She gripped my shoulders hard. Her green eyes, so full of dreams, were now hard.
“Go,” she said, her voice fierce and devoid of its naivete. “I can manage the clinic. I know the recipes better than Father realizes.” She glanced back at the boy, who was frantically pulling up his trousers. “Clearly, we work well together under pressure.”
The door banged open behind me, and Maren stumbled in, shaking water from her wrap. She took one look at the scattered sage, the broken jar, and Lorin’s red face.
“Well,” Maren drawled, stepping over a stray boot. “Smells like musk and poor decisions in here. Good for you, girl. Break him in early.”
Lorin made a sound like a dying goose.
Maren ignored him, sidling up to me and shoving a heavy leather satchel into my chest. “I packed the nasty stuff. Restoratives, sure, but also strong binding agents—wolfsbane concentrate and iron-shavings. If that bitch tries to get into your head, throw the black powder in her eyes.”
I clutched the bag, the weight of it grounding me.
“The whole town feels wrong, Lysa,” Maren warned, her humour evaporating as she looked past me, toward the dark line of the cliffs visible through the windows. “The air tastes like ash. Like something is eating at the foundation of the valley itself. If it’s centred at that manor, you’re the only one who can walk into the eye of the storm without being torn apart.”
“I know.” I fumbled through the locked cabinet in the corner and fished out the stolen map I’d taken from the bookstore, the one showing the ley-lines. Then, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the vial Kelda had given me—the “pain relief” meant for Fenrik.
If Kelda wanted to play with poisons and illusions, she was about to learn that Arcane Medicine required knowing exactly how to dismantle a body before you could heal it. I turned for the door, Maren’s bag bumping against my hip, but the bell above the entrance jingled before I could reach the latch.
My father stood in the doorway, shaking a wet umbrella. He looked weary, the lines around his eyes etched deep, but he blinked rapidly as he took in the scene. He looked at the shattered jar of newt eyes. He looked at the crushed sage on the floor. Finally, his gaze landed on Lorin, who was currently trying to make himself invisible by pressing his back flat against the shelving unit, his shirt buttoned wrong so that one side hung lower than the other.
“Why is the silversmith’s boy trying to merge with the drywall?” Father asked, his voice mild but perplexed.
“He slipped,” Briony said quickly, smoothing her wild hair.
“Slipped,” Father squinted at the floor. “On the premium sage? Did you wrestle a garden gnome on the sorting table?”
Lorin made a strangled noise. “I was inspecting the integrity of the table, sir. For... safety.”
Father stared at him. “With your belt unbuckled? Is the integrity dependent on your trousers being loose, son?”
“It’s a new technique,” Maren supplied helpfully from the corner, leaning against a stack of crates with a wicked grin. “Ventilation aids focus.”
Father sighed, the long, suffering exhale of a man who has decided that ignorance is not just bliss, but clever survival strategy. “Right. Well. Button up boy, before you catch a draft in your ambition.”
He stepped over the puddle of pickle juice and crushed herbs, ignoring Briony’s mortified squeak, and caught my arm just as I reached for the handle. His grip was tight.
“You’re going back,” he said.
“I have to,” I said, meeting his eyes. “He’s in trouble, Da. Real trouble.”
“I know.” He reached into his vest pocket. “I saw the river turning black. I felt the floorboards shaking, I’ve already lived through a Collapse once. I’m surprised more people don’t remember.”
He pressed something into my palm. It was warm, and hummed against my skin, a small glass vial filled with liquid the color of fresh blood, swirling with flecks of gold.
“Your mother made this,” he said, his voice thickening. “She brewed it the year before she died. Kept it in the false bottom of the safe.”
My breath caught. “Is this...”
“Dragonheart extract, undiluted. Distilled from the fire-gland of a voluntary donor.” He closed my fingers over the glass, his calloused thumb brushing my knuckles. “It’s pure magical adrenaline, Lysa. It will force your channels open wider than they were meant to go. It will let you push past your limits—past exhaustion, past the Quieting, past everything.”
He looked at me with a mixture of pride and grief. “Only once. If you take it, your heart might not stop racing for a week. Or it might just stop.”
“Dragonheart surges aren’t healing,” Maren said. “They’re borrowing time from the body. You don’t recover what they take.”
“Why give it to me then?” I asked him, feeling the heat of the vial seeping into my palm.
“Because you have your mother’s look in your eye, when she left to help the Stormgarde folks all those years ago,” he said softly. “ The one that says you’re going to do something incredibly stupid and incredibly brave. And I can’t stop you.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t let the darkness win, little bird.”
