Page 74 of House of the Iron Reaper

I am twenty-five when I see the Reapers.

No pain comes when the doomkin pierces my body. I only look at the blade sticking up through my stomach with a surreal curiosity, as though finding someone else’s dinner plate in your cabinet and wondering how it got there.

I do not feel the ground as I land upon it, thrown limply to the side. I only grow very tired very quickly and wish to close my eyes. Dimly, I’m aware of the crowd around me. The doomkin falls beside me with a dull thud, pierced with arrows. It is my mother’s scream I hear above all else.

This was all to make her proud. To have her smile at me the way she did in the kitchens, kneading bread together.

And then I see them.

Two Reapers stand quietly at some distance away. One’s face is covered in a glittering mask and the other has a gossamer cloth over its head. They stand still as statues but cast no shadow.

I failed.

Eyes closed, I do not fight death when it comes for me.

But my mother does.

I wake some weeks later to a blinding light. Sun streams through the open windows of the House of Healing. Pain throbs dully at the edges of my mind. I cannot move. My mother sits at my bedside with bloodshot eyes.

“Shivanya bless us,” she whispers. “You are alive.”

I look for the Reapers but they’re gone.

“I’m sorry.” My voice feels like nails in my throat. My lips crack and sting under the salt of my tears.

Some time passes in a haze of lavender tonic. When the fog of my mind clears somewhat and I can sit up with little help, the cleric informs me the doomkin narrowly missed my krata. I would heal, in time and with more bahk. I would even fight again in the Rites, if I wish. I stare at the tattoo on my thigh and give no answer.

I’m taken to Stormwatch for my recovery. It is common for water dragons to heal faster near the water, I am told. I do not argue, for when I arrive, she is waiting for me.

Nerissa sits beside me with my long sleeps during the day. She helps me eat when my hands shake too hard to hold my cutlery. She braids my hair and decorates it with delicate pearls, singing in a way that reminds me of the healing bahk. Her voice is as soft as the first day we met.

She brings me to the water when I am strong enough to do so. We stand together in the shallows, the waves lapping at my calves. I lace my fingers through hers.

We sit beside a fire on the beach and she teaches me her written language. We lie in the shallows of the sea and trade stories and make shapes out of the clouds floating past. I teach her recipes passed down from my mother and her father before her, and we cook together in a kitchen barely big enough to fit us both, shoulders pressed together.

My body heals, slowly. My hands shake less and less. My krata is intact.

But my mind is still broken, my faeth out of reach. I take bhak when I awaken, sweating, from dreams of blades and Reapers. The taste is sweet and it sings to me in a voice like Nerissa, soft and high. I kneel at the water’s edge, praying. I kneel in the sand when the frequent storms hit, letting the rain soak me through. I kneel at the shrine in our small cabin, hands clasped and knuckles pressed against my forehead. Between it all, I lick my lips and taste bahk.

Where I used to feel my krata and the magic it held, I feel nothing. I wonder, not for the first or last time, if the doomkin took a part of me with it that day. What else could explain the hole in my being?

Nerissa deserves someone complete. Someone who can carry her when she’s sick, someone who can take the burden when she cannot.

I will do whatever it takes to reach my faeth again, for her.

I am twenty-six when I promise Nerissa I will return to her when I am a whole dragon again.

Chapter 33

Novalie

Deimos stalks in a wide circle around the doomkin, throwing barbed insults its way with a wicked grin. The doomkin snaps and crackles at him. Deimos dances up to and away from it, twirling just out of reach each time the doomkin sends a fiery claw his way. It slams the ground in frustration.

Its flames flick and turn icy blue. It grows hotter, angrier. Flames twirl, climbing higher, exposing its skeleton. This time, when the doomkin throws a lick of flame, Deimos flips over it, spinning quickly to land a hard kick against its bones.

Crack.

The doomkin howls. Deimos backs away quickly, out of its billowing flames. Before it can pull the fire back, Deimos leaps over it and lands another jab.