Chapter 3
three
Lysa
Morning came with light filtering through the windows and the sound of my father’s cough from downstairs. I dragged myself upright, peeled off yesterday’s clothes, and pulled on clean trousers and a blouse that smelled only faintly of potions.
The infirmary looked different in daylight.
Less cramped, somehow. Weak sunlight turned the rows of glass jars into prisms, scattering rainbow fragments across the examination tables.
The copper distillation apparatus my mother had used gleamed on its shelf, polished to brightness by my father’s hands.
Bundles of dried sage and moonpetal hung from the ceiling beams.
I moved through the space automatically, checking the fire in the brazier, arranging surgical instruments on their tray, pulling fresh linen from the cabinet. The morning routine settled my own anxiety.
The front bell chimed. I was elbow-deep in scrubbing dried blood from a mortar when heavy footsteps crossed the threshold.
“Miss Emberlin?”
The voice was rough, and weathered. A stocky man in his fifties stood in the doorway.
Ginger hair was plastered to his skull. Burn scars twisted up his left arm from wrist to shoulder, the kind you earned from panicked drakes.
But it was the bundle in his arms that made my breath catch, warded cloth wrapped tight, smoking where something inside pressed against the fabric.
The bundle thrashed.
“Examination table.” I was already moving, shoving the mortar aside, grabbing restraints from the cabinet.
He crossed the room in three strides and laid the bundle down. The table rattled. Whatever was inside fought the cloth with strength, and the wards, expensive, well-crafted containment wards, flickered like candle flames in wind.
“He’s never calmed for anyone,” the man said. His hands shook as he unwrapped the first layer. “Not even Lord Stormgarde himself.”
Lord Stormgarde. The reclusive lord in his manor on the cliffs. The man who hadn’t been seen in Abberwyn proper in years. Whose creatures had started showing signs of magical instability months ago.
The final layer of cloth fell away. Midnight-blue scales. Silver markings along the spine like lightning frozen in place. A wyrmling, roughly the size of a large dog, all lean muscle and awkward juvenile proportions. Beautiful, if you could see past the wrongness.
Heat radiated from its skin, too much and feverish, making the air shimmer. Bloodshot eyes with flecks of molten gold rolled wildly. Its jaws snapped at nothing, revealing needle-sharp teeth. I pressed my hand to its flank.
The wyrmling screamed, a sound that shouldn’t come from something so small.
It twisted, its claws scrabbling against the table, tail whipping.
I caught its neck, holding firm while it bucked beneath my palm.
Behind the wyrmling’s thrashing form, visible only at the edge of my vision, I saw a shadow of wings.
Enormous wings that existed in the space between one breath and the next.
A double-exposure, a ghost-shape that shouldn’t be there at all.
My heart stuttered. The wyrmling wasn’t sick in the usual sort of way. Something was trying to come through.
The wyrmling lunged. I didn’t have time to flinch. It extended its claws, opening its jaws wide, and aimed straight for my throat. The man behind me shouted something. My hands moved on instinct, catching the creature mid-strike.
Cold slammed into me the instant we touched.
Not the gentle frost of the book-dragon yesterday.
This was ice water, arctic and vicious, lancing up my arms and into my shoulders.
My fingertips went numb. The room tilted sideways, walls bleeding into the floor, colours smearing together like wet paint.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see anything but blurred shapes and swimming light.
The wyrmling went still beneath my palms. For a heartbeat, nothing moved, then the creature made a sound I’d never heard a dragon make before, a sobbing, broken keen that vibrated through its entire body.
It twisted in my grip, but not to escape.
It burrowed under my chin, pressing its overheated skull against my throat, its scales scraping my skin.
The trembling started in its wings and spread outward until every part of it shook.
The heat should have burnt me. I’d felt dragonfire scorch flesh, and knew how badly those scales could sear.
But this didn’t burn. Its heartbeat hammered against my collarbone.
I felt the magic churning inside it like a trapped storm, wild and formless.
Every pulse sent another wave of cold through my arms, crawling up my elbows, settling into my bones.
And beneath the magic, beneath the heat and the wrongness, I felt terror. The poor wyrmling was drowning in fear.
“Easy,” I heard myself whisper. My voice sounded distant, muffled. “I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
Its claws dug into my shoulders like I was the only solid thing in the world. The sobbing keen quieted to rapid, desperate little huffs against my neck.
The man’s voice cut through the haze. “What in the—how did you—?”
I couldn’t answer. My hands were still numb. My vision hadn’t cleared. But the wyrmling stayed pressed against me, shaking, and I knew with absolute certainty that if I let it go, it would somehow break. The silver markings pulsed, I’d seen that light yesterday, in the dead drake’s veins.
