Chapter 20 Lysa #3
I suppose I was a sight. Blood-smeared apron, bruised eyes, shaking hands, and a wyrmling clinging to my chest like one overgrown, scaly brooch. I probably looked less like a healer and more like a necromancer caught midway through a ritual.
“Councilman,” I said. “To what do I owe the honor? Here for a checkup?”
“Lady Stormgarde,” Beatrice Holt said. She was refusing to look me in the eye, focusing intently on a jar of pickled newt eyes on the shelf behind me. “We are here on official business.”
Pembroke held out a rolled parchment, but he wouldn’t step over the threshold. He extended his arm fully, leaning forward while keeping his feet planted safely outside.
“Read it,” I challenged.
Pembroke cleared his throat, the sound distinctively high-pitched.
“Given the... recent disturbances... and the alarming reports regarding the stability of the magical atmosphere surrounding...” He faltered, glancing at the wyrmling, which let out a hiss.
Pembroke squeaked again. “The Council hereby issues a Motion of Cease and Desist.”
“A what?” Maren stepped forward, planting her hands on her hips.
“A formal request,” Beatrice cut in, her face pale. “We strongly suggest you cease all Arcane clinical practice immediately. Until the source of the... contagion... is identified.”
“Contagion?” I laughed. “You think I’m the contagion?”
“It’s for the town’s safety, Miss Emberlin,” Beatrice said, risking a glance at me. Her gaze snagged on the blood drying on my upper lip, and she recoiled, taking a swift step backward. “You are... unwell. And the magic around you is... wrong. People are frightened.”
They were terrified. I could smell it on them. These were people that had known me since I was a little girl. It should have broken my heart.
“You ‘strongly suggest’ I stop?” I stepped forward. Pembroke scrambled back, tripping over the guard. “Or what? You’ll arrest me? You’ll drag me out?” I raised my chin, ignoring the throb of my headache. I let the gold flare in my eyes, just a little.
“If I stop,” I said, my voice dropping, “then there is no one left to hold the line. But if you want to quarantine me, by all means. Mark the door. Paint a red x.”
“Lysa,” Father warned softly.
“But know this, Pembroke. If I’m the monster,” I tapped the parchment in his hand, “then you’re the ones trapped in the cage with me.”
Pembroke shove the paper at my father and fled, muttering about protocols. Beatrice held her ground for a second longer, eyeing the wyrmling.
“It really is for the best,” she said, half to herself, before turning and hurrying after him.
The door clicked shut.
“Well,” Maren said into the silence, picking up a cloth to wipe a speck of spittle from the counter. “I think that went quite well. It was fast and you didn’t even bite them.”
“We’re going to the bookshop,” I said, petting Kirion’s head as he settled against my heartbeat. “If I’m already a public danger, I might as well commit some light trespassing.”
The Rainmint Bookshop was closed and dark at this hour, since it was well towards midnight by now.
Maren picked the lock with a hairpin and a muttered curse that would have made a sailor blush.
The mechanism clicked, a sharp sound in the night, and she eased the door open just enough for us to slip through.
“Maren, you have some questionable talents,” I said.
“Quiet,” she answered. “If Whisk hears us, he’ll raise the alarm. Or scorch our eyebrows off.”
The interior was a labyrinth of shadows.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves loomed over, stuffed with volumes that hummed with faint, ambient light.
High above, on top of a precarious stack of encyclopedias near the ceiling, a rhythmic puff of smoke signaled the book-dragon’s location. He was asleep, thank the Gods.
We crept toward the back section—Local History & Arcane Geography.
“I still don’t understand why the Stormgardes didn’t destroy these records,” Maren said, her fingers trailing over the spines of books titled Hydrology of the Silver River and Mineral Compositions of the Northern Peaks.
“If I were Fenrik, I’d have burned everything that reminded me of the Collapse. ”
“Fenrik hoards knowledge,” I murmured, my eyes scanning the titles. “He thinks if he studies the disaster long enough, he can retroactively fix it.”
“A fool’s errand,” Maren said, though her tone was sad rather than biting. “His parents drained the local lines dry trying to stabilize the manor. They killed themselves and nearly took the town with them. Why study a graveyard?”
“It wasn’t just a graveyard, Maren,” I whispered, sliding a heavy, leather-bound folio from the shelf. Dust motes danced in the beam of Maren’s lantern.
Maren stiffened, her gaze unfocused as she stared at the dark rows of books. “I remember where I was. Standing in my mother’s kitchen. One second, the kettle was whistling, and the next... silence. Not quiet—silence. As if the world had stopped breathing.”
“And then the scream,” I added, the memory shivering through me cold and sharp. I had been ten years old, clutching a doll in the infirmary while the glass jars rattled off the shelves. “The sound of the earth tearing open.”
“The sky turned that awful bruised violet for weeks,” Maren said, rubbing her arms as if warding off a chill. “We didn’t see the sun for a month. The ‘Grey Year,’ they called it. Crops withered in the fields because the soil forgot how to nurture them. And the river...”
“Ran black for three days,” I finished, opening the folio on a reading lectern.
The parchment crinkled, brittle with age.
“People talk about the heavy taxes or the council’s incompetence, but they forget that before the Collapse, you didn’t need a master Brewworker to keep a loaf of bread from molding in an hour.
The ambient magic used to be gentle. Now it bites. ”
“It went feral,” Maren agreed, moving to look over my shoulder. “When Fenrik’s parents broke the line, they snapped the leash. That’s why we have talking soups and drakes with incompatible anatomy. The valley has been bleeding magic for thirteen years.”
