Chapter 19 The Restricted Files
The restricted section is behind a door within a door... a narrow panel set into the back wall of the east archive that the iron key opens with a sound like something old exhaling.
Inside it's smaller than the main archive, colder, the shelves holding fewer volumes but each one carrying the specific weight of something that was put here because it needed to be kept rather than found. A single lamp on the reading table. Two chairs. No window.
Rhydan closes the panel door behind us.
We sit.
I go for the tamer case files first, not my mother's specifically, not yet, because I need the context before I can hold the specific thing, and I pull the first full case history and open it between us on the table.
The restricted documentation is considerably less sanitised than the general archive.
The first case, dated a hundred and twelve years ago, reads like something between a medical record and a love story: a dragon-natured woman and a witch tamer who found each other during a pack conflict in Northern Europe, their bond developing over six months, the case documented by a supernatural academic who clearly understood he was watching something rare.
"She stabilised him through three partial shifts," I read quietly. "Including one full expression event in a populated area that would have resulted in significant exposure without her intervention." I pause. "The academic notes that the stabilisation appeared involuntary on her part. She responded to his distress before she was aware of the response."
"Same as last night," Rhydan says.
"Same as the forest," I say.
He's reading alongside me now, leaning forward slightly, and he's close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him, which is its own thing I'm choosing not to take any closer look at.
"The bond didn't make them compliant with each other," he says, reading ahead. "It says here they argued constantly."
"Reassuring," I mutter.
He glances at me sideways. "For both of us," he agrees, and it's so dry and so unexpected that I laugh, actually laugh, and he looks at me when I do with that almost-expression that gets a little closer to arriving every time.
We read for two hours.
Five cases. Each different in detail and consistent in shape. The bond develops at its own pace regardless of the parties' feelings about it. The tamer's ability expands in proportion to the dragon nature's development. The emotional relationship between the bonded pair runs the full range across documented cases, from deeply loving to functional and professional, with the supernatural bond operating independently of whatever the people involved felt about each other.
"It doesn't require anything from us emotionally," I say. "The bond. It operates whether or not we..." I stop.
"Whether or not we what?" he asks.
I look at the page. "Whether or not we have feelings about it."
Silence.
"Right," he says.
I find my mother's file near the back of the restricted shelf.
Maren Calladine. Documented tamer case, twenty years ago.
I put it on the table and look at it for a moment without opening it.
Rhydan doesn't say anything. He just waits, which is becoming something I've noticed about him, the quality of his waiting... it's not impatient or performed, just present.
I open it.
My mother was nineteen when her ability presented. Northveil Academy student, Ember House initially, which lands with a specific weight. Her bond began during her second year. The dragon-natured individual is listed only as a case reference number, not a name, which is unusual compared to the other files.
I read further.
The bond reached stage two within three months of initial contact, faster than any previously documented case. Stage three indicators appeared within five months. The academic documenting the case noted that the speed of development appeared connected to the unusual strength of both parties' abilities.
Then the documentation stops.
Mid-sentence. A note in different handwriting at the bottom of the last page, added later, reads simply:
Case closed. Subject withdrew from academy. Further documentation unavailable.
I stare at that sentence.
"She left," I say.
Rhydan leans over to read it. "Mid-documentation," he replies. "No explanation given."
"Someone closed the file," I say. "Added this note. Look at the handwriting, it's different from the rest of the documentation."
He looks. "Who has access to the restricted archive to amend files?"
"Corvyn," I say. "Or someone before Corvyn."
"The bonded individual," he says carefully. "The one listed only as a case number. Is there a way to find out who that was?"
I look at the case reference number at the top of the file.
Something cold moves through me slowly.
Because the case reference format is a year, a category, and an identifier, and the identifier on my mother's file is a name code, and the name code is VAL, and I have been in this archive long enough now to know that VAL is the Valecrest family identifier.
I look at Rhydan.
He's reading the same code.
His face has gone very still.
"VAL," I say quietly.
He doesn't move.
"Rhydan," I say carefully. "Who in your family was nineteen, approximately, twenty years ago?"
He looks up at me slowly.
And what's in his expression is the specific look of someone arriving at something enormous and finding that a part of them, some deep quiet part, already knew it was coming.
"My father," he says.
The lamp on the table flickers once.
The restricted archive is very cold and very quiet.
"Your mother," he says slowly, "and my father..."
The sentence sits between us like something that can't be unsaid.
"...were bonded," I finish.
Neither of us speaks for a very long time.