Page 44 of The Iron Flower

“I wish I could strip the runes from my skin,” he finally says, his voice rough with hurt.

I rub his back, desperate to find something to bolster him. “You know, you’ll have those incredible Lupine eyes soon enough,” I say encouragingly. “They’ll outshine the tattoos, believe me.”

Andras coughs out a laugh and shoots me a wan smile.

I reach up to put my hand on his broad shoulder. “Did you notice that your son looks like you?”

Andras’s small smile turns into a wider grin, but it soon falters. He looks back to the fire, his eyes tensing with conflict. “I want my mother to come with us. I don’t want to leave her. But she needs to accept my child, and I fear she never will.”

I let out a long sigh. “People can change, Andras. I used to be deathly afraid of Icarals. Now I steal food from the livestock barns for Ariel’s pets.” I spit out the trace of a laugh and stare at the glowing coals at the fire’s edge. “Your mother might come around yet. Especially when she meets your son.”

Andras nods tightly, but I can see him fighting back more tears. I glance past him to find Yvan watching me. I flush to find his eyes on me so intently—it’s unsettling to hold on to his green-eyed stare.

I take a deep, shuddering breath and look away.

MAGE COUNCIL

RULING

#211

Defacing or defamingThe Book of the Ancientsshall be punishable by execution.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SPIRALING DOWN

“Will that be enough to treat Naga’s wing?” Tierney whispers as I peer at the small jar ofAsterbane.

Mage Ernoff’s out-of-the-way apothecary shop is a cluttered, lantern-lit disarray of bottles filled with powders and crushed leaves and tinctures and tonics. Dried lizards hang from the ceiling on rusty iron hooks, and black dragon talons fill large glass canisters that line the shelves along the back of the store.

I eyeball the vermillion powder, mentally gauging the amount. “It should be.”

Naga’s left wing has stubbornly refused to heal, despite the tireless efforts of Andras and Ariel. The tear in the soft tissues around her shoulder joint is too deep, but there’s a slim chance that the wound-closing properties ofAsterbanemight help.

Tierney holds up a russet tangle of bloodroot for my inspection as well, conveying everything she needs to with a blazing stare.

I nod silently. Yes, we’ll need that, too—to make more of the expensiveNorfuretincture Jules requested for the refugees suffering from a vicious outbreak of the Red Grippe.

Anguish twists in me as I remember our visit to the refugees’ hiding place a few nights ago, when we delivered the first batch of tincture. An exhausted Jules had opened the door a crack, just wide enough to take each box of medicinal vials, giving us a wan smile. Over his shoulder, we’d caught only a brief glimpse of the isolated circular barn’s occupants.

The space was full of Smaragdalfar refugees—mostly children, with patterned emerald skin glinting in the dim light of a single lamp and green hair as mussed as their tattered clothes. Most were sitting on or collapsed against hay bales, the torn pages fromTheBook of the Ancientssplayed out under their feet.

Shock and compassion rushed through me at the sight of them. They were all much too thin, marked with bloodshot eyes and a blistering, angry rash around their mouths—telltale symptoms of the Red Grippe.

Iris, Fernyllia, Bleddyn and Yvan were all there with Jules, helping care for the children alongside a few tough-looking Smaragdalfar women and my former Metallurgie professor, Fyon Hawkkyn. I was startled to see Fyon there—believing he’d fled the Western Realm weeks ago.

Muscular Bleddyn was down on one knee, consoling a child. She caught a glimpse of me and her face instantly contorted into a threatening glare with a clear message—get out!

I moved to close the door just as Yvan looked up from where he was sitting by a prone child, his hand on the little girl’s forehead. Our eyes met for a brief moment, a flash of his heat coursing through me, before the door shut.

As Tierney and I walked away from the barn and into the blackness of a starless night, I turned once.

Three Watchers were perched on the barn’s roof, like ghostly sentinels. They remained there for the span of a heartbeat, then disappeared into the cold, bleak night.

A tug on my sleeve draws me back to the present. “We should go,” Tierney says in a low voice.

Shaking my head slightly to clear it, I take the bloodroot from her, and together we make our way to the front of the shop.

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