I should say something. Something reassuring or clinical. Something that would remind us both that this was a professional arrangement, that I was here to help. But my tongue felt thick and clumsy, and the darkness at the edges of my vision was creeping closer. The blood from my nose had soaked into the sheets, a spreading stain I’d have to apologise for later.
Fenrik’s gaze found mine across the ruined room.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
I wanted to laugh. Of course that was what he noticed. Not the miracle I’d just performed, not the curse I’d somehow pushed back. The blood.
“I noticed,” I managed. The darkness won. I slipped under.
I woke to warmth and a palm cradling my cheek, calloused fingers brushing hair from my temple.
My eyes fluttered open. Fenrik knelt beside the bed, his face inches from mine. The silver veins had faded, leaving his skin pale but unmarked. His shirt still hung open, and I could see the steady rise and fall of his chest.
His gaze wasn’t on my face. It was fixed on my hands, which lay limp against the sheets, the skin mottled red and white with frostbite.
“Your magic,” he whispered.
I tried to curl my fingers. They wouldn’t obey. The numbness had spread past my wrists now, a dead weight at the end of my arms.
“It’s gold.” His voice cracked on the word. “I can see it lingering around your fingers. Like sunlight through honey.”
That made no sense. My magic had always felt silver to me, cold and sharp as winter moonlight. I’d seen it reflected in creatures’ eyes when I worked, a pale shimmer that made them flinch before it soothed. It’s never been neither warm nor gold.
Fenrik reached toward my face, his hand trembling. His fingers hovered inches from my cheek. If I leaned forward, even afraction...
Our eyes locked.
Silver light flickered in his stormy grey irises, and behind it, I saw a shadow-shape that didn’t match his human form. It had wings, folded against a spine ridged with scales. A long, elegant neck. Eyes that burned with ancient knowing.
The vision lasted only a heartbeat. Then it was gone, and he was just a man again, kneeling beside my bed with wonder written across his face.
“Gold,” I breathed. “You see it as gold?”
Then something shifted behind his eyes. The wonder curdled into horror.
Fenrik snatched his hand back as if I’d burned him. He lurched to his feet, nearly tripping over his own boots in his haste to put distance between us.
“I shouldn’t have.” He shoved a hand through his hair, forcing the wild peaks back into order. “My apologies for the intrusion. The hour.” His gaze dropped to his bare chest. “The state of my attire.” He fastened the buttons, his eyes locking onto mine, daring me to look away.
“I’ll send Mrs. Crane,” he muttered to the doorframe. “For your hands. The blood. Whatever you need.”
And then he was gone, the door left open behind him. A draft crept through, raising gooseflesh along my arms. I wiped my upper lip with the back of my hand. Bright red smeared across my knuckles. The tips of my fingers were the colour of winter bruises.
Kirion chirruped in his sleep, nuzzling deeper against my hip. Whatever thing was devouring the wyrmling from theinside out was drinking from Fenrik’s soul. Their suffering was a closed circuit, each feeding the other’s pain, and I’d managed to make myself the bridge between them.
eleven
Lysa
The nesting lizard bit me twice before noon. The first time, I’d been adjusting the warming stones beneath her clutch of eggs, trying to coax the temperature back to something that wouldn’t cook the embryos or freeze them solid. The manor’s heating enchantments had been flickering all morning, cycling between tropical greenhouse and mountain glacier with no discernible pattern. One moment I was sweating through my linen shirt; the next, my breath fogged in front of my face.
The lizard, a spotted ridge-back named Duchess, according to the tarnished nameplate on her enclosure, took exception to my interference. She lunged, sank needle-teeth into the meat of my thumb, and refused to let go until I’d counted to thirty and offered her a dead cricket as a peace offering.
“Lovely,” I said, wrapping my bleeding thumb in a scrap of clean linen. “Absolutely charming manners you’ve got.”
Duchess flicked her tongue at me and retreated to her eggs, which had begun to glow with an unsettling silver luminescence that eggs should never, under any circumstances, possess.
The second bite came when I tried to examine the webbing spreading beneath her scales. Fine threads of silver, delicate as spider silk, traced patterns under the surface of her skin. They pulsed in time with the manor’s failing wards, brightening when the golden light flared overhead, dimming when it guttered.
