Page 55 of Dragon Cursed
She watched as centuries of grief rearranged themselves in his chest.
When he lowered his hand, he looked tired, but content.Like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"She knew."His voice was soft."She knew when she did it.She didn’t have time to tell me — but she knew.Mairin knew what was coming for her and she chose you, chose your line,a chuisle.She gifted your line with her magic because she couldn’t save me herself."
"We don't know that."
"I know it."
"Alsander —"
"Read the rest."
She turned the page.
Saoirse's hand.The same strong, angry script.
The Lady chose the girl because she had seen, in her dying, that the dragon would need her.That the dragon would not be able to bear the weight alone.That the rot at the heart of the wood would eat the dragon as it had eaten her, and the line of her own divinity would die with him, unless she gave a piece of herself into a vessel that could carry it forward and bring it back to him in time.
The kitchen went very quiet.
The girl was the vessel.Her daughter was the vessel.My grandmother was the vessel.My mother was the vessel.I am the vessel.My daughter shall be the vessel.And one of us, one of these daughters of Caoimhe, shall be the one the Lady saw.The one who shall walk into the wood and find him.The one whose touch shall undo what was done and break the curse.
Poppy read it all once.Again.She set her hand on the page where her great-grandmother had writtenlet it be me, let it be over, and she felt, with a quiet, absolute certainty she had never felt about anything in her life, it was her.She was the one.She was going to figure out how to break the curse.How to save the dragon and the forest."Alsander."
"Yes."
"You’re the dragon."
He turned his head against her shoulder.He didn’t lift it."I know,a chuisle."
"I am the last of the line that carries Mairin’s magic."
"I know."
The fire in the hearth cracked.
Outside, the dawn had given way to a clean morning.Somewhere far off, a gull cried over the harbor.In the small dark chest at the bottom of the larger chest, the one with the iron bands and the lock she hadn’t used, something began very faintly tohum.
Poppy lifted her head.
"Alsander."
"I hear it."
He had already heard it.His eyes had gone to the chest.
"I think," she said, very softly, "I am ready now."
14
They read the rest of Saoirse’s journal.
Saoirse wrote of theDraquonir.The keeper-line.The dragon-kin who had stood beside the Lady at the relic in the wood.She wrote of the one who had loved the Lady —her brother in scale and bone— who had survived her, and who walked the wood still.She wrote that he didn’t know what the Lady had done.That only the girl knew.She was instructed to keep herself, and her line, away from the deepest part of the wood until the children in the village sickened with a fever only theAos-sí-bloomcould cure because the line was what the Lady made it.The line was what may yetundowhat was done.
"Here."Alsander stopped at a line."Your great-grandmother knew the line was meant to undo it.She didn’t know how."
"What does she say?"
