Chapter Forty-Five
I didn’t tell Nova where I was going. I couldn’t.
Moving swiftly down the corridors, heading toward my bedroom, but not stopping to enter, I looked around to see the flicker of movement in front of me.
The key. It stirred the moment I reached for it, stretching its little wings against my fingertips like it had been waiting.
“Alright,” I whispered. “Take me in.”
The key zipped from my hand and flitted to the carved door ahead, the one most people would never see.
The door shivered once, then opened with a soft click and the faint sigh of old air.
I stepped inside.
The dragon wing.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the air changed completely. It was warmer here, not artificially so, but like the sun itself had kissed every stone. A soft orange glow flickered along the walls from lanterns I hadn’t lit. The scent of ash and crushed herbs floated gently through the air.
And the quiet…it wasn’t empty. It was full. Deep. Like the hush inside a cathedral before a hymn begins.
I let the door close behind me and walked forward.
The tall and domed chamber, where the stone curved like the inside of a seashell, was as magnificent as the first day I saw it. And there, tucked into the alcove at the far end, was the baby dragon.
It blinked at me as I approached, its luminescent scales glinting in the low light. It wasn’t much larger than a big dog yet, its wings still tucked tight against its back, its long tail curled protectively around the little pile of dried moss and old parchment it had collected.
I crouched slowly, giving it time.
“Hey,” I whispered.
The dragon tilted its head, then let out a puff of warm air that smelled faintly of burned cinnamon. It didn’t move toward me, but it didn’t retreat either. We had an understanding, the two of us. Not quite friendship. Not yet. But something adjacent. Something full of patience.
“I won’t stay long,” I told it. “I just needed…”
I didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t matter.
The egg lay in the nest.
I turned toward it slowly, reverently, my heart softening as it always did when I saw it.
Large as a pumpkin, streaked in rich blue and deep silver, it pulsed faintly with a light that didn’t come from the lanterns. It breathed, in its way. The stone around it was carved in protective circles, and old symbols were etched into the floor and walls. A small shimmer surrounded the egg, like a bubble of magic maintaining its warmth.
But it wasn’t the egg that caught my attention this time.
It was the mother.
She stood just beyond the egg, half in shadow.
I hadn’t seen her there at first. She blended so fully into the darker parts of the alcove. Larger than I remembered, her body arched slightly over the space, wings folded tight, neck curved like a bow. Her eyes were open, fixed on the egg. Not moving. Just watching.
I stepped slowly into the space, with my hands at my sides.
The baby dragon chirped once behind me, a small warning.
I stopped.
The mother dragon didn’t look at me, but I felt the shift in the room. A tightening. Not hostile. Not yet. But protective. Tense.
Then I saw it.
The shimmer around the egg had changed.
It wasn’t pulsing in steady waves anymore. It flickered now, uneven. Something inside had stirred, and the magic couldn’t decide how to hold it.
I moved to the edge of the carved line in the floor, careful not to cross it.
The mother dragon turned her head slowly and deliberately and fixed her gaze on me.
Everything in my body stilled.
Her eyes were the color of fall storms with gray, flecked with lightning, and they held something older than fear. Older than thought. She looked at me the way mountains might, if they could weigh your soul.
My breath caught in my throat.
“I won’t touch it,” I whispered. “I know better.”
The dragon blinked once.
Then she shifted her weight slightly, drawing closer to the egg.
Something was happening.
The egg glowed brighter for a moment, then dimmed. Then pulsed again—stronger. The flicker wasn’t fading. It was building.
I stared, unable to look away.
The egg was waking up.
And the mother was waiting. Watching.
Guarding.
My heart hammered as I took a step back, still within the circle but giving her space. The baby behind me chirped again, lower this time. Uneasy.
I reached behind slowly, resting one hand on the mossy bench where I usually sat. I needed to steady myself. The magic in the room had thickened. It clung to my skin like mist.
The egg pulsed again—then glowed.
The shimmer broke.
Just for a breath. A flicker of bare shell, no protection. I saw the glint of a scale beneath the surface.
The mother dragon growled low in her throat, a sound that vibrated through my bones as she moved to the egg.
Then the shimmer returned.
I let out a shaky breath.
“She’s hatching soon,” I whispered.
The mother dragon returned her gaze to the egg, curling her body tighter around it.
I took one slow step back, then another.
I had come for quiet for answers.
Instead, I had found a storm waiting in the shell of something new.
And whatever happened next…
The Academy would feel it. We all would.
The mother dragon didn’t take her eyes off the egg.
Even as the shimmer thickened again, surrounding the shell like a breathing veil, she didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The glow pulsed brighter than before, faded, and returned stronger. She was watching it the way a storm watches the sea. Not afraid, not even expectant—just present . Immovable. Fierce.
I stayed where I was, rooted at the edge of the carved circle that marked the safe space. My breath was shallow. My heart, quick. I could feel the magic gathering in the walls. The temperature of the chamber had changed. No longer warm, but vital. Every breath I drew in tasted like change.
Then, slowly, the dragon shifted.
Just a small movement—her great head lowering, her wings pressing tighter against her flanks. And then, with a gentleness that made my throat ache, she nosed something from the nest toward me.
A red crystal.
It was shaped like a tear. Smooth, perfectly formed. It shimmered faintly with the same soft glow that lived in the egg, but deeper. Warmer. Like embers banked in ash. It slid across the stone floor with barely a sound, stopping shy of the circle’s edge.
I didn’t move.
I just stared.
The dragon didn’t push it again. She didn’t move at all after that. She only watched the egg, letting the crystal sit there in the space between us. Waiting.
And slowly, I understood.
She wanted me to take it.
I took a step forward.
The air around the crystal tingled slightly as I reached for it. I bent slowly, heart in my throat, and scooped it into my hands.
It was warm.
Not just warmed-by-the-floor warm. It pulsed with its heat, its rhythm. I could feel it under my fingers like a second heartbeat. Alive in a way that had nothing to do with breath or blood.
I held it close to my chest, still crouched, staring at the dragon.
“Why me?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer, of course. But somehow, I knew.
Because this was bigger than me.
Bigger than her.
Bigger than the Academy, even.
Whatever was about to happen, whatever was coming , it was already in motion. The egg would hatch. The Butterfly Ward would heal or fall. The curse would rise or break. And I would have to stand in the middle of all of it.
Not because I had asked to.
But because I was in the middle of it. Chosen not by destiny, blood, or prophecy, but by every step since I first opened that cottage door and walked into a world I didn’t know would ask everything of me.
The red crystal vibrated once against my palm.
I closed my fingers around it, letting its warmth spread up my arm, down into my bones.
And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t shrink from what it meant.
I didn’t ask why me again.
I just stood.
Not as someone uncertain.
Not as someone pretending.
But as myself.
And then I realized what my role in all of this was.
The mother dragon watched, protected, but most importantly, she waited.
As headmistress, my role was to watch and protect, but most importantly, wait until the Academy or the students needed me.
Whatever this crystal was, whatever it was meant for, I would carry it. I would trust that the dragon knew something I didn’t. That the magic inside this stone, inside me, was ready.
Then I bowed my head, just slightly, to the mother dragon.
And turned to go.
As I stepped back down the corridor, toward the hidden door and the world waiting just outside it, I didn’t feel small anymore.
The fear was still there.
But belief had found its way in beside it.