Chapter Four Claire #2
Surprise lit her face. She released me. I turned to run, but she grabbed my wrist so fast that I dropped the jewelry box. She took the opportunity to force a packet of powder into my hand.
“Don’t run from help,” she lectured. “This sedative will keep you unconscious through the Ignition.”
My breath caught. “This will keep me human?”
“Sleep powder is not a cure, and it is a rare drug. You will find the doses you need only on the black market,” she explained. “But if you memorize the celestial events calendar and take this precise dose before each Ignition Day, you won’t turn.”
My hands shook as I considered the powder. If what she said was true, I needed more. I needed to frequent the black market for the rest of my life.
“How do you know this?” I asked, but her drifting gaze spoke her story. The girl in chains possessed Anne-Sophie’s hazel eyes, her high cheekbones. “She’s your daughter,” I realized. “But why didn’t this powder save her?”
“It did. Until—” Her expression stiffened, and she shook her head. “It is merely a way to remain in human form. Your choices will dictate whether you survive in the long run,” she said instead.
“But how—”
“Steal. Join the Dames Blanches and take back the life Diu stole from you.”
“The Dames Blanches help dragons hide?”
“No.” She squeezed my fingers so hard, I flinched. “If you join us, we will help you survive, just as we help each other, no questions asked. However, you must keep your curse a secret. Even from our sisters.”
“Why? You’re helping me now.”
“I am the exception, not the rule.” She looked to the blood-smeared dock, where her daughter had fallen. “To be a sister to the Dames Blanches, you must be viewed as human first.”
After that, Anne-Sophie taught me everything I know. How to wear various masks to manipulate my targets. How to find sleep powder dealers. How to find a fellow Dame Blanche. Once, when we drank to the bottom of a bottle of wine I stole, she finally told me how her daughter had been caught.
“Leah’s first Ignition happened three months before étienne took her,” Anne-Sophie mumbled, cheek against the tavern’s table. “I tried everything to suppress her magic. Sleep powder kept her hidden for a time, but he learned about her curse eventually.”
Tipsy, I struggled for words. Watching stone-faced Anne-Sophie unravel made me feel sicker than a green sailor.
“How did he find her?” I asked.
“Leah was so proud that she’d regained her life. She revealed her secret to her favorite sister, believing she would find support.” Her voice broke on the last word. “That sister sold her identity to étienne in exchange for a cut of the bounty.”
My skin prickled with awareness of the sisters around us. Sparse as the late-night crowd was, the tavern was a Dames Blanches hideout. Who else wouldn’t hesitate to sell out a dragon sister like me?
“Where is that sister now?” I whispered.
Anne-Sophie’s bloodshot eyes found mine. “With Leah.”
My stomach churned with understanding. In the short time since I’d met her, my savior had become someone else’s killer. I didn’t know how to reconcile that, so I drank while Anne-Sophie spoke of another hope she might have followed, had Leah not been captured.
The journal of dragon slayer Abel Estellio.
My horse’s ears flick forward. I follow his attention beyond the line of trees, to the local cemetery, but it’s just a funeral.
Townspeople gather together, dressed in black.
Fresh plots darken the ground. A cardinal in a green worship robe and a twin-suns brooch offers words of comfort to the victims’ families.
Coins clink as low-level priests—the clergy without a brooch—pass donation trays through the crowd.
They’re preying on fear of Diu under the guise of promoting generosity. Disgusting.
“Where to next?” I ask.
“Once we reach Bourlin’s town limit, we should see a fork in the road,” Abel says. “We’ll go left.”
“I found the dragon!” a woman shrieks.
Abel halts his mare, which pulls the lead line between us taut.
I tense in the saddle, forced to watch as the mourners descend upon a cowering man.
But that poor man can’t be a dragon. He’s a survivor.
His burns are visible from here. If he were a dragon in human form, his injuries would have magically healed.
“Heathen!”
“Greedy scum!”
“Pin him down!”
Gendarmes race to the scene with muskets raised. They scream at the man—the victim—to stay down.
I can’t afford to watch. If any Diu-fearing person uncovers my secret, they won’t care that I’m a daughter who loved her papa.
A horse trainer who tended to any newborn foal round the clock and fell asleep in the hay with its head on my lap.
They’ll scorn the fact that even with the self-inflicted dragon-claw scars down my cheek, I look in the mirror and love myself.
I kick my horse forward. Abel halts again.
“Leave them be,” I say. “The Gendarmerie will sort it out.”
“The violence will stop immediately if a slayer intervenes.”
“Angry mobs aren’t that easy to appease.”
“They’re just afraid. If I tell them that man isn’t dragon cursed, it’ll put everyone back on a proper moral trajectory.”
I shake my head. The na?veté of this boy, I swear.
“Humans don’t magically contract amoral behavior just because a dragon appears. It’s not a disease,” I reply. “Those people are choosing violence because they want violence. You can’t change them.”
“But—”
“Even if a slayer’s word can spread peace, do you really think they’ll find comfort in you?”
His jaw clenches. Shame turns his gaze downward. Good. As much as I dislike prodding at people’s insecurities, my safety comes first.
“If you really want to lead by example, start by interrogating yourself.” I cluck the horses forward. “Otherwise, let people reap what they sow.”