My gaze dropped back to the water bowl, where the reflection showed that darkness again. That wrongness superimposed over his body like a second skin. And beneath it, barely visible, the wyrmling’s true form seemed smaller.
The wyrmling whimpered again. I reached out and pressed my palm to his flank. He curled into my touch without waking, shivering despite the fever-heat radiating from his scales. In the water’s reflection, the dark shimmer rippled almost like it was trying to pull away from my hand.
four
Fenrik
The grey marble of the library mantelpiece offered no anchor. It was cold, certainly, stone hewn from the cliffs beneath the manor, but I was colder. I was a void where heat went to die.
My breath ghosted in the air, curling in white plumes that had nothing to do with the season and everything to do with the rot spreading through my blood. I gripped the stone edge until the sharp lines of the carving dug into my palms, grounding me, or trying to.
It wasn’t working.
The sensation wasn’t pain, precisely. Pain was a signal, a biological warning of damage. This was an unmaking. I looked down at my hands. They were traitorous things, elegant and long-fingered, capable of the most delicate arpeggios on the piano in the locked room down the hall. Now, they belongedto a stranger. Shadows pooled beneath the surface of my skin, rising from the bone outward. They moved like ink in water, coalescing into the distinct, overlapping pattern of scales along the back of my hand and creeping past my wrist cuff. Between the darkening patches, my veins flared with an agonizing, toxic silver light.
I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to retch.
Thump-thump.That was my heart. A steady, disciplined rhythm I had spent a lifetime controlling.
Thud.That was the other.
The thing lodged in my chest felt like a second organ, wet and heavy and hateful. It beat out of time, and every time that foreign pulse hammered against my ribs, the silver light in my veins surged, searing the nerves.
I had catalogued the symptoms for weeks, tracing the escalation because if I stopped analyzing, I would scream. I unbuttoned my high collar, gasping for air. The silk of my shirt felt abrasive, scraping against skin that was becoming something... else.
The library remained silent, save for the wind battering the leaded glass windows. A fitting tomb. I had sent the staff away hours ago, retreating here where the wards were thickest, praying the stone walls would contain the fallout if I lost the war against my own biology.
“Come now, Fenrik,” I said, the sound harsh and broken in the empty room. “Discipline.”
I forced my spine straight. I was Lord Stormgarde, master of a dying estate and a lineage of broken magic, and I would not be reduced to a shivering animal on his own hearth rug. But the thing lurched again, a sickening roll inside my chest, and I almost went to my knees. The vertigo tilted the room on a forty-five-degree axis.
For a moment, I saw myself reflecting in the dark windowpanes: a tall, severe shadow with silver-fire eyes, barely human, barely holding the shape of a man. Thorven should have returned by now. If he came back empty-handed, if I’d been wrong and there was no one in that wretched medical clinic who could make sense of this...
I gritted my teeth against the rising bile. Then the agony cut out like it was severed. One instant, my skull was made of fractured glass and screaming nerves; the next, silence. Absolute, stunned silence.
I staggered, gripping the mantelpiece as the sudden absence of resistance threw my equilibrium off more effectively than the pain had. The claw raking down my spine dissolved, replaced by a sensation so alien I didn’t recognize it at first. It was warmth, spilling through my marrow like sun-warmed honey. It washed over the silver toxicity in my veins with a gentleness that felt almost intrusive. I gasped, the air rushing into my lungs.
Impossible.
Deep in the hollow of my chest, the intruder panicked. The thing, which had been feasting on my misery, thrashed against my ribs before recoiling. It shrank back into the darkest recessesof my soul, terrified of this sudden serenity. For the first time in months, the invasive beating stopped, leaving only the rhythm of my own heart.
It was the bond, the frayed, erratic thread linking me to Kirion, the wyrmling Thorven had taken into town. For hours, that line had been slack, dead air. Now it hummed with vibrant, resonant life. It anchored me. It felt less like a leash constricting my throat and more like a lifeline thrown into a storm, pulled suddenly.
I pressed my palm flat against my sternum, feeling for the discordant second heartbeat that had been my constant, unwelcome companion.
Nothing. Only the steady drum of my own pulse, strong and sure for the first time in... Gods, I couldn’t remember.
The manor noticed. Of course it did, the old house was as much a living thing as any of the creatures in my sanctuary. The groaning timbers fell silent mid-creak. The persistent rattle of loose windowpanes stilled. Even the wind outside seemed to hold its breath, as if the entire estate had paused to listen. Then the scent hit me. It came through the bond like a whisper pressed against my bare skin: rain-soaked cobblestones. Underneath, something earthier: dried herbs, the green-bitter tang of healing salves, and beneath that still, a warmth that made me think of hearth fires and honey.
My knees buckled, and I gripped the mantelpiece as the phantom fragrance curled through my senses. It was intimatein a way that felt almost indecent, as though I’d pressed my face into the hollow of a stranger’s throat and breathed deep.
Who are you?
The question echoed through the bond before I could stop it. The connection thrummed in response, and I could have sworn I felt the ghost of fingers against my chest, cool and sure, pressing where the pain had been. Whoever had touched my wyrmling, whoever carried that intoxicating scent, they had reached through the bond and gentled the monster in my chest without even knowing I existed. I needed to find them right away.
The sensation was already fading, and I couldn’t bear to lose it. I pushed off the mantelpiece and crossed the library, colliding with the corner of my writing desk. The brass inkwell rattled as I braced myself against the polished wood. My hands were shaking. When had they started shaking?
Write it down. Before you forget.