“How long?” My fingers traced the base of its skull, searching for pressure points, checking for fever signs. The creature pressed harder against me, knocking me backwards.
“Three months. Maybe four.” The man, Thorven, his name came to me from town gossip, he couldn’t stop staring at the way the wyrmling clung to me. “Been getting worse since that lady started visiting again.”
“The lady?” I asked.
“Lady Kelda,” he continued. “Comes near-daily now. Always closeted with Lord Stormgarde in his study for hours at a time. This one,” he gestured at the creature trembling in my arms, “used to be the lord’s shadow.
He went everywhere with him. But ever since her visits started this year, he’s been wrong. Violent.”
My hand moved to the wyrmling’s chest, pressing gently. Its heartbeat hammered against my palm.
“Lord Stormgarde ordered him locked away after he attacked one of the sentinels.”
The wyrmling keened again, softer this time. I shifted my grip, supporting more of its weight, and it curled tighter, claws pricking through my blouse.
I tilted its head up, to check its eyes.
The pupils blew wide, then contracted to pinpoints so small I could barely see them.
Back and forth. Expanding and shrinking with no pattern I could follow.
My thumb found the soft scales behind its ear, and I started stroking in slow circles.
The creature shuddered, its entire body going liquid for a heartbeat before tensing again.
“What did she do when she visited?” I asked.
Thorven shifted his weight. “Don’t know really. Lord Stormgarde always sends the staff away. But I’ve seen her leaving. She looks... satisfied. And the wyrmling’s always worse after.”
I worked my way down the creature’s spine, counting vertebrae, checking each joint. The silver markings flared brighter under my touch. The wyrmling made a sound between a purr and a sob.
“How did Lady Kelda get involved with your master?” My hands moved without thinking, mapping the creature’s body.
“She’s been an old friend of the family, but lately she offered her services. Hearthcraft specialist, she said. Supposed to help stabilize the estate’s enchantments.” Thorven’s voice went flat. “Instead, everything’s falling apart.”
The wyrmling’s claws flexed against my shoulders. I pressed my cheek to the top of its head, feeling scales catch in my hair. Its trembling had lessened but hadn’t stopped.
“This isn’t illness,” I said.
“What is it, then?” Thorven asked.
I didn’t answer immediately. The wyrmling’s heartbeat had slowed under my palm, but the silver veins still pulsed beneath its scales.
“I don’t know. It’s something else.”
The creature made a small questioning sound against my throat.
“Let me keep him,” I said. “A day or two. See if the symptoms change when he’s away from the manor.”
Thorven’s scarred hands clenched into fists. “Lord Stormgarde won’t like it. He sent me to fetch help, not surrender his familiar.”
“Then tell him I need time to observe.” I stroked down the wyrmling’s spine again. It pressed harder against me. “If it’s connected to the estate’s enchantments like you said, distance might help me understand what we’re dealing with.”
The silence stretched. Finally, Thorven nodded.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The infirmary’s kennel sat in the back room, reinforced with iron bars and Hearthcraft wards that should have held anything short of a full-grown dragon. The wyrmling lay curled in the corner, his breathing shallow and rapid even in sleep.
At three in the morning, he started whimpering.
I pushed off the cot I’d dragged into the hallway and moved to the kennel door.
Through the bars, I could see the wyrmling thrashing weakly, his wings twitching against the stone floor.
His claws scraped at nothing. The silver markings along his spine pulsed erratically, bright then dim, bright then dim.
Then he started making broken, struggling, sounds, like something was trying to claw its way out through his throat. I unlocked the kennel and slipped inside.
The wyrmling didn’t wake. His eyes stayed closed, moving rapidly beneath the lids. Dreaming. Or trapped in something that looked like dreaming. I knelt beside him, reached out to stroke his neck.
Movement caught my eye. The water bowl sat in the corner where I’d left it hours ago. The surface was still, mirror-smooth. And in that reflection –
My hand froze. The wyrmling’s scales looked different in the reflection. An oily shimmer overlay the midnight-blue, like a film of something viscous coating his true form. The silver markings writhed in the reflection, alive and serpentine rather than static.
I looked at the creature beside me. It had normal midnight-blue scales, with silver markings fixed and beautiful. Exactly as they’d been all day.
My gaze dropped back to the water bowl, where the reflection showed that darkness again. That wrongness superimposed over his body like a second skin. And beneath it, barely visible, the wyrmling’s true form seemed smaller.
The wyrmling whimpered again. I reached out and pressed my palm to his flank. He curled into my touch without waking, shivering despite the fever-heat radiating from his scales. In the water’s reflection, the dark shimmer rippled almost like it was trying to pull away from my hand.