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The field was full of stalks of golden wheat. But scattered in between the gold were shorter, slender shoots of green tipped with orange fronds.

Fireheart, it is pointless. The poison in the highblood’s fangs was older than kingdoms and more loathsome than the grave.

I flinched from the truth, the words like a dagger to my heart. “Pointless, my eye,” I snapped aloud. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me, Nyxaris. When will you get that through your thick dragon skull?”

I was having a kind of epiphany. Placing the fluffin gently on the ground, I walked around to the side of the dragon’s neck where the gash began.

What are you doing? Nyxaris sounded weary yet curious.

Good. That meant he hadn’t given up hope.

Wait and see. Hesitating only a moment, in my palm I scrunched the sticky wad Neville had been chewing, then slapped it across the bleeding gash. A hiss like the quenching of coals rose up. Tendrils of smoke spiraled from the wound. My hand burned. I yanked it back. Then grinned in triumph. Where the emberfern touched, the skin beneath the broken scales was tightening and pulling inwards. The bleeding in that area slowed to a trickle.

I ran into the field, ripping up fistfuls of emberfern, shredding the fronds between my fingers until the sap ran in fiery rivulets. My eyes watered. The plant burned my skin worse than nettles I’d once had the misfortune to sit in as a small child, but I barely felt the pain over the hammering in my heart. This could work, I thought.

I wrenched and tore, racing back and forth between the field and Nyxaris, slapping handful after handful of the emberfern mash onto the gaping gash along his neck. Slowly, the edges of the scales began knitting together like ripped cloth made whole.

“It’s working,” I crowed. “You see? You just have to stay stubborn a little longer. That’s all.”

But Nyxaris didn’t answer. The fluffin had climbed back onto the dragon. Now he sat on Nyxaris’s shoulder ridge, his tiny head tipped back, and began to sing again.

“Nyxaris?” I laid both my blistering palms against his muzzle. “Talk to me. Please.”

His massive chest had fallen into a more shallow rhythm, I realized abruptly. Each breath was shorter than the last.

“Nyxaris …” Panic flooded my veins. “No, no, no.”

Neville’s song rose in a sudden, piercing swell. The little fluffin’s throat vibrated and puffed.

I looked up at him. “Neville?”

His large eyes glowed down at me. Everything about the tiny creature was glowing, I realized. He sat in an aura of golden light. The fluffin suddenly sprang forward, leaping into my hands, as the world … tilted. Nyxaris’s vast form shuddered. His wings folded close, trembling.

“What’s happening?” I whispered. “Nyxaris?”

I staggered back, my mouth dry, heart slamming against my ribs, as light flared from the creature in my arms—blinding and purifying.

CHAPTER 38

MEDRA

The refugees were at the door, but the doors weren’t opening. They were being held firmly shut. I moved towards the vaulted foyer at the front of a column, flanked by Visha on one side and Lysander on the other. Behind us came Theo, Vaughn, Evie, Rodriguez, Sankara, and a mix of students from all three houses. A crowd of blightborn and highbloods blended together in a mishmash of red and purple, gold and silver and black. Some might have said the colors clashed. I thought they were beautiful together.

We could hear the banging on the doors as we reached the top of the stairs. The sounds of heavy oak panels rattling beneath the fists of the hundreds of refugees trapped outside. Cries bled through the cracks. Men shouting, women pleading, children crying.

Between us and those doors stood House Mortis. Silvio Santos, his pale blond hair plastered back against his tan skin, white-and-crimson steel armor hugging his frame, stood shouting orders. He and his lackeys had obviously been there for some time. They’d dragged banquet tables from the refectory into the entranceway, pulling them across the doors in a makeshift barricade. Above, at each end of the mezzanine, stood a dozen or more House Mortis students armed with bows. They’d smashed the windows overlooking the courtyard. Now they held position—some looking eager, others uncertain—as Silvio shouted at them to prepare to shoot. Around the foyer, other students looked on in silence, sitting on the floor or leaning against colonnades, gaping, hesitating, weary—neither obeying nor intervening.

“Tell me I’m fucking imagining this,” Theo whispered, coming up beside Lysander with Vaughn.

“I wish you were,” Lysander said.

“These aren’t all House Mortis students,” Sankara observed.

“No, there are blightborn here, too. They fear the ship is sinking.” Rodriguez’s voice was laced with disgust. “They’ll take the side of least resistance.”

“You mean the side most likely to win,” Visha said starkly.

“That would be us,” I said firmly. “They’re outnumbered. And this isn’t fucking happening. We are better than this.”