Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Three days pass, and each one arrives heavier than the last.
Arlo is recovering slowly, but fully, the healers say, though he remains under careful watch, forbidden from leaving his bed.
The palace around him doesn't share the luxury of rest. A seemingly endless stream of messengers—most of them carrying bad news—come and go at all hours.
The guards stand straighter, the servants are tense, and a particular stillness has overtaken much of the place, as if it's holding its breath, anticipating worse things to come.
I try to stay as informed as possible. Reave briefs me regularly on his meetings, his movements beyond the city walls, the shape of the threats pressing in from every direction.
He answers every question I ask without flinching.
No more secrets between us, regardless of how grim the information.
We're equals. He was serious about that promise, it turns out.
Even so, I can't stand at his side as often as I'd like to.
There are things only I can do, and the window to do them is narrowing.
My understanding of dragons and their magic—of Sesca, of the bond between us—still feels dangerously thin, far from the stable foundation I need to face everything ahead of us.
If I'm going to keep myself from becoming someone else's weapon, if there's any chance of helping Arlo before this unravels entirely, I have to stay focused on what I can control.
The curse. That's what I’m going to control, I’ve decided. It's the most specific purpose I've had since arriving in Mouren, and I cling to that, appreciating it the way I used to appreciate clear and detailed job assignments.
Every day, I wake up eager to find Sesca and get to work.
Briar joins me, just as she has with almost every other job I’ve ever taken on.
Kestrel often shows up, too—I think she's grateful to have something to focus on aside from worrying about her brothers.
They're becoming such regulars that Sesca now trusts them enough to occasionally speak to them along with me, which makes it much easier to have productive conversations and work through problems without losing anything in translation. Less lonely, too.
Today, they're both already waiting when I make my way into the yard.
Sesca is reclining lazily on her side, recovering from what looks to have been a giant feast of bones, judging by the huge, empty basket Briar has at her feet.
Kestrel is busy rubbing the dragon's neck, a distant, contemplative look in her dark blue eyes.
I come to a stop in front of Sesca, crossing my arms and tilting my head. “You're turning into a giant, spoiled house cat.”
Can house cats do this? she inquires, rather smugly—and a moment later violent heat explodes in my chest.
I hastily direct the fiery energy down my arm and out through the tips of my fingers, sending a spinning javelin of flame into the ground along the nearby creek. It sizzles and dies in the mud, leaving behind a faint black scar.
“Okay,” I say, dryly. “You're marginally more useful than a house cat.”
“Particularly if you enjoy setting things on fire,” Briar adds with a grin.
Sesca's reply to this is to send a surge of water coursing through me, which I promptly spin into a swirling orb and dump on Briar's head.
“Or drowning things,” Briar mutters, wringing out her hair. “Clearly, you're more balanced than I gave you credit for. Apologies.”
The dragon snorts in response before rolling onto her feet, taking several quick bounds, and then smoothly launching into the sky.
We watch her soaring for a while, enjoying the strong, warm breeze, before Kestrel asks, “If she can pull energy for spells from the world around us, couldn’t she potentially pull out whatever makes up our curse?”
I shake my head; I already asked this same question yesterday.
Sesca swoops back to us, landing as gracefully as she took off, and fixes her gaze on the princess as she explains further. The rot that infests your bloodline is not of divine origin, unlike the elements. I have no control over it. I can't even sense it properly.
“It's of human origin, right?” Kestrel says, after a moment of thought. “Something corrupted and unintended by the gods, so not something you could readily see and understand. But…” Her icy gaze slides toward me. “You're human, right?”
“Last I checked.”
She continues as though I haven't spoken, her eyes returning to Sesca. “A link between the divine and earthly realms…that's what a Flamebound essentially is, right? So maybe Arowyn could sense what you can't.”
Sesca doesn't immediately reply, her tail swishing back and forth in that slightly agitated way it does when she doesn't have a precise answer to give.
“It's an interesting thought,” I say, slowly. “I don't know that I could control it, either, but I do think I can sense it.”
The princess's eyes brighten with possibility.
