Chapter 10 Lysa
ten
Lysa
Ahigh-pitched keening dragged me from sleep and threw me into panic. Kirion was a blur of violence against the side of the bed. In the moonlight, he looked like a creature unmaking itself. His small body convulsed, his spine arching so hard I swore I heard vertebrae popping.
“Kirion!” I called.
Foam bubbled at his jaws, thick sludge that dripped onto the floor and hissed, eating right through the varnish. The air in the room was suffocating. He thrashed now, his claws gouging deep furrows into the oak, his eyes rolled back so far only the whites showed, veined with glowing crimson.
I dropped to my knees, and it felt like standing before an open furnace door, searing the skin of my face, but I reached for him anyway.
“I’ve got you,” I said, though he couldn’t hear me over his own choking. “I’m here.”
My hands hovered for a split second, the heat was intense enough to blister, but I shoved my fear down and clamped my hands onto his shoulders.
Pain hissed against my palms. His scales were burning hot.
I clamped my teeth together to stifle a cry, my fingers digging into the burning muscle, anchoring him to me.
Then the door crashed open rattling the windowpanes in their frames.
Fenrik stood on the threshold looking disheveled.
He was half-dressed, his white shirt was hanging open, the buttons torn or forgotten in his haste.
It revealed the expanse of his chest, where the curse was devouring him.
Silver veins pulsed beneath his skin, branching across his pectorals and disappearing down the ripple of his stomach.
He looked like a man being eaten alive from the inside out.
He gripped the doorframe, his knuckles white with the force of his restraint.
His breathing came in ragged tears, his chest heaving with a rhythm that was all wrong.
“Get back!”
The words came out distorted, layering a growl over his human speech.
Shadows warped around him, peeling away from the corners of the room to pool at his feet.
They stretched toward me, sliding over the floorboards.
I froze. My hands were still pressed to the burning scales of the wyrmling, but my eyes were locked on Fenrik.
I should have been terrified. A rational woman would have scrambled for the window or the far corner.
“Stay away from him—stay away from me,“ he choked out. He took a stumbling step forward, then braced himself against the wall, his head bowing. Sweat slicked his skin, making the silver light under his flesh shimmer. “When I lose control, I’ve hurt people before. Don’t let me...”
Kirion shrieked beneath my hands, a sound of pure agony that mirrored the torment etched onto Fenrik’s face. The connection between them snapped into focus, a visible tether of suffering. But I couldn’t look away from Fenrik.
The fear was there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was tangled with something else.
There was a raw, devastating beauty in his unraveling.
The sheer power radiating off him hit me, heating my blood.
I watched a bead of sweat track down the column of his throat, over the glowing veins, vanishing beneath the waistband of his dark trousers. My mouth went dry.
“Fenrik,” I breathed. He lifted his head. His eyes were no longer grey. They were molten silver.
“Run, Lysa,” he snarled.
But the shadows reached the hem of my nightgown, caressing the fabric, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The monster in him was calling to the monster in me, the silence I kept locked away in my veins. And Gods help me, I wanted to answer.
The shadows licked at my ankles, but Kirion’s scream cut through whatever madness had gripped me. I wrenched my attention back to the wyrmling and slammed both hands flat against his heaving chest.
Ice flooded up my arms, while my palms seared against his fever-hot scales. I gasped, my spine bowing backward with the force of the connection, my head tipping back. A sound escaped me, something between a cry and a moan, as the opposing temperatures warred through my nervous system.
I didn’t let go. The magic inside Kirion was a hurricane, shrieking and slashing at everything it touched. I could feel it now, that wrongness I’d sensed before, something foreign wrapped around his natural flame. It fought me, it clawed at my consciousness with silver talons. Still, I commanded.
I poured everything I had, not the careful, measured doses my father had taught me.
My vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping in.
Sweat slicked my skin, plastering my thin nightgown to my body.
I was dimly aware of how I must look, back arched, chest heaving, fingers splayed against the creature’s scales.
Still. Settle. Sleep.
I visualised a heavy woolen blanket, the kind my mother used to wrap around me during winter storms. I imagined it settling over the wildfire inside him, smothering the flames inch by inch. The shrieking magic resisted, bucking against my hold, and pain lanced through my skull.
My fingers went numb. Then my wrists. The cold was climbing, spreading through my forearms toward my elbows.
“Don’t—“ Fenrik’s voice cracked somewhere behind me. “You’ll burn yourself out—”
I couldn’t stop. If I let go now, the backslash would kill Kirion and possibly take me with him. The wyrmling’s thrashing slowed. His scales dimmed from that sickly strobe to a gentler pulse. His keening dropped to a whimper.
Almost. Almost there. My elbows went numb. My shoulders began to ache.
Warmth trickled over my upper lip, copper and salt flooding my tongue. Blood. I didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe it away.