“I have a feeling the Stormgarde’s manor wasn’t supposed to be a graveyard. It was supposed to be a dam.” I pulled a heavy scroll case from the bottom shelf, blowing a cloud of dust from the leather cap. Cadastral Survey of Lumenvale: Pre-Collapse. “Here.”
It wasn’t a standard map. It was a mana-chart, drawn in ink that still shimmered with faint, bioluminescent properties. The physical geography of Lumenvale was sketched in black—the mountains, the river, the forests. But the ley-lines were drawn in silver.
I traced the silver veins with a trembling finger.
“Look,” I whispered. “Maren, look at the flow.”
“It’s the valley,” Maren said, squinting in the gloom. “There’s the river, there’s the...” She stopped. Her hand gripped my shoulder, hard. “That’s not right.”
Ley-lines ran like rivers: parallel, occasionally branching, feeding the land evenly.
But on this map, the silver lines didn’t flow past Abberwyn, they all collided with it.
Six major arteries of magic, spanning the entirety of Lumenvale, converged on a single point on the cliffs.
They slammed into Crumbling Manor like spokes on a wheel.
“It’s a nexus,” I said. “The manor is filtering the magic for our valley, but look, it’s the pressure valve for the entire kingdom.”
“The Collapse,” Maren breathed, her eyes wide. “It wasn’t a local accident. If those lines destabilized...”
“It would have been a very big leak of magic,” I finished. “Fenrik’s parents died preventing a shockwave that would have leveled everything from here to the capital.”
I stared at the ink, the pattern suddenly making horrific sense. The manor sat on top of ungodly power. Infinite power.
“Kelda,” I said. “She doesn’t care about the estate. She doesn’t want the title.”
“She wants the tap,” Maren whispered.
“She wants to control the flow,” I corrected, rolling the map up. “If she controls the manor, and the curse breaks through the filter ... she can channel all of that raw energy. She wouldn’t just be a wealthy Hearthcrafter. She’d be the most powerful mage in Lumenvale.”
The silence in the shop grew heavy, pressing in on my eardrums. We weren’t dealing with a petty land-grab. We were standing in the path of a woman who intended to become a god, and Fenrik was the lock she had to break to open the door.
A puff of smoke drifted down from the high stacks. The rhythmic snoring above us cut off abruptly, replaced by the ominous sound of claws clicking against wood.
“Run,” I whispered.
Whisk launched himself from the top shelf. He plummet with style, wings tucked, aiming straight for Maren’s head. He was only the size of a house cat, but a house cat made of obsidian scales and righteous indignation was not to be trifled with.
“He’s protecting the inventory!” Maren shrieked, ducking as a jet of black smoke singed the air where her ear had been.
“We need a distraction!” I shouted, clutching the map case to my ribs.
I grabbed the nearest book from the ‘New Arrivals’ display, a lurid paperback with a shirtless centaur on the cover titled Hoof-Hearted: A Stallion’s Love. I chucked it across the aisle.
“Whisk! Rare first edition! Unsigned!” I yelled.
The book-dragon banked mid-air. He dove for the airborne romance, catching it in his talons before it hit the floor, cradling it protectively as he rolled into a heavy pile of periodicals.
“You have terrible taste in literature!” Maren gasped, creating our opening.
We scrambled for the exit, but the shop had one last defense mechanism. As Maren reached for the door handle, the ‘Helpful Coat Rack’, a piece of enchanted furniture notoriously clingy with customers, animated. Its wooden arms snapped out, hooking onto Maren’s shawl.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Maren wrestled with the mahogany limb. “I am leaving! Let go!”
The rack held fast, trying to aggressively insist she take an umbrella, shoving a dusty parasol at her face.
“It thinks it’s raining!” I cried, trying to pry the wooden fingers loose.
“I don’t want the parasol, you possessed twig!” Maren managed to unzip herself from her shawl, leaving the garment in the rack’s embrace. The furniture seemed satisfied with the trade, petting the fabric contentedly.
We burst out into the street, the door clicking shut behind us. We didn’t stop running until we’d crossed the bridge, giggling like schoolgirls who’d stolen sweetmeats from the pantry.
“I liked that shawl,” Maren said, leaning against a lamppost. “But I suppose it was a fair price for a map of the magical apocalypse.”
We parted ways at the corner, and I hurried back to the infirmary, sneaking in through the back to avoid waking my father and sister.
Up in my narrow bedroom, the air was cold, but the safety of the locked door made my shoulders drop.
I set the map case down on my desk and sat on the bed, near Kirion.
He looked as exhausted as I felt. His scales were dull, and he shivered as I settled him onto the mound of pillows at the head of my bed.
He curled into a tight spiral, tucking his nose under his tail.
I changed into my nightgown, shivering as the cool air hit my skin, and climbed in beside him. He was a strange bedfellow—radiating patches of fever-heat and unnatural cold—but he felt like an anchor.
“Hey,” I whispered, stroking the velvet-soft spot behind his ear. He let out a huff of smoke that smelled like burnt cinnamon. “We got it, Kirion. We have the map.”
He cracked one amber eye open, the pupil blown wide.
“We’re going to fix him,” I promised, pulling the quilt up over both of us. “We’re going to fix your Fenrik, and we’re going to fix you. No more bad dreams.”
I wasn’t sure if I was lying to him or to myself, but as he rested his head on my collarbone and fell asleep, I decided that for tonight, the lie was enough.