Chapter 5 Lysa
five
Lysa
The teacup slipped from my fingers for the second time that morning. I watched it tumble before shattering against the flagstones. Tea splashed across my boots. The ceramic shards scattered, and I stood there, staring at the mess, my treacherous hands still hovering where the cup had been.
Bloody hell.
“That’s the fourth cup this week.” Briony’s voice floated in from the doorway, deceptively light. “Should I start serving your tea in a bucket? Perhaps with a straw?”
“Hilarious.” I crouched to gather the shards, but my fingers refused to cooperate. They trembled against the flagstones, twitching like dying insects. When I tried to pinch a piece of broken handle, it skittered away from me. “Absolutely bloody hilarious.”
“I thought so.” She crossed the kitchen, her skirts swishing with that effortless grace I’d never managed to replicate. “Here, let me—“
“I can do it.”
“Clearly.” She crouched beside me anyway, sweeping the fragments into her palm. “Is this the tremors, or have you developed a vendetta against our dishware?”
The tremors. As if they were some minor inconvenience, like a head cold or a splinter.
They’d started as a faint quiver I’d dismissed as exhaustion.
By yesterday evening, I couldn’t thread a needle.
By this morning, I could barely manage buttons.
I flexed my fingers experimentally. The joints ached with a deep, bone-cold wrongness that made my teeth clench.
Using the Quieting gift had always cost something: numbness, stiffness, the frost-burn sensation that lingered for hours.
However, cold restraint had never been who I was.
It was what I learned in order to endure, but this felt like debt accumulating faster than I could repay it. I needed rest, a lot of rest.
The wyrmling needed me every few hours, though. Each time I laid my hands on those midnight scales, each time I poured my power into his fractured magic, I felt something in my own body give way. The magic drew from somewhere.
Temporary, I told myself. It’s temporary.
But my hands kept shaking.
“Your hands, Lysa.” Briony’s teasing tone had evaporated. She was watching me now with those green eyes, her brow furrowed. “They’re getting worse.”
“It’s only fatigue.” I pushed myself upright. “I haven’t been sleeping well. The wyrmling wakes every few hours, and—“
“Don’t.” She set the collected shards on the counter, then turned to face me fully. “Don’t do that thing where you pretend everything’s fine while you’re falling apart. I hate that thing.”
“What thing? I don’t have a thing.”
“You absolutely have a thing. It’s your most annoying one.” She stepped closer, reaching for my wrist. I pulled back, but she was faster. Her fingers closed around my forearm, and she turned my hand palm-up.
The tremor was visible now. A constant, fine vibration that made my fingers dance without my permission. Against Briony’s steady grip, the contrast was damning.
“Lysa.”
“It’s temporary.” The words came out sharper than I intended. “The sustained magical contact is taxing. But once the wyrmling stabilises fully, I’ll be able to rest properly, and—“
“And if he doesn’t stabilise?” She wasn’t letting go of my wrist. “You’ve been Quieting him every three hours for two days. How long can you keep this up before your hands stop working entirely?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
The truth was, I didn’t know. The Academy texts covered standard Creaturae Arts exhaustion, the muscle fatigue from restraining thrashing patients, the minor burns from accidental dragonfire exposure.
But my gift wasn’t standard. There were no chapters on what happened when you poured your magic into a creature three times daily, when you reached inside their fractured power and held it together with nothing but will and frost-bitten fingers.
The wyrmling found me before I could argue further.
He came barrelling around the corner from the kennel, his claws scrabbling against the flagstones, and slammed his head into my chest. The impact knocked me back a step.
His scales burned through my blouse, fever-hot, and that desperate keening sound rose from his throat, the one that meant now, now, please now.
“Easy.” I cupped my hands around his skull, sliding my fingers into the groove behind his jaw where the scales grew softer. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”
His whole body shuddered against mine. The intervals were shortening. Yesterday, he’d managed four hours between episodes. This morning, barely two. Now it had been less than ninety minutes since I’d last Quieted him, and already the madness was clawing its way back to the surface.
I sank to my knees and the wyrmling followed me down, pressing closer, until his snout was buried against my sternum and his wings mantled around us both like a desperate embrace.
