Chapter 10
It was worse than Portia had imagined. It wasn’t just the control group.
The disconnection from magic had spread through the whole flight, the little dragons in the snuggery all showing a variety of signs.
In most it was little more than a sluggishness in their flight, or a lack of coordination.
But Jade, Ripple, Rusty and Glitter were the worst affected.
It had to be the balm. But she had no idea why.
She had followed the instructions to the letter.
Iris instantly launched into a plan of action as soon as she heard the nature of the problem.
Portia didn’t want to admit how reassuring that was.
Her great-aunt didn’t question her, or accuse her of anything.
She just got to work. Anyone with magical ability on the island was summoned to the castle.
They came too, even August and Seb, each of them taking charge of a teacup dragon and doing whatever they could to keep the magical field around them primed.
For someone like Esme with only a little innate magic, that simply meant taking the hatchlings and sitting with them in a corner of the orangery, where the dappled sunlight fell through the leaves.
Saffron arrived with an array of cakes and pastries, all specially augmented to feed them, and anyone else who needed fortifying.
Seb, on the other hand, planted himself on the floor in the middle of the snuggery and filled the air with magic, sending everything in the room whirling around him as if at the heart of a hurricane.
The healthier dragons swooped around him in delight, relishing this.
Iris and her friend Margery Melville sat with Ripple and Glitter, feeding them by hand and petting them, weaving magic around them as if creating those intricate patterns in lace for which Margery was famous.
Even Ophelia, who had no magic of her own at all, was up at the castle, overseeing everyone, making tea, and ensuring everyone had anything they needed.
August appeared with a ridiculously handsome bard in tow, a delicately featured man called Weir with dark skin and eyes, and long black hair threaded with shining beads, who played the lute with his long, dexterous fingers, calling up magic from the strings.
His gaze followed August around, leaving her in no doubt that this was his newest conquest. Portia wondered bleakly how long this one would last. But clearly it was early days yet.
Rusty manoeuvred himself to drape around Weir’s neck, purring gently in time to the music and the bard smiled softly to himself at the contact.
Meanwhile August gathered Jade in his arms, cradling her, murmuring to her in that deep, soft voice of his when she fussed at being taken away from Portia.
He didn’t do anything that Portia could see, nothing showy or overt, but August had always exuded such an all-encompassing calm that it had to be magic.
He might not want to talk about it, but he was possibly the most powerful of them all.
He chose not to use magic, but she knew it was there. So did the dragons.
‘It’s my fault,’ Portia said again, tears stinging her eyes, and her brother looked up at her, as solemn as ever. If she expected to be blamed or castigated, it didn’t happen. That had never been his way.
‘Better go and fix it then, hadn’t you?’ August said. He stroked Jade again, his touch so gentle. ‘I’ve got her, Portia, and I won’t let anything happen to her. You get to work.’
Noah was waiting for her outside the room she had turned into her lab, pacing back and forth.
‘What can I do?’ he asked, as soon as he saw her.
He hadn’t slept any more than she had. She could see the signs of it all over his handsome face. His hair was dishevelled and the shirt was the same one he had hurriedly pulled on last night.
Portia floundered at the sight of him. If she had expected August to tell her off, this was going to be so much worse. Noah had warned her to be careful. He’d told her not to experiment on Jade. He had been the one urging caution and she’d accused him…
And now look what had happened.
‘I – I should have listened—’
He shook his head solemnly. ‘No time for that now,’ he told her and tried to offer an encouraging smile, although she could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. He was as worried as she was. ‘I’m here to offer my help. We need to fix this as quickly as possible, that’s all there is to it.’
Portia nodded. He was right. Later on, if she could fix this, she would allow him to lecture her all he wanted, simply out of gratitude that he didn’t do it now. There wasn’t any time for their acrimonious exchanges.
Portia had always relied on herself alone.
That had been her nature. She’d been the one to look after the others, to take responsibility for them.
She’d never expected to need help from her siblings, or the islanders.
And certainly not from Noah. But now, it felt like everything was shifting around her.
