Fenrik stood on the threshold looking disheveled. He was half-dressed, his white shirt was hanging open, the buttons torn or forgotten in his haste. It revealed the expanse of his chest, where the curse was devouring him. Silver veins pulsed beneath his skin, branching across his pectorals and disappearing down the ripple of his stomach. He looked like a man being eaten alive from the inside out. He gripped the doorframe, his knuckles white with the force of his restraint. His breathing came in ragged tears, his chest heaving with a rhythm that was all wrong.
“Get back!”
The words came out distorted, layering a growl over his human speech. Shadows warped around him, peeling away from the corners of the room to pool at his feet. They stretched toward me, sliding over the floorboards. I froze. My hands were still pressed to the burning scales of the wyrmling, but my eyes were locked on Fenrik.
I should have been terrified. A rational woman would have scrambled for the window or the far corner.
“Stay away from him—stay away fromme,“ he choked out. He took a stumbling step forward, then braced himself against the wall, his head bowing. Sweat slicked his skin, making the silver light under his flesh shimmer. “When I lose control, I’vehurtpeople before. Don’t let me...”
Kirion shrieked beneath my hands, a sound of pure agony that mirrored the torment etched onto Fenrik’s face. The connection between them snapped into focus, a visible tether of suffering. But I couldn’t look away from Fenrik.
The fear was there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was tangled with something else. There was a raw, devastating beauty in his unraveling. The sheer power radiating off him hit me, heating my blood. I watched a bead of sweat track down the column of his throat, over the glowing veins, vanishing beneath the waistband of his dark trousers. My mouth went dry.
“Fenrik,” I breathed. He lifted his head. His eyes were no longer grey. They were molten silver.
“Run, Lysa,” he snarled.
But the shadows reached the hem of my nightgown, caressing the fabric, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The monster in him was calling to the monster in me, the silence I kept locked away in my veins. And Gods help me, I wanted to answer.
The shadows licked at my ankles, but Kirion’s scream cut through whatever madness had gripped me. I wrenched myattention back to the wyrmling and slammed both hands flat against his heaving chest.
Ice flooded up my arms, while my palms seared against his fever-hot scales. I gasped, my spine bowing backward with the force of the connection, my head tipping back. A sound escaped me, something between a cry and a moan, as the opposing temperatures warred through my nervous system.
I didn’t let go. The magic inside Kirion was a hurricane, shrieking and slashing at everything it touched. I could feel it now, that wrongness I’d sensed before, something foreign wrapped around his natural flame. It fought me, it clawed at my consciousness with silver talons.Still, I commanded.
I poured everything I had, not the careful, measured doses my father had taught me. My vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in. Sweat slicked my skin, plastering my thin nightgown to my body. I was dimly aware of how I must look, back arched, chest heaving, fingers splayed against the creature’s scales.
Still. Settle. Sleep.
I visualised a heavy woolen blanket, the kind my mother used to wrap around me during winter storms. I imagined it settling over the wildfire inside him, smothering the flames inch by inch. The shrieking magic resisted, bucking against my hold, and pain lanced through my skull.
My fingers went numb. Then my wrists. The cold was climbing, spreading through my forearms toward my elbows.
“Don’t—“ Fenrik’s voice cracked somewhere behind me. “You’ll burn yourself out—”
I couldn’t stop. If I let go now, the backslash would kill Kirion and possibly take me with him. The wyrmling’s thrashing slowed. His scales dimmed from that sickly strobe to a gentler pulse. His keening dropped to a whimper.
Almost. Almost there.My elbows went numb. My shoulders began to ache.
Warmth trickled over my upper lip, copper and salt flooding my tongue. Blood. I didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe it away.
Below my wrists, my skin had turned a frightening shade of red, the kind of colour that came before blackened flesh and permanent damage, and my fingernails had gone blue at the tips. The room tilted. The floor seemed to pitch sideways, and I swayed on my knees, my vision swimming with dark spots.
Kirion’s thrashing stopped. The foam at his jaws dissolved, evaporating. His breathing hitched, then settled into a rhythmic pattern. He was asleep. The unnatural heat bled out of his scales, leaving them cool and iridescent under my palms. Midnight blue, shot through with silver like starlight on dark water. Beautiful. I tried to smile. Tried to say something reassuring.
Instead, my arms gave out. I slumped forward, catching myself on the edge of the bed, my forehead pressing against the cool sheets beside the sleeping wyrmling. The blood from my nose dripped onto the white linen, blooming red. Through the dark spots swimming in my vision, I watched Fenrik slam backwardinto the wall. His shoulder blades hit the plaster hard enough to crack it, sending a web of fractures spreading outward.
The shadows that had been pooling at his feet recoiled, snapping back into the corners. He slid down the wall, his legs giving out beneath him, until he sat sprawled on the floor with his back against the wall.
I tried to lift my head. Failed. My cheek pressed against the cool sheets, and I could only watch him sideways, the world tilted at a strange angle.
The silver veins across his chest were dimming. The frantic pulse of light beneath his skin slowed, then faded to a faint glow before disappearing.
“I’d forgotten,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe without fighting for it.”
His head tipped back against the wall. In the moonlight, with the curse momentarily subdued, he looked younger.
Kirion stirred against my hip, a soft chirrup escaping his throat. His small body curled tighter, seeking warmth, and one wing draped over my forearm like a blanket.