“Briony,” I said. “Give us a moment.”
She hesitated in the doorway. I heard her intake of breath, the protest forming on her tongue. Then her footsteps retreated, and the door clicked shut.
Good. She didn’t need to see this. I closed my eyes and reached.
The Quieting poured down my arms in a rush. The wyrmling’s magic thrashed against mine. I pushed deeper, wrapping my will around those jagged edges, smoothing them down, down, until—
The infirmary’s lanterns flickered, then dimmed, then shifted to an eerie, underwater blue that made the shadows stretch long and strange. The wyrmling lifted his head from my chest. His amber eyes, still fever-bright, fixed on something behind me.
The hairs on my arms stood upright. A letter rested on the examination table.
Heavy parchment, edges crisp, sealed with dark wax that gleamed wetly in the blue-tinged light.
The table had been empty, I was certain of it.
I’d wiped it down myself not ten minutes ago, cleared away the bone-saw and the stained cloths and the bowl of cold water I’d used to check the wyrmling’s reflection.
Nothing had been there, and now something was.
I rose slowly, the wyrmling still pressed against my thigh.
The seal caught the strange light and threw it back in fragments: a dragon coiled around a lightning bolt, its scales rendered in precise detail, jaws open around the crackling strike.
If I remembered correctly, that was the Stormgarde sigil.
Strangely, the wax was still warm when I touched it.
I cracked the seal, curious to read the letter. The handwriting was beautiful.
Miss Emberlin,
I write to you regarding a matter of mutual benefit, though I confess the formal language feels inadequate for what I must ask.
I am dying.
Not quickly, perhaps. But the curse that has consumed my household these past years has begun consuming me as well. My condition worsens daily. The episodes grow longer, the periods of clarity shorter. I am told you have a gift that might help.
I do not know how long I have left.
My throat tightened.
What I propose is this: a formal magical union.
Marriage in the legal and arcane sense, binding our households together.
In exchange, I offer immediate payment of your family’s debts: all of them, including those your father has not yet confessed to you.
I offer access to the Stormgarde library, which contains texts on creature magic that the Academy has long since restricted from general study.
I offer resources for your research, funding for your infirmary, and the protection of my name.
What I ask in return is your presence and your gift. I will not pretend this is a romantic proposal, but I am told that you are not easily swayed by romantic endeavors.
I hope they are right.
If you refuse, I will understand. The letter will burn itself within the hour, and you may forget this offer was ever made.
The script faltered here. A single word had been crossed out, then rewritten, then crossed out again. I couldn’t make out what it had been. It could have been Please.
Lord Fenrik Stormgarde
Something slipped from between the pages as I turned to the signature. A pressed flower, fell into my palm. It was a Moonflower. In Lumenvale tradition, moonflower meant truth in darkness. It meant I am showing you what I hide from everyone else. It also meant believe me.
The wyrmling pressed harder against my leg, a low sound building in his chest. I looked at the letter again. It promised my family the salvation they were waiting for and for me a trap around my throat.
The letter trembled in my grip. I read it again, slower this time, letting each word settle.
Marriage. A formal magical union with a lord I’d never met, in exchange for my family’s survival.
The moonflower’s faint glow pulsed against my palm.
The wyrmling whined and pressed his snout harder against my thigh.
His scales had cooled slightly, the Quieting holding for now, but I could feel the wrongness building beneath the surface again.
The front door crashed open.
“Lysa!” Maren’s voice preceded her into the infirmary. “Lysa, where are you? I need to—oh, there you are.”
She stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, and her colorful headwrap askew.
I’d never seen Maren run anywhere. She moved through the world with the unhurried grace of someone who knew the tea would steep in its own time.
But now her brown skin gleamed with sweat, and her hands twisted in her apron.
“Maren?” I folded the letter quickly, tucking it into my pocket. “What’s wrong?”
“Lady Kelda.” She crossed the room in three long strides. “Lady Kelda has been asking about you. Specifically.”
I remembered the gossip at the Teapot, hearing the name in a conversation there.
“What do you mean, asking about me?”