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There is one very old cook who lives in the house, I’d told Rayne that night. But, like most of the things I’d told her that night, it wasn’t exactly the truth. Olin hadn’t cooked anything in years. He’d moved into the house years ago, after his wife had died, and most of the time I only had a vague sense of what he did there. Things around the house were clean enough, at any rate, and he delivered my mail in the mornings, and I paid him far more than any human servant was worth every fortnight just to save the hassle of trying to find someone else to deliver my mail and share my home.
My eyes narrow at that one lonely little light in the window, which pulsates weirdly in time to my frantic, painful breathing. That has to mean Olin is here, I tell myself. It has to because the alternative is—
No. No alternative. I pull in a deep breath, open my jaws, and call for Olin. The echoes of my voice come back to me, ringing inside my skull like a series of brass bells, and the ground suddenly rises up to meet me. I sink down gently, onto my back legs, then roll to my side, clutching my mother close to my scales.
“Holy stars above!” a man’s voice cries.
I open the eyes I didn’t realize I’d closed and turn my head toward the light in the window. Olin is rushing across the grass, the kitchen door open behind him. He’s moving faster than I’ve seen him move in years. I let my wing unfurl, then my arm, and then I lower my mother to the grass as gently as I can. She doesn’t move. Olin meets my eyes. The old man’s face is a mask of shock and horror.
Right. Dragon. He knew I was a dragon, of course, just like everyone in town knows I’m a dragon. But he’s never seen the dragon before. And now here I am, undeniably draconic, all scales and wings and vicious claws, delivering a badly injured, blood-covered woman to my front door.
“My mother,” I manage to rasp. “Needs help. Needs… inside.”
Olin’s expression shifts in a heartbeat. He bends over my mother with trembling hands and an expression on his face that makes me think all the dragons of the Iron Mountains wouldn’t stop him. His frown pulses in and out of focus as an unpleasant thought batters against my skull, trying to force its way through my scales.
Olin is a passably companionable groundskeeper, my numbed brain finally manages to tell me, but he is not a healer. He is also very old, and likely not even strong enough to get my mother into the house.
With that thought driving me, I manage to plant my claws on the soft, dewy grass and force my body back upright. Pain shoots through every single scale, my breath catches in the back of my throat, and my vision goes dark. Something is ringing deep inside my ears, something so loud and brassy that it takes me a moment to realize Olin is speaking.
I swing my head around and try to focus on the man who’s spent almost every day of his adult life sharing my house. His face is contorted, and he’s speaking, but his words can’t penetrate the fog seeping through my brain.
I have, I realize with cold certainty, very little time.
“Imma get help,” I say.
The words come out as a low, gasping sort of roar. I can only hope they make sense, and then I’m forcing my wings to beat against the air, and Olin drops to his knees to shelter my mother from the grit and leaves and uprooted grass swirling through the air beneath me, pushed by the frantic churn of my wings.
This time both my feet knock against the garden wall, and I hear something clatter to the ground behind me. Some strange, still lucid voice in my head notes that the housing association is going to fine me for that, and then I’m rising higher, my wings tugging my body painfully down the street. Toward the sign with the crutch. Toward Ailen the Healer.
* * *
This landing was even worsethan the one in my garden. I pulled my feet up to keep from crushing the red tiles of the roofs around the greengrocers, my wings beat frantically in the air, and a trail of screaming followed me wherever I went. A dragon should be able to land anywhere, my mother taught me, with grace and poise.
But I crashed into the greengrocer’s square like a load of dead weight shot from a cannon. I folded my wings tight to my side, pulled my legs in, and then shattered a cart beneath my shoulders. And then my head bounced off the cobblestones. Twice.
The air fills with that strange buzzing ring, and everything moves very slowly. Noise rises in the street, screams and footsteps, and that oddly lucid part of my brain notes that a dragon crashing straight into the center of Cairncliff might be the most exciting thing that’s happened in this town since Flannagan hauled in that record-breaking marlin with sucker marks all along its abdomen. And also, I’m going to have to pay to replace the cart.
With a groan, I manage to tug myself back up to standing. Ailen’s sign swings just ahead of me, the huge wooden crutch tantalizingly close. I pull my lips back from my teeth; blood drips onto the cobblestones beneath me. That’s probably a bad sign.
I take a step forward. Tremble. Take another step. Someone screams behind me, but I don’t have the strength to turn around. There’s a slam as a door on the street either opens or closes; I ignore it. Ailen’s store is so damned close. So close, and so very small. Her neat little storefront swims in front of me, its gleaming window filled with potions and vials and star charts. I drop my head and see my black claws clutching the cobblestones.
No. Not as a dragon.
I lurch forward, dragging this massive body that stinks of smoke and blood, and then reach deep inside myself, stretching toward that wellspring of magic granted to all dragons as their birthright. But the magic is faint, twisting, and as slippery as an eel. I’ve used it my whole life, but now, it’s drifted far away.
No matter. I seize the magic and drag myself into my human form.
Then I fall through the door of Ailen the Healer’s shop.
Chapter5
Rayne
Ifind King Donovan’s signet ring on the second day.
I rock back on my heels in the pile of papers spread across the floor of Ensyvir’s tower and hiss through my teeth. Donovan’s ring glitters in my palm like a piece of trapped sunlight. I turn it over slowly, running my fingers around its contours, the deep engravings, the serrated edges. It’s heavy, this symbol of my .
I wipe my hands across my eyes and push my hair back. It’s midday, and it’s hot in the tower. I haven’t wanted to open any of the windows for fear of disturbing the piles of papers I’ve got spread all over the floor, but that means the air in here has been baking like an oven and releasing all sorts of unfortunate scents. I almost wish mint were the worst of them.
