The canvas fell away. The drake was small, no larger than a house cat, her scales dull grey where they should have gleamed jewel-bright. Her eyes had filmed over with milk-white cataracts, mouth slightly open, tiny fangs just visible. I’d seen death before. Too many times. But this...
I leant closer, tilting the drake’s head to catch the lamplight. There. Beneath the scales along her throat, faint silver veins spread in a delicate web, branching from her chest. They pulsed with a subtle luminescence even in death.
“Da.” My voice came out tight. “Have you ever seen this?”
He moved to my side, notebook forgotten. His breath caught.
“No,” he said. “Never.”
“I’ll need my references.” Da straightened, already moving towards the stairs. “There’s a section in Harrow’sCompendiumon magical corruption, and that old text your mother kept, the one with the handwritten notes...”
He disappeared into the upper room where he was probably going to fall asleep reading through my mother’s notes.
The silversmith shifted his weight. “We should get home before the rain worsens. Will you... let us know what you find?”
“Of course.”
Briony caught Lorin’s hand, tugging him towards the door. “I’ll walk you out. Make sure you don’t catch your death in this weather.”
The door clicked shut behind the silversmiths. I heard my sister’s voice trailing off down the alley, something about tea, her tone pitched in that particular way she used when trying to sound mysteriously alluring. Poor Lorin wouldn’t know what hit him.
I turned back to the drake.
“Right, then.” I rolled my sleeves higher, pushing them past my elbows. “Let’s see what killed you.”
The examination table was too tall. I had to lean over it, my weight on my forearms, bringing my face close to the drake’s chest. The scales were cool beneath my cheek. I pressed my ear where her heart should have been.
Silence. Expected. But then, a faint buzzing, like a wasp trapped in a jar. I jerked back, my pulse jumping.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” I told the corpse. “You’re aware of that, yes?”
I fetched my scalpel from the drawer. I was incredibly tired, but my hands were steady. They always were, when it came to this. I could calm a maddened wyrm without flinching, cut into dead flesh without hesitation, but ask me to make small talk at Briony’s garden parties and I’d forget how words worked.
The silver veins pulsed faintly beneath the scales. I pressed the blade’s tip to the largest one, applying careful pressure. The floor shuddered.
I froze, scalpel hovering. The sensation rolled through the boards beneath my boots, that same cold pulse from earlier in the street, but stronger now, like something enormous turningover in its sleep deep underground. The lamp flame guttered. Shadows lurched across the walls.
“Oh, brilliant,” I muttered. “The ley-lines are having feelings.”
The ley-lines were rivers of raw magic flowing beneath the realm of Lumenvale, feeding power to every ward, every enchantment, every piece of magic. Until lately, stable and predictable.
When the tremor passed, I set the scalpel aside and pulled out my notebook instead. The drake’s expression drew my attention as I sketched: mouth slightly parted, eyes wide even in death. She looked surprised, terrified, even.
I touched the edge of her jaw, tilting her head. “What did you see?”
The silver veins branched in patterns I’d never encountered in any text. They spread from the chest like tree roots, delicate and geometric, too deliberate to be natural. I sketched them carefully, my charcoal scratching across the page.
My father would want measurements. Samples. A full post-mortem report with proper documentation and—
The buzzing came again.
I pressed my palm flat against the drake’s chest. The sound vibrated through my bones, making my teeth ache.
“You’re being mysterious,” I told the corpse. “And unhelpful. In case you were wondering.”
I grabbed a clean jar from the shelf, selected a smaller blade, and carefully extracted a section of the silver-veined scale. Itcame away with a softsnick, revealing the grey flesh beneath. The vein pulsed once, twice, then went dark.
The buzzing stopped. I sealed the sample in the jar, labelled it, and stared at the drake’s terrified expression. Whatever had killed her, she’d seen it coming, and she’d been afraid.
