Chapter 7 Lysa #2
Fenrik’s grey eyes darkened, the pupils blowing wide. His gaze dragged over my face, lingering on my lips, and for a terrifying second, I thought he might lean down and devour me. I wanted him to. Gods help me, I wanted his hands on my waist instead of the window frame.
He shifted, his thigh brushing against my hip. I gasped, the sound loud in the silence.
Fenrik flinched back as if burned. “The latch is secure,” he said.
“Good,” I managed, my voice breathless and unfamiliar. “I’d hate for the bed to escape in the night.”
“The wardrobe contains appropriate attire.” Fenrik gestured. “Mrs. Crane took the liberty of preparing a selection.”
I crossed to the wardrobe and pulled it open. Silks and velvets in deep jewel tones hung in neat rows, more gowns than I’d owned in my entire life combined. My fingers brushed against emerald damask, wine-coloured satin, midnight blue wool.
“These are...” I turned back to him. “I can’t accept—“
“You can wear them or not, I don’t really care. I wanted to make sure you have what to wear and don’t feel forced to walk around naked.” A corner of his mouth ticked up. “Mrs. Crane will bring linens. Try not to get lost in them.”
Fenrik jerked back, tripping over his own feet in his haste to put distance between us. Two spots of colour burned high on his cheekbones.
“I’ll leave you to settle in.” He was already backing toward the door. He fled.
There was no other word for it. Lord Fenrik Stormgarde, master of Stormgarde Manor, eccentric and recluse, fled from my bedroom like his coat-tails were on fire. Well, that went well. I started unpacking my clothes. There was no way I would wear the gowns in that wardrobe.
The wyrmling had spent the morning plastered to my side, refusing to let me out of his sight for more than a few seconds.
Every time I tried to set him down, he’d make a pitiful keening sound that made my heart clench.
So I’d given up and worked around him, checking his vitals with one hand while he wrapped his tail around my wrist.
His scales had cooled, the fevered heat fading to something closer to normal dragon-warmth. The silver sparks no longer crackled along his spine when he moved. Progress. Small, fragile progress that I didn’t dare trust yet.
I was in the drawing room, the wyrmling dozing in my lap while I reviewed notes on curse-adjacent magical maladies, when the door swept open and a woman entered like a queen gracing her subjects with an audience.
Her blonde hair was coiled in elaborate braids threaded with silver, catching the lamplight like a crown.
Her Hearthcrafter robes were green silk with silver embroidery that probably cost more than my family’s yearly income.
She moved like she was dancing a choreography, using a basket of supplies hooked over one arm as kind of elegant prop.
“Fenrik, darling.” Her voice was warm. “I’ve brought those healing tonics we discussed.”
I hadn’t heard Fenrik enter behind her, but there he was, shadows under his eyes darker than yesterday, his posture rigid as he watched her set crystal vials on the side table. The wyrmling stirred in my lap, a low growl building in his throat.
Then those pale green eyes found me. “And you must be Miss Emberlin.” Her smile stretched wider, revealing perfect teeth. “Oh, pardon me. Lady Stormgarde now, isn’t it? How delightful.”
I set my notes aside, one hand steadying the wyrmling. “You must be Lady Morvain.”
“Kelda, please. I’ve been helping dear Fenrik research his condition for years.“ She turned to him and laid her hand on his arm. “We’re practically family.” Fenrik flinched. Then his face went smooth. His shoulders relaxed into her grip as though the flinch had never happened.
“You look better today, Fenrik.” Kelda’s thumb stroked along his forearm, and her smile widened even more. For a moment, the air around her hands seemed to blur.
I became acutely aware of how I must look. Hair escaping its tie. Ink stains on my fingers. Wearing my own practical clothes instead of the silks in the wardrobe. A commoner playing at nobility with a dragon in her lap.
And then Fenrik’s eyes met mine. His gaze dragged down my body with an intensity that made my skin prickle, lingering on my throat, my collarbones, the swell of my breasts beneath my linen shirt.
When his attention climbed back to my face, silver flickered in those storm-cloud depths.
My thighs pressed together involuntarily.
The ache from last night returned with a vengeance, pooling hot in my belly.
Kelda’s fingers tightened on his arm. “The tonics should help with the episodes,” she said, and something in her voice had sharpened. “Though I wonder if perhaps you’re overtaxing yourself, darling. The strain of entertaining a guest ...”
“Wife,” I heard myself say. “The contract was quite specific.”
Kelda’s smile didn’t waver, but her eyes went flat. “Of course. How modern.”
The wyrmling growled louder, his claws pricking through my trousers. I stroked his spine to soothe him, and Fenrik’s gaze tracked the movement of my hand.
Jealous, I realised with a start. He’s jealous of his own familiar. This idea shouldn’t have sent heat flooding through me. It absolutely shouldn’t have made my nipples tighten against my bodice.
Kelda was still talking, something about research and ley-lines, but I couldn’t focus.
Not with Fenrik’s hungry gaze burning holes through my clothes.
Not with the wrongness of that flinch echoing in my mind.
Something was very, very wrong here. My stomach churned, whether from jealousy or genuine wrongness, I couldn’t say.
Kelda departed with air kisses and promises to return tomorrow.
The door hadn’t fully closed behind her before I was on my feet, the wyrmling protesting with a sleepy chirp as I displaced him from my lap.
“What was that?”
