Page 2 of House of the Iron Reaper

Faeth poured through my veins, pumping towards my heart and onwards again to my krata. It was euphoric. I had never grasped more than the lightest of magic before and now it was growing like a flood around me.

Static lifted my hair from my skin. The air was thick.

“Deyanara.”

I focussed my faeth on my krata, ignoring all else. My krata responded in kind, quivering like a newborn. Every muscle in my body was taut, as though seized in a vice-like grip.

“Deyanara!”

My eyes snapped open. My father’s fingers dug into the flesh of my shoulders, shaking me from my meditation. The world rushed back in around me, the laughter and din of the food hall, the smell of finished supper. I blinked slowly, as though awoken from a dream. My faeth still thrummed around my bones.

My father forced me to look at him, worry etched into the lines of his face. Oh. I had never seen him so concerned, even at my most reckless. I knew then I had done something wrong, took the meditation too far. In the reflection of his eyes, wide and worried, I saw my own. Not my usual stormy grey but blazing gold.

An apology sat at the back of my throat. I opened my mouth.

Lightning struck.

The wall behind my father’s head exploded, firing molten glass across the room. I did not realise I was hit until I felt the bite of it, claiming my jaw in a fiery grip. The pain lanced through me. I screamed.

My krata clenched, too full, too charged. Lightning clawed up my throat and hit the ceiling.

“Dey!”

My father looked at me with horror, half-reaching out to my face. His head whipped to the side as the ceiling cracked.

The house shrieked under the weight of itself, brick screaming against iron. Panicked bodies shot past me, desperate to escape. The support beam above the door groans and snaps, shutting them in.

Someone half-transformed, growing in height but their scales flickered up and down their body in panic. They grabbed the ceiling, attempting to hold it up.

Screams.

Dust.

Screams.

Dust.

I needed to help. I needed to do something. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, down to where the molten glass hardened across my jaw. My krata twisted painfully as lightning seized it.

No. No, please.

I clapped a hand over my mouth but it was not enough. I retched out a fork of lightning, the force of it flinging me onto my back. It cracked against the ceiling, the last bastion of the support beam exploding on impact. Sandbrick loosened and fell like an anvil, crushing the half-transformed dragon.

My father threw himself on top of me, cutting off my view, but I heard the wet sound and the thump of a body.

“Look at me, Dey,” my father said, caging me beneath him. He winced as more sandbrick landed on his back, sending a shower of sand around him.

His body lengthened, claws digging into the floor as he hunched over me.

“Papa,” I sobbed. The first thing I could speak, with only sparks in my throat.

“Eyes on me,” he says, unwavering.

I did as he said, even as sandbricks landed like a fist on the ground beside us. His warm brown eyes melted into red. I tasted copper on my tongue and understood then why dragon magic tastes of blood. He leaned down close, pressing his forehead against mine. His dragon body shielded me, half the size I knew he could be, braced on his arms. I was encased in darkness.

“Svellenta,” he whispered in dragon tongue. “Svellen-”

Something crunched like a wet twig and my father’s body went limp. I could not move. I could not see. Something warm and sticky dripped onto my face. Something that tasted like faeth.