IDALLIA
I wake up so stiff and sore, I fleetingly fear that parts of me don’t work anymore. The terrifying thought fades as I gingerly stretch and take stock of my limbs. All there, all intact, and more importantly, so are my birds.
Little Embersol sleeps tucked into the crook of my right arm. Rimblaze warms my entire left side. Fyrestar lounges at the base of the bed, keeping my feet from feeling the constant chill in my open-windowed quarters.
I know who else is in the room before I even turn my head. Sybil sits at my bedside, holding a mug of hot something between her hands. I smile at her a little warily as she looks at me through the steam rising from the cup.
My sheepish grin turns into a grimace. “I’m in for a scolding, aren’t I?” The rasping words scrape my parched throat.
“That was hard to fix.” She doesn’t look amused, eyeing me as if she wants to do more damage than healing right now.
“It was just a few scratches.”
She snorts. “Tell that to the skin on your back I had to regrow.”
“Fine, really deep scratches.” I try to sit up and immediately abandon the idea. Between everything hurting and my phoenixes pinning me down under my blanket, I stay where I am. “Scars?” I ask hesitantly.
“As if I’d let anything mar that skin of yours.”
Relief sweeps through me—vanity striking again. I’d eventually heal on my own, but Sybil’s magic both speeds it up and erases visible damage. I only have one mark on me, smallish twin scars on the inside of my right forearm that happened before my perfect memory kicked in.
“Did I almost die?” I ask.
She shakes her head, her frown accentuating the fine lines around her mouth. “You’re hard to kill. Luckily.”
I nod, the usual questions circling my mind like crows and pecking at where I’m the most sensitive and unsure. I carefully stretch my limbs without disturbing the phoenixes, glad to be alive and healed, but wondering what in the blazing stars I am. I’ve already lived about a hundred and thirty years too long for a human and still look like I’m twenty-five. My slow aging and natural healing are on par with the fae and vampires, but I don’t have fae magic, and I might have a finicky appetite, but I’ve never once been tempted to latch on to a vein and guzzle down blood. I don’t shift into anything, were or dragon. So what does that leave?
“Was healing me even harder than usual?” The dimming of magic is always a concern these days.
“It was…intense,” she answers.
I don’t like her cagey tone and look over sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Stuart’s convinced I’ve lost a year off my life.” She shrugs. “It just took a lot out of me.”
I stare at her in shock. “Is that possible? A year?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so, but magic has never been this weak, and everything is harder now.”
“I’m so sorry, Sybil.” Tears well in my eyes. “I wish you’d left me scarred.”
“Are you jesting?” Outrage lifts her voice along with her brows. “I would consider it a professional failure to leave so much as a scratch on you. Besides, I know how much you’d hate it.”
My throat thickens. “I’d hate losing you more.”
“That, my friend,”—she reaches out and lightly grips my hand, a still-sleeping Sol between us—“is inevitable.”
I squeeze her hand back, fighting the rise of more tears. Sybil has already crossed over the halfway mark of a normal human lifetime. Healing magic only exists in humans, which is another reason the southern kingdom of Ruthinock needs the Dragon King’s protection. Everyone wants a human sorcerer around—especially a healer—but not everyone wants to give them a choice about where they go or who they work for.
“Don’t worry.” Sybil sits back again, the steaming mug still in one hand. “Even if Cealastra doesn’t see fit to replenish magic in Ellonrift, you won’t have to worry about much more than decapitation, extreme blood loss, or a sword through the heart. And there will still be healers around, even if they’re not as powerful as they are now.”
“You’re right,” I say hoarsely. But they won’t be my best friend.
I close my eyes, and that familiar, queasy feeling of dread hits me like a gong, vibrating the worst of my memories through me. I’d been so alone at Glarraden House. Rita and Gerard were always too wrapped up in each other to notice me. There were no other children on the estate, just a few crusty old dragon shifters on staff in an isolated country mansion—the “big house” of a small town.
Nearly forty years went by before my adoptive parents looked up from each other enough to notice I wasn’t aging and wouldn’t live a human lifetime and die. Being sent off to the Drayke School of Fire and Flight was going to change everything. Companions. Socializing. Normal-life stuff. It was all I wanted, and it couldn’t have gone more wrong. Nothing went right until Bale offered me a job and a home.
Swallowing hard, I open my eyes. I hate my memories more than seeing the age on Sybil’s face and the gray strands mixing into her brown hair. But I don’t turn to her yet. I look to Fyrestar instead.
