“Arlo is innocent, but what about you?” I ask. “What about Kestrel? Your parents? How long has this curse affected you all?”
The ragged, weary breath he exhales seems to shake the whole world.
Or maybe it’s just me that’s trembling.
“Generations,” he says.
“Why would you risk losing yourselves to this curse, all for the sake of power?”
I don’t think he’s going to answer at first.
When he speaks again, it’s more to the sky than me. “Because in the beginning, there wasonlypower. The first king and queen, and those who served them, extracted and wielded pure magic, and the dragons they collared allegedly heeded their every command without exception.” He lowers his gaze, but stares past me—at Sesca, maybe—as he continues. “But dragons, and the magic they bring to the world, aren’t reallymeant to be controlled by anyone other than the divinely-chosen. So there were consequences, eventually. A corruption that seeped into their blood. A sickness that began to affect some members of the royal family and the other families who’d sworn their service to the crown—a curse that became hereditary. But even then, some were inheriting magical gifts, too.”
“And the gifts are what your ancestors focused on?” I guess.
“After they got used to having magic and power, it was difficult to let it go.”
“So they didn’t stop, despite the consequences.”
“No. They didn’t. Even when the sickness began to outweigh the gifts.”
I brace my hands against the damp ground as my balance sways. “And that sickness, it…”
“Transforms them.”
“Permanently?”
“By the end, yes. They lose all sense of humanity, and they don’t even resemble the dragons they once tried to command—nothing intelligent or divine about them. Just mindless, ravaging beasts. Some of us who share the curse in our blood, like myself, can control them, somewhat, but even that has limitations.”
I think of Arlo’s sweet, innocent face. His smile, his laughter, his kind eyes and little scribbled notes and all the gifts he’s always leaving me. The way those gifts were a light in the dark that kept me going even on the hardest days.
Mindless, ravaging beasts.
It can’t be true.
It’s too cruel. Too harsh of a punishment…and for what? Being born? He didn’t ask to be a part of this cursed bloodline any more than the starving children back home asked to be born in the ashes of the Burn.
My heart feels swollen and battered, and I’m not sure how much more it can endure today, but I have to keep asking questions. I have to know the full truth of what I’m facing. “The dragons who fill Mouren’s skies, the ones you said have long protected your city, are they…were they once human?”
“Only a few of them; the true dragons have killed most of them at this point.”
“And you? Have you ever transformed?”
“Not entirely. Not…” He trails off. It takes him several tries to get his next words out. “Not the way Arlo transforms. I have moments where I struggle. The more I use magic, the more control I try to exert over both the true and the cursed dragons, the worse and more frequent those moments become. But my affliction is mild, compared to others. Compared to…him.” He rakes a hand across his face, digs his fingers in so viciously that I have to fight the urge to grab his wrist and stop him from hurting himself.
“I wish it wasn’t.” His fingers claw into his hair and grip tightly as he bows his head. “I wish the worst of it would somehow take me instead.”
I don’t say anything to that.
There’s nothing to say.
I know this gut-wrenching grief and frustration far too well—what it feels like to not understand why you were spared, why your life has carried on, relatively unscathed, while the ones you love suffer and die around you. There’s nothing anyone can say or do to make this feeling go away. Nothing I’ve found that makes it better.
So I just keep still, and I silently endure it with him, until another horrible thought occurs to me.
“You said Arlo was getting worse, and you’ve also said the dragons in the city are getting more erratic…do you think it’s because of the same reason? That Sesca’s growing power and influence, and my bond with her, is causing the curse’s progression?”
His answer comes slowly. “Maybe.”
