The fabric fell, and she nodded to her apprentice. Zakkari hurried forward with a silver tray of linen strips, each glistening with a green salve. Saecily pressed the first to Viktor’s shoulder.
Coolness sank into his blistered skin, easing the tight pull of half-healed burns. Viktor drew a ragged breath as she laid another against his chest, another across his ribs, until his body was draped in damp relief.
Saecily’s eyes narrowed, her murmur low.
“…what sorcery struck you?”
Viktor’s gaze dropped to the angry red of his own flesh.
“A dragon.”
Zakkari faltered, nearly dropping his tray. Saecily steadied him with a click of her tongue.
“Keep your wits,” she scolded. Then with a tip of her chin: “Fetch a stone from my chamber—we’ll need it.”
When the boy darted off, she touched Viktor’s hand.
“Now, Ruakite. Your turn.”
“My turn?” he asked, wary.
Saecily only moved aside, rifling through herbs.
“The Midnight brought me savorspear on the very day I would need it.”
“The Midnight?”
But before she could answer, Zakkari returned, a crystal hanging from a chain around his neck. He slipped it into Viktor’s palm, cool and heavy.
“The Midnight,” Saecily hummed, “is my apothecary apprentice.” She laid a linen sheet across Viktor’s shoulders. “Blind, but gifted. He sees what others miss.”
Blind.
The word struck like flint.
The whispering figure in the wood, the hooded voice at the Vykenraven—it all returned in a rush. Memory collided, too sharp to ignore.
And then—like heat under ice—something stirred.
Not pain. Not wind. A presence. Familiar.
The same shadow that had turned a dragon’s rage, the same whisper that had pulled him back from the void.
The Midnight.
No voice, no words—only recognition brushing Viktor’s mind like a hand across flame. His pulse answered it.
Whoever he was, he’d been here all along. Watching. Waiting.
“Focus,” Saecily urged, smoothing the sheet into place.
“Send the wind through your body. Seek out the pain. Harness it.”
Viktor closed his eyes.
At once the ache of his burns roared awake, sharper for being acknowledged. He gritted his teeth, forcing the pain into the stone.
It flowed through him like wind through reeds—shuddering, then gone. Heat gathered, shimmered, and bled into the crystal cupped in his hands.
