The wyrmling’s head snapped toward my voice. His movements were jerky and one amber eye was swollen shut; the otherwas bloodshot, swimming with a milky haze, but when it landed on me, clarity sharpened the pain. He let out a sound that broke my heart: a high, trilling cry that broke into a wheeze. He took one step toward me, his legs trembling, and then his strength evaporated.
I hit my knees in the mud beside him an instant later. “No, no, I’ve got you,” I said, my hands hovering over his flank, terrified to touch him where the silver blood seeped. His breathing rattled in his chest.
“Miss Emberlin, get away from it!” the baker warned. “It’s cursed!”
“He’s hurting!” A small voice piped up.
I looked up, blinking against the rain. Two children, the miller’s identical daughters, had slipped through the line of fearful adults. The braver of the two dropped to her knees beside me, her small hand reaching out to stroke the only patch of intact scales on Kirion’s neck. Tears made tracks through the dirt on her round cheeks. “It’s okay,” she sniffled, patting him. “Lysa is here.”
Kirion leaned into the child’s touch, a low hum vibrating in his throat.
“He came all this way,” I whispered to the girl, though I was speaking to myself. My hands settled on his neck, ignoring the sting of the corrupted magic radiating from him.
A familiar was a reflection of his bonded one. If the familiar was this broken, this consumed by the silver rot...
“He’s dying,” the little girl said, looking up at me with wide eyes.
“No,” I said, the word trembling with anger. Not at the creature, but at the lie I had swallowed. Kelda had said I was the problem. Kelda had said my absence would save them.
Kirion let out a long exhale, and a cloud of silver mist drifted from his nostrils. He nudged my hand with his snout.
“Lysa. The inquisitive eyes,” Maren hissed, her grip on my shoulder firm enough to bruise. “If Holt or Pembroke receive word you’re practising Arcane Medicine on the street after their warning, they’ll shackle you.”
Rain plastered my hair to my skull, but the cold barely registered against the heat of the wyrmling’s fevered hide. Maren was right. The baker looked ready to fetch the constables, and the crowd’s murmurs were sharpening from fear into accusation.
“Help me,” I rasped, sliding my arms under Kirion’s trembling belly.
Maren threw her heavier wool cloak over the wyrmling, shielding the glow of his silver blood from prying eyes. Together, we hefted him. He was light, but his heat seared through my wet clothes. We stumbled through the side door of the tea shop, bypassing the main floor where crockery clinked and patrons whispered, and hauled him up the narrow staircase to Maren’s private quarters.
“Easy, love, easy,” Maren soothed, though she was breathless by the time we kicked open thedoor to her flat.
The air of Maren’s home was a comforting blend of dried lavender, steep-smoke, and old wool. Vibrant tapestries from the southern coasts draped over mismatched armchairs, and the ceiling was a constellation of hanging drying racks where bunches of chamomile and star-anise spun in the draft. It was a nest of colour and life, so unsuited for death.
We laid Kirion on the rug before the hearth. The silver blood immediately began to hiss against the woven fabric, eating into the dyes.
“I’ll fetch the heavy salves,” Maren said. “And fresh linens. Don’t let him burn a hole in the floorboards.”
I sank to my knees, my hands hovering over the wyrmling’s chest. “Kirion?”
He didn’t open his eyes. I pressed my fingers to the hollow of his throat, seeking a pulse.Thump... thump-thump... silence.
“Don’t you dare.” I moved my hands down, checking his limbs for circulation. His right foreleg was tucked tight against his chest, the talons clenched into a fist so rigid the knuckles were white under the scales. He was holding something. Holding on as if it were the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“Let me see,” I said, prying at the claws.
They wouldn’t budge. He whined, and tightened his grip even as his strength failed elsewhere.
“I need to see, Kirion. It’s alright.” I pushed a pulse of my Quieting magic into the joint, just a thread.
The tension in the claw slackened and I peeled the talons back one by one. A crumpled ball of parchment fell into my palm, damp with rain and slick with that luminous, toxic silver blood.
The paper was clearly expensive Stormgarde stationary. But the writing... I pressed a hand to my mouth to stifle a sob. It was a battlefield of ink. Fenrik’s elegant, aristocratic script was there, but it was jagged, fighting itself across the page, the letters tearing through the paper in places.
Lysa—stay away—no, please, come—she’s—I can’t—Heavy, frantic strike-throughs obliterated half the words.
Something shifted inside the parchment. I tilted my hand, and a pressed moonflower slid out onto my palm, like the one I’d seen in his sketchbook and like the one he’d sent me tucked in his first letter.Truth in darkness.
He had sent Kirion to find me.