Fenrik was already moving toward the sideboard, putting furniture between us. “Lady Morvain is a family friend. She’s been invaluable in researching—“
“You flinched when she touched you.”
He went still. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You flinched. And then you didn’t. Like someone had smoothed it away.” I stepped closer, and he retreated another pace. “What’s in those vials she brought?”
“Healing tonics. As she said.”
“For what, specifically?”
His jaw tightened. “What are you trying to say? That you think she’s poisoning me? That is so presumptuous!”
“I’m your contracted healer. Everything about your health is my concern.”
“You’re here because your gift eased the condition of my creatures.” He turned away, busying himself with papers on the desk. “Lady Morvain is schooled in treating people. She has been treating me for years.”
The dismissal stung more than it should have. I pressed on anyway. “And the restricted areas? The ley-line chamber? If I’m meant to help you and your creatures, I need to understand.”
“You need to understand nothing beyond what I permit you to understand.” His voice had gone cold. “The tour outlined your boundaries quite clearly.”
“Boundaries. Right.” I crossed the room in three quick strides, stopping just short of the desk. “You brought me here because your magic is failing. Because the creatures are suffering and you can’t help them. You said you were dying. Let me help then.”
He didn’t look up from his papers. “You are helping, within appropriate limits.”
“Appropriate limits.” I stepped around the desk, invading the distance he maintained. He backed into the wall. Good. “Stop locking me out of half the house and treating me like a servant. I’m not here to wash your damned socks.”
His head snapped up. This close, I could see the shadows moving beneath his collar, the silver threading through his eyes. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Then tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I brought you here because I am desperate, Lysa, not reckless,” he said. “There are things in this manor that could kill you. Creatures whose instability makes my wyrmling look tame. And the ley-line ...” He stopped himself, jaw clenching so hard I heard his teeth grind.
“The ley-line what?”
“I will not be responsible for your death simply because you’re curious.”
“Curious.” I laughed. “You think this is curiosity? Your familiar nearly died in my arms. I felt his pain like it was my own. I felt yours.“ I jabbed a finger at his chest. “Something is very wrong here, and you’re too busy building walls to see it.”
His hand caught my wrist. The leather of his glove was warm from his skin, and the contact sent a jolt through me. His pupils dilated, nostrils flaring as he inhaled sharply.
“You felt...” His thumb pressed against my pulse. “What exactly did you feel?”
My heart hammered against his touch. “Enough to know you’re not telling me everything.”
“And did you notice,” I said carefully, “when she touched you earlier?”
He frowned. “Touched me?”
We were too close. His breath ghosted across my cheek, carrying that maddening scent of ink and spice. The shadows under his collar writhed, and I watched them creep higher, curling toward his jaw. His grip on my wrist tightened.
“You should step back,” he said. His eyes flashed pure silver.
A heavy thud made us both jump. A book had fallen from the shelf across the room, landing open on the floor between us. Neither of us had touched it. Neither of us had been anywhere near it. Fenrik released my wrist like I’d burned him.
I crossed to the fallen volume, crouching to examine it.
The pages had fallen open to an illustrated diagram, beautifully detailed despite its age.
Two figures stood connected by flowing lines of gold and silver, a human and a dragon, their magical signatures intertwined.
The text beneath read: On the Resonance Between Bonded Pairs: How Trust and Proximity Strengthen the Ethereal Connection.
I looked up to find him staring at the illustration with an expression I couldn’t read. Hunger and fear and something almost like hope, all tangled together.
“The house wants us to trust each other.” I straightened, holding the book against my chest. “Maybe you should listen to it.”
“The house,” he said slowly, “has been making increasingly poor decisions lately.” In the wall behind me, a pipe groaned.
The bed swallowed me whole. I lay in the centre of that ridiculous mattress, surrounded by pillows and quilts that smelled of lavender and cedar, and felt like a single grain of rice lost in a banquet bowl.
The painted trees swayed in the lamplight, their yellow blossoms seeming to flutter with each gust of wind against the windows.
Beautiful. Peaceful. A cage lined with silk and fading murals.
On the bedside table, the marriage contract sat folded beneath a silver inkwell.
Lady Lysa Stormgarde. The words had dried the day before, but they still felt wet on my tongue, foreign and ill-fitting.
I’d worn Emberlin my whole life, carried it like a second skin through the infirmary’s cramped rooms, through the Academy’s cold corridors, through every whispered warning about my unnatural gift.
Now I was meant to shed it for a name that belonged to portraits with disapproving eyes and a manor that breathed beneath my feet.
The wyrmling was curled at the foot of the bed, his midnight scales rising and falling.
He’d refused to sleep in the creature sanctuary, had keened so pitifully when Thorven tried to carry him away that I’d relented.
Now his warmth seeped through the quilts, a small comfort in this vast, strange room.
I should feel grateful. Debts paid. Family safe. Access to research that might finally help me understand my gift. Instead, I felt observed. The house’s attention pressed against my skin, curious and patient.
Someone was playing a piano, the notes climbing and falling in a melody that made my chest tighten.
I sat up slowly, careful not to disturb the wyrmling, and pressed my ear against the cold plaster.
Was that coming from the music room? The one Fenrik had gestured toward without explanation, the door locked?
Around me, the manor’s timbers groaned. It sounded much like a sigh.
The house was mourning something. Or someone. Who are you mourning, House?