Page 39 of Dragon Cursed
"She was younger than me by sixty years.A child when I was already a man.A young woman when I was already old."He paused."She was the keeper because the elemental magic chose her at birth.The forest looks at a Draquonir baby and saysyes, that one.There is nothing the family can do but raise the child for the work the forest has already chosen."
"Did she mind?"
"She loved it."His mouth tried to smile."She loved it the way other women love their husbands.The forest was hers and she was its, and there was never much space in her for anything else.She would vanish for weeks.Come back with leaves in her hair and dirt under her nails and her eyes the color of moss.She would tell me which fox kit had been born under which oak.She would sleep for three days.Then she would go again."
Poppy's hand had tightened in his.
"What happened to her?"
"I told you."
"You told me she died.You didn’t tell mehow."
He shut his eyes.
He could speak here.In this.In the warmth of her against his side.He couldn’t have spoken anywhere else.
"She felt the corruption first."His voice had gone flat."She felt it in the relic before any of the rest of us knew anything was wrong.She came to me one night."
He could see it.Centuries gone and the memory was still fresh.
His sister, sixteen and frightened, wearing a long white shift, her dragon-eyes wide.She’d tried to warn him, but he’d brushed her worry aside.
"She told me she could feel a wound in the wood.Couldn’t find where it was."His voice cracked."I told her to sleep.I told her she was tired.I told her the forest was old, and old things ached, and there was nothing to find.I sent her back to bed."
"Oh."Just that.The smallest sound from Poppy.
"Three weeks later she went into the shrine alone to look for the wound.She didn’t come out.I went in after her."
He stopped.
He could see that too, the memory just as horrifyingly fresh.
The inner chamber.The smell of old water.His sister on the floor with her hands at her throat.Her eyes already gone.Vacant.
"There was a shadow on the wall behind her that shouldn’t have been there."His own voice wasn’t his anymore.It was the voice of the man who had walked into that chamber."There was a voice in the shadow that knew my name.It said —"
He couldn’t speak for a moment.
"It said ‘Too late, little prince.She let me in’."
Poppy made a small sound against his chest.
"I went for it with everything I had.The shadow withdrew.Mairin died in my arms an hour later.The forest died with her.I have spent every day?—"
He stopped cold.Every muscle in his body went rigid in warning.
Something was wrong.Very wrong.
The fire in its iron cradle had taken on a strange, unnatural shape.
It had been burning low.He had let it burn low.Now the flames had folded inward.Hunched.The way a small animal hunches when something larger walks past its hole.
The light in the chamber thinned.
He could hear his own breath.
He could hear Poppy's breath.
