Page 1 of House of the Iron Reaper

Prologue

When a dragon breathes lightning, it does not make a sound.

The air stills. Hair raises. Anticipation thrums. But lightning itself is as soundless as the sun, only the flash of its forked tongue ripping the air in two. When it cracks the ground like a whip, only then does the sound come. A great boom that rattles bones and splits the earth—and whoever is in its way.

Coalsburgh, home of the dragons, is a city built from sandbrick and iron. Deep in the Dry Sea—a vast desert—the city hugs the sides of a towering mountain, separated into layers. Coalsburgh is sturdy enough to weather the most blistering sandstorms. But my home, House Iron, was not sturdy enough to withstand me.

I was young and curious about my faeth—the magic all dragons have that lets us breathe fire or water. Or, rarely, poison. I was the second rarest—a lightning dragon. But faeth has more than one application. It allows us to shapeshift between our human selves and our dragon forms. I struggled to reach anything beyond sprouting small wings from my back. I tried, relentlessly, flying high enough to panic my father before falling in a heap in the sand. He never stopped me. Only checked I was alright before reaching down.

“On your feet, Dey.” His hand was warm in mine, his eyes glinting.

To my mind, he couldn’t understand my plight. My elders had wells of faeth that seemed like the deepest oceans compared to my pitiful puddle.

Faeth is gifted to us by the Saints. Knowing this, I attended the shrines each day before the sun rose and well after it sank below the horizon. Small shrines tucked into the halls of our House. Medium shrines carved into the mountain at the edge of the street. Large shrines built from sandbrick with stained dragon glass slashing a rainbow through the air.

I clasped my hands and closed my eyes and did my best to keep my mind from wandering. I spoke to each of the Saints in turn. I asked politely. I begged humbly. I even demanded, in my weaker moments. Even still, I could not reach beyond that shallow pool of magic sitting just above my stomach.

My father had no such issue with his faeth. As the Elder of our House, he was known as a force of nature—huge, even when not in his dragon form, and a ferocious fighter. He laughed a lot, and loudly. He was a fire dragon, unlike me, and his hugs felt like curling up beside a hearth.

He could transform at will, effortlessly shifting between forms, and I wished I knew how.

Frustrated, I tugged at the hem of my father’s tunic and asked for his help. Supper was being served, the food hall full of almost everyone in my House, besides a sleeping few. I heard them guffaw at my request.

“These things cannot be rushed, Ni Deyanara,” a distant uncle said as he sat down at the benches. “You must be patient.”

“I am of House Iron!” I said with as much indignation as I could muster. “I am not of House Patience!”

I received only a chorus of laughs in response. Even as a child, I recognised it as the kind of laughter reserved for the hubris of young people, which only served my frustration. But my father did not laugh—he stroked my hair back from my forehead and smiled down at me.

“Perhaps we should kneel before Shivanya,” he suggested. “The Saint of iron will for the child of iron impatience.” He gave a fully belly laugh. “She should smile down favourably on you, Dey.”

And so we did. After supper, the food hall settled from loud excitement to the buzz of evening conversation. Someone sang a slow song in the corner, plucking at the strings of their lute, their voice mingling with the chatter and laughter of my House. My father led me to a small shrine near the back of the room. We could have gone to any shrine in the city, of which are there plenty. But we did not. We stayed at home. The choice would haunt me.

“Your uncle is right—it does take many years,” he told me as we knelt on the worn cushion together.

“But I was born with faeth,” I protest. It all seemed so unfair. “Why should it take so long?”

“You are born with the ability to use faeth,” my father gently corrected me. The heat radiated from him. “The faeth itself comes with practice. It is a certain kind of inner peace, a gift from the Saints humbly accepted, not something we can pull from nowhere.” He presses a kiss against my temple. “Some dragons spend their entire lives seeking that clarity of mind.”

I wish I had been one of those dragons. One with a clouded or weary mind, one who needed decades to find her magic. But in my home, with my father and my family, with my stomach full and my heart relaxed, I found no such trouble. My mind was as clear as the Coalsburgh sky. A certain kind of inner peace, my father had said. I wish I had never known such peace. Not then.

I closed my eyes and faeth trickled through me, nipping gently at my skin, as it usually did.

I sucked in a slow breath and pictured Shivanya before me. In my mind, she was too beautiful, too otherworldly, so she appeared as a blur of silver light. I imagined her reaching to me, gifting the magic I desired so badly.

I was standing in a stream as the water slipped around me. All was quiet. When I dipped my fingers in, it felt like touching static.

The air stilled and thickened. The hair at the nape of my neck rose.

All dragons are born with a krata—an organ sitting just above our stomachs. For poison dragons, rare as they are, their krata forms caustic acid for them to spit. For the more common fire dragons, their krata births flames that roar from their throats. It is the source of our magic, our faeth flowing from it like blood flows from a heart.

My faeth grew, turning from a trickle to the beginnings of a stream, and my krata clenched like a fist. It was not painful, only new. My brow smoothed and the world fell away from me. Sparks clicked in my krata, building into something more. My heart pounded at the feel of something pinching beneath my skin. I tasted copper on my tongue—the taste of faeth in the air.

“Dey…”

My father’s voice echoed somewhere around me, but I could not open my eyes.

No… I did not want to. I wondered how far I could go.