It was almost dawn when I climbed the narrow stairs to my room. My ceramic dragons waited on their shelf, small sentinels arranged by colour, crimson to amber to jade to midnight. Fifty-three of them. I’d counted yesterday during one of my anxious rearrangements. The emerald drake I’d named Clever sat too close to Ash, the slate-grey wyrmling. I moved them apart, then reconsidered. Colour families. That made sense. I shifted the entire amber collection left, creating space for better gradation between the yellows and reds.
My fingers trembled. I pressed them against the shelf’s edge until they steadied.
“You’re fine,” I told Ember, the tiny copper drake at the centre. “Everything’s under control.” But that was a lie, everything wasnotunder control.
I touched each figurine as I passed, a ritual that usually brought calm. Tonight it made my chest ache. These creatures didn’t fear me. They were ceramic and silent, incapable of flinching from my touch, of whispering about my unnatural gift, of looking at me like I might shatter their magic with a careless thought. The real dragons sought me out when they were suffering. Trusted me with their pain. But their humans?They paid in eggs and dried herbs and backed away the moment I’d finished, relief and unease warring in their expressions.
I wanted ... wanting was dangerous and selfish. The infirmary was drowning in red-inked ledgers while I stood here arranging toys like a child, while mysterious silver veins spread through dead drakes, and my father buried himself in guilt. I was useful. That was enough. It had to be enough.
But the hunger sat beneath my ribs anyway, stubborn and shameful. I craved someone who wouldn’t fear my power, and who’d look at my Quieting gift and see strength instead of monstrosity. My gift wasn’t like other Creaturae Arts. I didn’t soothe the beasts with gentle magic or coax their temperaments into balance. No, I reached into the chaos of their internal arcane energy and commanded it tostill. Forced it to obey me, really. Most mages worked with a creature’s natural inclinations. I worked against the magic itself, bending it to my will whether it wanted to comply or not. No wonder people whispered.
I fell into bed still dressed, leather apron and all, too bone-tired to care. The pillow smelled like herbs and smoke. My own scent, worn into the fabric. Sleep dragged me under. In the dream, silver veins spread beneath my skin, branching from my heart in delicate patterns. I pressed my palm to my chest and felt that wrong buzzing, that wasp-trapped-in-a-jar pulse. The ley-lines shuddered beneath me, enormous and cold, turning over in their sleep.
three
Lysa
Morning came with light filtering through the windows and the sound of my father’s cough from downstairs. I dragged myself upright, peeled off yesterday’s clothes, and pulled on clean trousers and a blouse that smelled only faintly of potions.
The infirmary looked different in daylight. Less cramped, somehow. Weak sunlight turned the rows of glass jars into prisms, scattering rainbow fragments across the examination tables. The copper distillation apparatus my mother had used gleamed on its shelf, polished to brightness by my father’s hands. Bundles of dried sage and moonpetal hung from the ceiling beams.
I moved through the space automatically, checking the fire in the brazier, arranging surgical instruments on their tray, pullingfresh linen from the cabinet. The morning routine settled my own anxiety.
The front bell chimed. I was elbow-deep in scrubbing dried blood from a mortar when heavy footsteps crossed the threshold.
“Miss Emberlin?”
The voice was rough, and weathered. A stocky man in his fifties stood in the doorway. Ginger hair was plastered to his skull. Burn scars twisted up his left arm from wrist to shoulder, the kind you earned from panicked drakes. But it was the bundle in his arms that made my breath catch, warded cloth wrapped tight, smoking where something inside pressed against the fabric.
The bundlethrashed.
“Examination table.” I was already moving, shoving the mortar aside, grabbing restraints from the cabinet.
He crossed the room in three strides and laid the bundle down. The table rattled. Whatever was inside fought the cloth with strength, and the wards, expensive, well-crafted containment wards, flickered like candle flames in wind.
“He’s never calmed for anyone,” the man said. His hands shook as he unwrapped the first layer. “Not even Lord Stormgarde himself.”
Lord Stormgarde. The reclusive lord in his manor on the cliffs. The man who hadn’t been seen in Abberwyn proper in years. Whose creatures had started showing signs of magical instability months ago.
The final layer of cloth fell away. Midnight-blue scales. Silver markings along the spine like lightning frozen in place. A wyrmling, roughly the size of a large dog, all lean muscle and awkward juvenile proportions. Beautiful, if you could see past the wrongness.
Heat radiated from its skin, too much and feverish, making the air shimmer. Bloodshot eyes with flecks of molten gold rolled wildly. Its jaws snapped at nothing, revealing needle-sharp teeth. I pressed my hand to its flank.
The wyrmling screamed, a sound that shouldn’t come from something so small. It twisted, its claws scrabbling against the table, tail whipping. I caught its neck, holding firm while it bucked beneath my palm. Behind the wyrmling’s thrashing form, visible only at the edge of my vision, I saw a shadow of wings. Enormous wings that existed in the space between one breath and the next. A double-exposure, a ghost-shape that shouldn’t be there at all. My heart stuttered. The wyrmling wasn’t sick in the usual sort of way. Something was trying to come through.
The wyrmling lunged. I didn’t have time to flinch. It extended its claws, opening its jaws wide, and aimed straight for my throat. The man behind me shouted something. My hands moved on instinct, catching the creature mid-strike.
Cold slammed into me the instant we touched. Not the gentle frost of the book-dragon yesterday. This wasice water, arctic and vicious, lancing up my arms and into my shoulders. My fingertips went numb. The room tilted sideways, walls bleedinginto the floor, colours smearing together like wet paint. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see anything but blurred shapes and swimming light.
The wyrmling went still beneath my palms. For a heartbeat, nothing moved, then the creature made a sound I’d never heard a dragon make before, a sobbing, broken keen that vibrated through its entire body. It twisted in my grip, but not to escape. It burrowed under my chin, pressing its overheated skull against my throat, its scales scraping my skin. The trembling started in its wings and spread outward until every part of it shook. The heat should have burnt me. I’d felt dragonfire scorch flesh, and knew how badly those scales could sear. But this didn’t burn. Its heartbeat hammered against my collarbone. I felt the magic churning inside it like a trapped storm, wild and formless. Every pulse sent another wave of cold through my arms, crawling up my elbows, settling into my bones. And beneath the magic, beneath the heat and the wrongness, I feltterror. The poor wyrmling was drowning in fear.
“Easy,” I heard myself whisper. My voice sounded distant, muffled. “I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
Its claws dug into my shoulders like I was the only solid thing in the world. The sobbing keen quieted to rapid, desperate little huffs against my neck.
The man’s voice cut through the haze. “What in the—how did you—?”
I couldn’t answer. My hands were still numb. My vision hadn’t cleared. But the wyrmling stayed pressed against me,shaking, and I knew with absolute certainty that if I let it go, it would somehow break. The silver markings pulsed, I’d seen that light yesterday, in the dead drake’s veins.
