one
Lysa
The best part about the Drifting Teapot was Steady, the barista dragon who always knew when you needed your tea warm enough to sting your tongue. The enchanted pots that chose your perfect blend came a close second.
I pushed through the door, grateful when the familiar scent of cardamom and bergamot washed over me. My fingers throbbed where I’d gripped the maddened wyrmling this morning, my joints still protesting each flex. The creature had thrashed in my arms for two hours before I quieted the fever-madness burning through his blood. Worth it. He’d lived. But my hands had paid the price.
The café hummed with evening conversation: merchants grumbling about the wet roads, students arguing over the properties of lunar-harvested dreamwort, and someone’s grandmother loudly insisting that dragon-warmed tea was superior toanything boiled in a kettle. I wove between the crowded tables, leaving a trail of rainwater across the already-slick floorboards.
Steady lifted his copper-scaled head from the cup he’d been warming for a customer. The dragon was massive for his kind, nearly the size of a large dog, with eyes that always seemed faintly amused by the chaos of running a tea shop. His eyes found mine across the room, and his tail gave a pleased little twitch.
I hadn’t taken three steps before a teacup appeared on the counter. Not just appeared, Steady had abandoned his customer mid-pour to fetch it. Steam curled from the painted porcelain in a wavering line. I wrapped my fingers around the cup and bit back a hiss. Scalding. Almost too hot to hold.
“Steady,” I said, but the dragon had already returned to his abandoned customer, huffing apologetically as he reheated their now-tepid blend.
I took a sip. The burn travelled down my throat and bloomed in my chest, chasing away the lingering chill from the infirmary’s stone floors. My shoulders dropped half an inch.
The enchanted teapots lining the shelves behind the counter swayed gently, their spouts turning as if scenting the air. One, painted with winter roses, began to rattle insistently. Maren emerged from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron. Her dark hair was escaping its braid, and flour dusted her left cheek. She took one look at the rattling pot, then at me, and her expression settled somewhere between concern and determination.
“Right then,” she said. “Come here, Lysa. Now.”
Maren’s eyes swiped past me to the corner table, where a knot of customers had formed a semicircle of anxious onlookers. They looked ready to help but even more ready for someone qualified to take over.
I was apparently that someone.
“Thank the mountains you’re here.” Maren caught my elbow, already steering me toward the commotion. Her usual warmth had sharpened into something anxious and pointed. “I was about to send Pip to fetch you.” Pip, the scarlet fire-starting dragon, chirped joyfully from the couch, scattering a few warm sparks.
A book-dragon crouched on the table, no bigger than a teakettle, trembling so hard its tail rattled against someone’s abandoned saucer. The creature’s normally pearl-grey scales pulsed with an eerie blue-green glow - brightest near its belly, where the light pressed outward through the thin membranes like a lantern trying to break through paper. The glow flickered. Brightened. Pulsed again.
“It swallowed an active rune from an enchanted book,” Maren said. “The glow’s getting brighter, I think the poor thing is destabilising.”
A woman in a merchant’s cloak pulled her chair back with an audible scrape, creating a generous buffer between herself and the glowing dragon. Her companion followed suit. Within seconds, the entire corner had cleared, leaving the book-dragon isolated on its table.
“It just, it grabbed the page right out of my grimoire,” a young man stammered from the safety of the doorway. He clutched the grimoire to his chest, its spine hanging half-detached. “I didn’t think it would actuallyeatit.”
The dragon’s glow pulsed again, brighter this time, and someone near the back muttered a prayer.
I set down my tea and approached slowly, my palms out. The creature’s eyes tracked me, wide and panicked, its pupils blown so large they’d nearly swallowed the amber iris.
“Steady,” I called over my shoulder.
The copper dragon appeared at my elbow, solid and calm.
“I need you to keep everyone back.” I rolled up my sleeves, already cataloguing symptoms. Luminescent destabilisation, probable magical indigestion, moderate panic response.
I dropped to my knees beside the table. The book-dragon’s breathing came in short, hitching bursts, its ribcage expanding and contracting too fast, too shallow. Each exhalation carried a faint whistle.
“Easy now,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”
The dragon’s tail lashed once, catching the edge of the saucer and sending it spinning across the table. I caught it without looking, and set it aside. My brown hair had come loose from its tie somewhere between the infirmary and here, and a strand fell across my face as I leaned closer. I pushed it back with my fingers, leaving what was probably a smudge of something dark across my temple.
The blue-green glow pulsed again, brighter this time. The light pressed outward against the dragon’s belly scales, illuminating the delicate membrane between each plate. I could see the rune’s shape now, angular and wrong, a geometric infection lodged somewhere near the creature’s stomach. If it ruptured—
I reached for my gift before the thought finished forming. The familiar cold started behind my sternum, a pressure building like frost spreading across glass, crystalline and sharp. I felt it crawl outward through my ribs, threading between bone and muscle, settling into the hollows of my shoulders. My hazel eyes must have flared gold. They always did when I called the magic up. I channelled the cold down through my arms, trying to keep it slow and controlled. My palms hovered above the dragon’s scaled belly, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the destabilising rune but not quite touching. Not yet. The magic pooled in my hands, a weight without substance.
“That’s it,” I whispered, watching the dragon’s eyes. Still too wide, pupils blown with panic. “Just a little longer. I’m going to make it stop hurting.”
The rune pulsed again. I pressed my palms against its warm scales andreached. Silver-white light bloomed beneath my palms, threading outward in spirals that sank into the dragon’s scales. I felt the rune’s resistance immediately—a living thing, all jagged edges, thrashing against my gift.Still,I commanded silently.Settle. Sleep.
