“I’ll tell him you’re doing your best,” she added over her shoulder. “He’s patient. I’m sure he’ll forgive the state of things.”
Lady Kelda didn’t even look at Mrs. Crane as she passed her, merely flicking a manicured hand toward the muddy footprints I’d tracked across the stone.
“Do try to keep the filth contained,” Kelda said. “It distressesthe house so.”
Mrs. Crane stiffened, but said nothing. She didn’t have to; the temperature in the hallway dropped ten degrees, a silent rebuke from the manor itself. Kelda seemed to notice the manor’s reaction and turned back to me. She stepped into my personal space again, blocking my view of the corridor where Fenrik had appeared. She leaned in, her lips brushing my ear.
“You’re out of your depth, little healer,” she whispered. “Perhaps this arrangement is more dangerous than we thought. For everyone. Fenrik’s control is obviously slipping if even the Garden Drakes are turning violent. He needs someone who understands the weight of a legacy, not a village girl who drags mud and chaos into his sanctuary. You’re not helping him at all, Lysa. You’re another thing he has to worry about breaking.”
The words lodged in my chest like a splinter of ice. Before I could find my voice, before I could defend myself or my magic, she pulled back with a dazzling smile.
“Rest now,” she said, loud enough for Mrs. Crane to hear. “I’ll handle Fenrik.” She swept away, heading straight for the music room. The heavy doors swung open for her.
I was left standing in the drafty hall, shivering. I couldn’t look Mrs. Crane in the eye. I felt dirty. And Gods help me, I felt a sick, churning jealousy that tasted like ash in my mouth. She was going to him. She was going to soothe him with her numb, perfect magic, and I was dismissed like a naughty child.
“I need...” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to my room.”
I fled. I didn’t run, but I walked with a speed that bordered on flight. The house didn’t try to stop me; the hallways were straight, the lanterns dim. I reached my bedroom door. I needed to wash the dirt from my skin. I needed to look at my collection of ceramic dragons, to arrange them by color, to ground myself in something small and safe and mine.
My room was pristine, the bed made, the curtains drawn, save for one spot. On the floor, right in the center of the rug where I couldn’t miss it, lay a pile of jagged blue shards.
Mist.
My favorite figurine, a delicate water-dragon painted with painstaking detail. I had left him on the highest shelf this morning, tucked safely behind a stack of books. He couldn’t have fallen from there.
I knelt, and picked up a piece of painted wing. The violation made my skin crawl. This wasn’t the mindless rage of a cursed creature. This was deliberate. This was cruel.
I was seven years old, kneeling in the dirt with a sparrow in my hands, its wing bent at a sickening angle, crying as I pushed my power into hollow bones that crunched under my clumsy, eager fingers.
“You cannot force it whole, little bird,”my mother had whispered, her hand covering mine.“If you push the magic too hard, you only break what you mean to save.”
I squeezed the ceramic shard until it bit into my palm. I wasn’t seven anymore.
fourteen
Fenrik
Iwas on my knees in the dungeon of my manor, the air was thick here with the scent of wet earth and stale magic. Before me, the ward-anchor of the house, a slab of black obsidian set into the foundation wall, pulsed with a sickly rhythm. It was the second one to fracture this week.
This deep down, I could feel the house’s fear. My family manor was a living thing, pinned to this volatile cliffside by five of these anchors. They acted like iron rivets in a heaving ship, bolted into the ley-lines themselves to keep the house from drifting into the Other or being torn apart by the raw magic beneath the earth. And right now, this rivet was popping loose.
“Hold,” I grated out.
I slammed my other hand against the obsidian. The friction tore the skin of my palm, but I welcomed the distraction of physical pain. It was easier to manage than the shadow dragonthrashing inside my chest, screaming at the proximity to the ward-magic.
The anchor hissed. It was trying to reject the ley-line’s current, the connection vibrating so violently my teeth rattled. If an anchor failed, the protective dome over the estate would develop a hole, a leak where illusions could twist reality and where the shadows I held at bay would flood in to drown us all.
I pushed back. I visualized the magic in my blood as mortar, thick and silvery, pouring into the invisible cracks of the stone.
Seal it. Hold it together.
The obsidian drank greedily. My vision grayed at the edges. The cost of manual reinforcement was blood and stamina, two things I had in dwindling supply. The stone grew hot under my hands, then cold, then hot again, stabilizing only when I felt a wave of nausea so potent I nearly retched on the boots I wore.
The frantic buzzing in the wall died down to a steady hum. The rivet held. I slumped forward, my forehead resting against the damp stone. Sweat slicked my spine, causing my shirt to cling to my back. The dungeon was freezing, the air biting enough to turn breath into mist, yet I burned. A fever-heat rolled through my veins, distinct from the churn of the curse. This fire was entirely my own.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the darkness behind my lids offered no sanctuary. It only broughtherback.
I pushed off the wall, and scrubbed a hand through my hair. Lysa. The name alone twisted the feral beast inside me. I would avoid her, would let the distance between us calcify into safety.Yet here, in the dungeon’s chill, the memory clawed free: the library, that storm-lashed night when the house had locked us in.