Below my wrists, my skin had turned a frightening shade of red, the kind of colour that came before blackened flesh and permanent damage, and my fingernails had gone blue at the tips. The room tilted. The floor seemed to pitch sideways, and I swayed on my knees, my vision swimming with dark spots.
Kirion’s thrashing stopped. The foam at his jaws dissolved, evaporating.
His breathing hitched, then settled into a rhythmic pattern.
He was asleep. The unnatural heat bled out of his scales, leaving them cool and iridescent under my palms. Midnight blue, shot through with silver like starlight on dark water.
Beautiful. I tried to smile. Tried to say something reassuring.
Instead, my arms gave out. I slumped forward, catching myself on the edge of the bed, my forehead pressing against the cool sheets beside the sleeping wyrmling.
The blood from my nose dripped onto the white linen, blooming red.
Through the dark spots swimming in my vision, I watched Fenrik slam backward into the wall.
His shoulder blades hit the plaster hard enough to crack it, sending a web of fractures spreading outward.
The shadows that had been pooling at his feet recoiled, snapping back into the corners. He slid down the wall, his legs giving out beneath him, until he sat sprawled on the floor with his back against the wall.
I tried to lift my head. Failed. My cheek pressed against the cool sheets, and I could only watch him sideways, the world tilted at a strange angle.
The silver veins across his chest were dimming. The frantic pulse of light beneath his skin slowed, then faded to a faint glow before disappearing.
“I’d forgotten,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe without fighting for it.”
His head tipped back against the wall. In the moonlight, with the curse momentarily subdued, he looked younger.
Kirion stirred against my hip, a soft chirrup escaping his throat. His small body curled tighter, seeking warmth, and one wing draped over my forearm like a blanket.
I should say something. Something reassuring or clinical.
Something that would remind us both that this was a professional arrangement, that I was here to help.
But my tongue felt thick and clumsy, and the darkness at the edges of my vision was creeping closer.
The blood from my nose had soaked into the sheets, a spreading stain I’d have to apologise for later.
Fenrik’s gaze found mine across the ruined room.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
I wanted to laugh. Of course that was what he noticed. Not the miracle I’d just performed, not the curse I’d somehow pushed back. The blood.
“I noticed,” I managed. The darkness won. I slipped under.
I woke to warmth and a palm cradling my cheek, calloused fingers brushing hair from my temple.
My eyes fluttered open. Fenrik knelt beside the bed, his face inches from mine. The silver veins had faded, leaving his skin pale but unmarked. His shirt still hung open, and I could see the steady rise and fall of his chest.
His gaze wasn’t on my face. It was fixed on my hands, which lay limp against the sheets, the skin mottled red and white with frostbite.
“Your magic,” he whispered.
I tried to curl my fingers. They wouldn’t obey. The numbness had spread past my wrists now, a dead weight at the end of my arms.
“It’s gold.” His voice cracked on the word. “I can see it lingering around your fingers. Like sunlight through honey.”
That made no sense. My magic had always felt silver to me, cold and sharp as winter moonlight. I’d seen it reflected in creatures’ eyes when I worked, a pale shimmer that made them flinch before it soothed. It’s never been neither warm nor gold.
Fenrik reached toward my face, his hand trembling. His fingers hovered inches from my cheek. If I leaned forward, even a fraction...
Our eyes locked.
Silver light flickered in his stormy grey irises, and behind it, I saw a shadow-shape that didn’t match his human form. It had wings, folded against a spine ridged with scales. A long, elegant neck. Eyes that burned with ancient knowing.
The vision lasted only a heartbeat. Then it was gone, and he was just a man again, kneeling beside my bed with wonder written across his face.
“Gold,” I breathed. “You see it as gold?”
Then something shifted behind his eyes. The wonder curdled into horror.
Fenrik snatched his hand back as if I’d burned him. He lurched to his feet, nearly tripping over his own boots in his haste to put distance between us.
“I shouldn’t have.” He shoved a hand through his hair, forcing the wild peaks back into order. “My apologies for the intrusion. The hour.” His gaze dropped to his bare chest. “The state of my attire.” He fastened the buttons, his eyes locking onto mine, daring me to look away.
“I’ll send Mrs. Crane,” he muttered to the doorframe. “For your hands. The blood. Whatever you need.”
And then he was gone, the door left open behind him. A draft crept through, raising gooseflesh along my arms. I wiped my upper lip with the back of my hand. Bright red smeared across my knuckles. The tips of my fingers were the colour of winter bruises.
Kirion chirruped in his sleep, nuzzling deeper against my hip. Whatever thing was devouring the wyrmling from the inside out was drinking from Fenrik’s soul. Their suffering was a closed circuit, each feeding the other’s pain, and I’d managed to make myself the bridge between them.