“Oh, gods, he’s still in there.”
I didn’t have any more time to verify if Maren was ready with the salves; Ipushed. I reached for the chord of his frantic heart, the thread of my Quieting gift unspooling from my core to wrap around his chaotic magic, my magic was coming out gold and silver this time. I couldn’t understand whether it was hot or cold. Even though my magic was confused, there was no resistance, the wyrmling’s barriers were gone, shredded by the curse. Then the room vanished. I wasn’t standing in Maren’s flat, I was crouched low to the ground, seeing the world through eyes that perceived heat as color and magic as vibration. I was Kirion.
Fenrik sat slumped at his desk in the manor study, his head heavy. The room swam in a haze of unnatural grey static. He gripped a quill so hard the wood splintered against his thumb, ink pooling on the parchment.
“I have to warn her,” Fenrik said, the words slurring as if his tongue were numb. His hand jerked, fighting an invisible weight to scratch outLysa. “I have to—what was I saying?”
A hand, pale and elegant, settled on his shoulder. I felt the wyrmling’s hiss vibrate in my own throat, felt the scales along my spine flaring with heat.
“You were saying goodbye, my love,” Kelda’s voice drifted down. She didn’t appear to use force; she used a gentle pressure instead. “Don’t fight it. The gaps are getting worse. Just write it down. Tell her you never wanted her.”
The air around Kelda shimmered, that looked like Veil magic. Through Kirion’s eyes it looked like a net of silver filaments drilled into Fenrik’s temple. He groaned, and the pen moved against his will, slashing through his own desperate warning.
The scene broke and reassembled into a different one. I was in a bedroom. Shadows stretched long across the floor, bleeding from Fenrik himself. He lay on the massive four-poster bed, his wrists bound by the same shadows.
Kelda was there. She straddled his hips, her green robe gone. My breath hitched—mybreath, Lysa’s breath, somewhere far away, as I realized what I was seeing. The wyrmling had been hiding under the vanity, watching. Kelda was rising and sinking onto him. Fenrik’s head was thrown back, the cords of his neckstraining, his face a mask of agony rather than pleasure. His shirt was torn open, revealing the curse-marks glowing like molten silver brands across his chest.
I saw the wet sheen of their joined bodies, the way her nails dug into his shoulders, drawing blood. She was grinding down hard, taking him with ferocity.
“Look at me,” she commanded, her hips snapping forward, forcing a gasp from him. “I am the only one who can touch you without burning.”
Fenrik’s hands gripped the sheets. He thrust up to meet her, harsh and desperate. The sound of skin slapping skin echoed in the silence, wet and hollow. He was hard obviously, but his eyes were squeezed shut.
“Say it,” Kelda hissed, riding him faster, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. “Say who saves you.”
Fenrik arched his back, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he spilled into her.
“Lysa,” he choked out, the name like a jagged prayer.
Kelda froze. In the vision, her face twisted. She climbed off him, leaving him panting and shivering in the dark, and wiped herself with a corner of the sheet.
“She isn’t real,” Kelda said, leaning down to tap his temple. “You imagined her.”
“This is not real, it’s a lie,” Fenrik said.
The scene dissolved into sparks.
The study again, but darker. Fenrik was alone, holding the moonflower. He pressed it into the parchment I now held in the real world. He looked at where the wyrmling was hiding.
“Find her,” Fenrik whispered to the creature—tome. His eyes were clear. “Find her before I forget her for good.”
I gasped, wrenched back into my own body so fast I nearly tipped over. Maren was shouting my name, but the roar of Fenrik’s despair was still deafening in my ears. The parchment within Kirion’s claw felt like it was burning a brand into my skin.
“Lysa?” Maren’s hands were on my shoulders, shaking me. “You went pale as death. What happened?”
I stared at the crumpled parchment in my hand, then at the wyrmling whose breathing had now hitched into a steady, albeit shallow, rhythm. The silver rot on his scales had stopped spreading, held in check by the gold thread of magic I’d woven through him.
“It was never me,” I said, the truth settling, and displacing the guilt I’d carried for days. “The instability, the house shaking, the creatures going mad, it really wasn’t because my magic was incompatible. It was perfectly compatible. The shadow dragon was fighting me off like antibodies fighting a virus.”
Maren unscrewed a jar of pungent, amber salve. “Start talking while we work.”
Together, we smeared the thick paste over Kirion’s cracked hide. The wyrmling didn’t wake, sedated by the sheer exhaustionof his flight, but he leaned unconsciously into the warmth of my hands.
“Kelda,” I said, my voice trembling. “She’s not treating him. She’s rewriting him. I saw... I saw them. In his bedroom.”
Maren paused, her hands slick with balm. “In his bed?”
I nodded, feeling heat scald my cheeks. “She was on top of him. Riding him. But Maren, it wasn’t... he wasn’t there. It was like she was feeding on him, using the act to anchor her illusions into his skin. He was in agony, and when he finished...” I swallowed hard, looking at my own palms. “He called out my name.”