She opened the door and ushered him inside.
The curtains were still closed, and everything still set up to create the cursed balm.
She made her way to the desk, pushing aside her own notebooks to haul out Art’s book and open it, desperately leafing through the pages until she found the recipe.
Carefully she read over every word again, double-checked every amount but there was nothing out of place. She had followed it to the letter. Every last thing, every incantation, every ingredient, every method.
Frustrated, she pushed herself back from it and looked wildly for Noah. He was examining the room, all the equipment, and the books on the shelves, many of which had belonged to her father and her uncle, as if he was lost in a wonderland.
‘I can’t see what I did wrong.’ The frustration of admitting that, and the whole sorry situation, almost made her sob and she hated the sound of it in her voice.
‘May I have a look?’ he asked in those unexpectedly kind tones.
‘Be my guest.’
He leaned over the book, studying it intently, turning the page to read the whole thing.
His fixed attention reminded her of a hawk.
It made him strangely attractive, the way he concentrated so hard on the page, the flicker of his eyes as he read, the way he chewed his lower lip in thought.
Finally, he shook his head. ‘There’s barely any mention of possible side effects. ’
Anyone making cures for anything should list any likely problems that might arise. It was common sense. She knew that.
‘Because there shouldn’t be any.’ Portia sank onto the chair and buried her head in her hands, as if she could push the frustration away. ‘Like I said, I followed his instructions exactly.’
‘Was he as powerful as you?’
‘What?’
‘Your uncle. He was magical but was he as powerful as you? Everyone has different levels of ability, or so I understand it. August said magic just comes out differently in everyone. How they use magic is their decision, but the levels of ability… Look, I have no connection with magic at all so excuse me if I’m not phrasing it right, but…
What would happen if I made this, given there’s a magical element to the process? ’
Portia lifted her head and stared at him incredulously. That had never occurred to her.
‘I don’t… I don’t know. It shouldn’t matter. The incantations are more about timing than anything else, a leftover from a more superstitious age.’
‘Are you sure? From what everyone has said it doesn’t sound like Art was superstitious. Did you… did you skip anything?’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
She hadn’t, had she? Not even if it had seemed pointless, because that was what you did with magic. You followed the stupid rules. She had always told Milo that. He was the one inclined to take shortcuts and she wasn’t going to take a risk like that.
‘What about this bit?’
She got to her feet, her stomach already dropping with dread as she approached. What had he just found? Had she missed something? Oh, this couldn’t be happening.
His finger was pointing at a marginal note, just beside the line instructing whoever was making the balm to repeat the incantation ten times.
It was almost illegible, obviously added in haste, little more than a squiggle really, and she couldn’t remember ever seeing it before.
She could barely read it. And she was ninety-nine per cent certain that it had not been there before.
She squinted at it and it lurched sickeningly into focus.
Consider ability in casting. Repeat only as necessary.
‘What sort of stupid instruction is that?’ she exclaimed before she could stop herself. ‘It totally contradicts what he says in the main body. What was he thinking?’
‘It looks like he added it later,’ Noah said. ‘But when he says ability… he means how powerful someone is, doesn’t he?’
‘Maybe,’ she muttered, touching it to see if the ink was wet.
Although how anyone could have added it, she didn’t know.
Or why they would want to. This was not the time for practical jokes and no one here would do that anyway.
Not now! Besides, it was her uncle’s writing, just as spidery and awkward and almost illegible as ever.
It hadn’t been there. She was sure of that. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘He must have run into a similar problem, maybe when someone else tried to make the same balm. And if you’re more powerful than he was…’
It made sense now. The spell was to peel back the connection of the old and the new. But what if it worked more widely than that. Not just on their skin but on everything. On the magical ties of the teacup dragons to the world around them…
‘I overdid it. Made it too powerful. It’s not just causing them to shed the dry skin, it’s making them shed everything, even their connection to the thaumaturgical fields all around us. Oh, this is a disaster. It’ll kill them all. They can’t survive without it.’