from the cart back to their places on the shelves. I turned the corner to go down the next row and found Shen there, standing tiptoe on a rickety step ladder, pushing onto the shelf.
“You love ticking off the scholars, don’t you, Ra?” he said without looking at me.
“You know it’s one of my great joys,” I replied, pushing my cart next to his. I picked up a heavy, worn tome from my pile and slid it back into its spot between two equally ancient books.
“It’s a good thing the Archivist here has a sense of humor. In the librarium I grew up in, you’d end up getting a good whacking for something like that.”
“Maybe I could use a good whacking,” I said.
Shen snorted and dropped the book he was holding. It hit the floor with a boom that echoed around the cavernous space that was the Stonvale Grand Librarium. One of the scholars shushed us, and both of us bowed our heads like the good, obedient omega custodians we were supposed to be.
The Fraternity of Archivists was the order of omegas who cared for the vast collection of materials located in librariums across the world. They accepted any omega without question; it didn’t matter where they were born, or if they had children, or if they were a human, a dragon, or a half-blood, like me. As long as they could learn the trade, they were welcome. It was a safe place, a place I’d called home for the past seven years.
Shen had been raised in the Fraternity, and when I’d first shown up at the Grand Librarium, he’d taken me under his wing and made sure I was taken care of. And I’d needed a lot of care during that difficult time. And it was still difficult. After learning my way around the Librarium and adjusting to a new life, finally feeling like I’d found a place where I was secure from the long reach of my family, there was still the shadow of what I’d done to Delos. I could never forget that, nor did I want to.
I did think about going back to find him. Of course I did. But I’d already endangered myself by deviating from my careful plan, and if I went to him, my family would find me for sure. And I couldn’t let that happen. There was far too much at stake now. More than just my own life.
“How’s Oli doing?” Shen asked. “Have things improved?”
“Still causing trouble,” I said. “He keeps finding ways to sneak out from the classroom right under the instructor’s nose. I’ve told him a million times that it isn’t safe for him to leave the librarium alone, but he’s stubborn.”
“Well, well,” Shen said, peering through the gap in the books. “Speak of the devil.”
I leaned down to look and sighed when I saw the little black-haired boy sneaking out through the cracked door at the end of the hallway. He looked back and forth, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the tables where the scholars were working. He grabbed the end of each table leg and turned them to ice, and then did the same to the legs of the chairs. The ancient floor was not perfectly level, and a second later the whole table along with three scholars were gliding away at a snail’s pace. They were all so absorbed in their studies that none of them noticed until they’d bumped into another table. The chairs all kept going, and the scholars looked up in confusion as they moved along like ducks on a meandering stream.
Shen was grinning. “I can see where he gets it from.”
Oli crawled away, giggling to himself as he looked over his shoulder at the unfolding chaos. I walked over and blocked his path, and he smacked headfirst into my shins. He gasped when he looked up and saw me glowering down at him.
“Oli…”
“Hi, Dad!”
“What did I say about skipping out on your lessons?” I grabbed his arm, lifted him to his feet, and dragged him with me, past the scholars who were fighting to get their table from spinning across the floor. Shen gave Oli a thumbs up. “Don’t encourage him,” I hissed.
Out of the main hall, I escorted Oli up the stairs to the study chambers where the Archivist held daily reading lessons. “You’ve gotta stop sneaking out of class, Oli,” I said sternly. “And I know you were gone from the librarium yesterday. Leander told me he saw you.”
“But it’s so boring here,” he said. “And the lessons are junk. Anyway, it isn’t like I go too far, Dad.”
I stopped and knelt to Oli’s eye level. “It’s not safe for you to go out on your own.”
“But all the other kids do it…”
“They don’t leave class. They’re supervised.”
“But you won’t even go out with me,” he pouted. “You hardly ever do.”
I felt a pang of guilt. “I’m sorry, Oli. I know it’s difficult…”
How could I expect a seven-year-old to understand that I couldn’t take any unnecessary risk? I’d made every effort to wipe my trail clean—as far as the world knew, I was dead, the only soul lost in the freak fire on that ship—but it’d been impossible for me to relax and believe that my family had stopped looking for me. Every time I went out, I could feel their eyes searching for me. Their hunter dragons on the prowl, even this many years later. They had the resources. But then…they didn’t know about Oli. I was probably being too overcautious and making him miserable in the process. I had to just…let go a little bit.
I hugged him. “Okay. You can go out with the others. But not far, and don’t leave the group. And never talk to strange people.”
He lit up. “Really?”
“Yes,” I said, sighing. “But only outside of class time. You have to promise to stop sneaking out of class.”
“I promise,” he said.
The study chamber was a long room much like the main hall, lined with desks and rows of bookshelves from the front to the very back, where the Archivist sat almost entirely obscured by his towering stacks of papers and books. It was no surprise Oli was bored. Having to sit still and stare at books all day at his age? Even the Archivist had nodded off. The training was important, though. Becoming an Archivist was the only way Oli would have a chance in the world when he came of age. I wished I could give him more, a chance to be anything he wanted—but I was stuck here, and with no alpha father to show him everything he could be…
Oli’s dragon abilities were much stronger than mine. He was only a quarter human. He could complete a full shift, unlike my stunted dragon form. He could use full ice magic. I could tell him about dragons but never fully show him what it was to be one. Not only that, I had to forbid him from shifting. Anything that could lead my family to find us had to be hidden. I had no choice.
I brought Oli back to his desk, and he sighed glumly at the stack of vocabulary work stacked high in front of him. The other kids around him gave him little “I told you you’d get caught” smirks, and he stuck his tongue out at them.
“Hang in there,” I said. I made my finger cold with ice and tapped the tip of his nose, a gesture I’d done with him since he was a baby. “Cold nose.”
“Thanks, Dad,” he said, rubbing his nose with a smile.
The Archivist let out a ripper of a snore and startled himself awake. The old man blinked and nodded at me over his stacks of books. I nodded back, mussed Oli’s hair, and left the room.
I knew why we were here, why I’d I was sheltering us in the safety of the librarium. I took pride in my resilience, my dedication, my careful planning. It was how I’d escaped my family and that frozen country unharmed. But not a day went by when I didn’t wonder if maybe I’d made a miscalculation. A mistake. That maybe… I should’ve stayed in Old Shore Port.
