Treasure by Megan Derr

as he began to wash the sand from his hair, slowly and carefully soaping, rinsing, and combing it out. The process would have been easier with a servant, but Kyo hated for anyone but Taka to be in his room, and only if one of them was around was anyone allowed in his room at all.
    Kyo had no intention of making it easy for his father's servants to snoop.
    Two hours later, he climbed from the bath and pulled his robe on once more, then strode to his dressing table to dry out and braid his hair. When at last he was done tending his hair, he walked to his desk and settled behind it, picking up the papers Taka had left out for him to sign.  He frowned and set them down again, looking around the desk, rifling through a drawer. Where had he put them? Annoyed, he stood up and went over to Taka's desk and stole the reading glasses set neatly to one side of Taka's blotter. Sliding them on, he returned to his desk and resumed looking over the papers.
    He signed warrants, search orders, and a handful of licenses requiring royal permission, then set them aside for Taka to take away again. Sitting back, he stared out the balcony off to his right at the dark sea glistening with moonlight.
    Soon, very soon, he would finally be sailing that sea. For three whole months, he would have freedom of a sort. Three months to do and be what he pleased before he had to serve in a royal capacity one last time.
    He fervently hoped he was doing the right thing.
    Kyo sighed softly and stood up, then headed across the room to his bed chamber. There, he reached into the back of his wardrobe for the book he stashed there. It was old, barely held together, and the words were so faded they were illegible in parts. But what remained was sufficient enough to tell him that the Book of Storms his father had given him had very little in common with the barely-legible version that was a great deal older. Kyo had no idea how old. The book looked almost more like a private journal than a formal book, as it was old enough to have been handwritten, and he recognized none of the other marks upon it.
    He did not even know where the book came from. He had simply found it on his bed shortly after his father had told him that he was to die, had been born for the sole purpose of preserving his family's hold on the dragon magic.
    Everyone knew the Legend of the Lost Gods:  they had one day gone mad with rage and nearly destroyed the world they had created. Then they had fallen, either by the hand of their children or, in the case of the Basilisk, by his own hand. The only country about no one knew anything about was Lost Schatten; no one went in, no one came out, and those who tried were either killed by the turbulent sees or slain by the terrible beasts that lurked in the Jagged Mountains.
    In Kundou, everyone knew that the Dragons of the Three Storms had been the first of the gods to go mad, betrayed by their twin priests. What, exactly, the priests had done was lost to time but the Dragons' rampage had changed Kundou forever. The little island that had rested in the middle of the three larger ones had vanished. Some said it sank, some said it somehow managed to float out to sea, some said it had simply ceased to be when the gods died.
    To his everlasting regret, Kyo knew the truth:  after defeating the dragons and stealing the Eye of the Storm, Taiseiyou I moved the island himself to a remote location that was known only by the royal family.
    Every one hundred years, one who possessed the dragon magic had to die to preserve the spell that kept the dragons sealed away and fed their power to the royal family by way of the Eye of the Storm and the sacrifice. Because nine hundred years ago, according to the book that had been left on his bed, Taiseiyou I had sacrificed a member of his own family to bind the magic to himself.
    Why, the book did not say. Who had died was not given either, but Kyo had his suspicions there. He went to the chaise set by the balcony in his room and