“Or, at least, I've always been able to tell when Reave is accessing the power the curse gives him, or when it's overtaking him. And I felt it the night Arlo transformed, too—an odd, cold sensation that shot through me right before he turned back into a human. Sort of like magic, but…wrong.”
“Sensing it seems like the first step, at least,” Briar says, looking hopeful.
Sesca's tail is still slowly swiping back and forth, and her eyes seem to be a darker, more solid and guarded gold when I look up to meet them.
“Could you teach me how you gather the energy from the world?” I ask quickly, before I lose my nerve. “Maybe I can do something similar with whatever I sense in Reave and the others.”
She exhales a soft breath, along with an odd, whispery sound that makes the grass in front of her wilt. Warmth tingles through me, an odd combination of comfort and warning.
This is dangerous, she says, and I suspect she's put up walls again so that only I can hear her.
I don't care, I think in response. Doing nothing is even more dangerous.
Several tense moments pass. She lets out another whispery note, blinking and lifting her face to the sun.
She still doesn't tell me how to gather the energy from the world around us.
But then she begins to show me.
The skin around my eyes—not just my scarred eye, but both—feels tight and warm, like it's stretching to accommodate something larger than simple sight.
I blink, hard, and when I open my eyes again, I'm facing a yard that's suddenly swarmed with color.
Everything pulses gently around its edges: the grass is a vivid, living green threaded with gold; the stone of the palace walls is laced with pale silver veins; the creek shimmers with waves of cool blue light.
In the air itself, loose and floating like dandelions in the breeze, are wisps of all these different colors and more.
Breathe in, Sesca commands, and I do, and those glowing wisps pull toward us, weaving together and then separating again, rising and falling in a mesmerizing dance.
Watching it makes me feel like I’m standing at the beginning of time itself, watching the gods and their dragons knit the world together thread by luminous thread.
I don't think it's actually me that's drawing the energy in—it's her—but it illustrates her point well enough.
As easy as breathing? I wonder.
With enough practice, she replies. But her tone is guarded, and words of caution follow close behind. The rot in them is likely burrowed far deeper than this, however. My eyes can't see it. I don't know how yours could. Sensing it alone might not be enough to safely take hold of it.
I can feel the frustration building in her, the fear, the words she can't bring herself to say. She doesn't like not knowing how to help me.
I lean against her foreleg, giving the smooth scales a reassuring rub. I haven't been able to see properly for years, I remind her. I'm very good at figuring things out and feeling my way through.
She restlessly kneads the dirt with her claws, a low, unhappy rumbling in her chest. But then she curls her tail around and lets the feathered tip of it gingerly pat and plop on top of my head.
It's a little gesture of affection she sometimes does, particularly when her affection is tinged with exasperation—as it often is toward me.
My vision slowly returns to normal. The world seems unbearably, depressingly drab for a long moment afterward. Blinking the last of the divine brightness from my eyes, I tell the others what she's shown me, and we continue to discuss theories and what little we know and understand.
“Is there a way Arowyn could practice this?” Briar wonders.
“She could try sensing and manipulating whatever lies in me,” Kestrel offers.
I hesitate only a moment before deciding it's worth a try.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, feeling for something like what I sensed on the night of Arlo’s transformation—that cold, wrong-feeling current.
There's something faintly similar in Kestrel, I think. But when I open my eyes to see if it might have manifested as glowing wisps or otherwise, there’s nothing there. Disappointment shoots through me, my focus slips, and all awareness of what might be the curse goes with it.
I close my eyes and try again, but the result is the same.
Again and again I try, but I never manage to see or grab hold of anything.
After several minutes of this, I give up, shaking my head.
“Reave told me you never really use magic,” I recall.
“So the curse likely hasn’t spread as much in you.
Which is why I don't think there's enough for me to grab hold of. Maybe if I had more experience spotting it, it would be different, but...”
Kestrel frowns, hugging her arms around herself and bowing her head in thought.
I look toward the palace, thinking of the frail prince, of how sad and anxious he must be, trapped in his room with no real understanding of why.