Chapter 28 Blood Tells
Daisy woke to the raw ache of birth.
Her first breath rattled with blood and mountain air, and her eyes snapped open to a ceiling of black stone arched high and uneven. No hospital. No slum. No familiar stink. She pushed upright, every inch of skin howling, and the cave wall in front of her shimmered, not with light, but with the memory of fire. She stared at her hands. They were hers, but not: across the back of each, red scales had begun to break the skin, bright as fresh scabs. They spiraled up her forearms, some shiny with clear fluid, others caked in brown.
She jerked, scraping back on her elbows, and smacked into the uneven wall. The pain shocked her awake.
She wasn’t alone.
A presence filled the air, thicker than smoke and colder than stone. The dragon, Xeris, crouched in the far corner of the cavern, immense and deliberate, head low, eyes slitted but awake. When he moved, the scales on his back sang together, a whisper like knives in a leather strop. His attention rested wholly, hungrily, on her.
She stared back, part of her expecting him to eat her then and there, crush her against the wall like a bad dream. But he did nothing. He only watched. The silence between them stretched, then snapped, as his voice filled her head, not a whisper, not a bellow, but a thought that forced its way through every crack in her skull.
‘You are awake. Good.’ He didn’t move, didn’t even flick his tail. The voice had no accent, no inflection, but it carried a weight that bruised her thoughts. ‘Your blood healed you.’
She grabbed at her shoulder, remembering the bite, the venom, the blur of pain. The wound was gone. In its place: more scales, in a perfect spiral, shiny and hard. The manticore’s poison had left something else, a tingling deep in her gut, like the seconds before a fever takes hold.
“You did this to me,” Daisy said. Her own voice felt thin, muffled against the telepathic force in the cave.
‘You did it to yourself. My blood touched yours. That was all it took.’ He paused, eyes narrowing to razor slits. ‘The transformation is expected, but not common. Only a handful survived it. You must be very stubborn.’
She tried to stand and nearly toppled. The cave floor was slick and cold, but she managed, using the wall for support. Every movement made the scales shift and burn. She searched for her satchel, her knife, her old life, but the only thing here was her, the dragon, and the ache of being alive.
Daisy looked at the beast, then at her arms, then at the exit: a narrow slit of sunlight far above, out of reach. “Why am I here?”
Xeris flexed one wing, a shrug so powerful it shook dust from the ceiling. ‘You saved me from those who caged me. Now, you are the cage.’
The words stung more than she’d admit. “That wasn’t what I meant to do,” she said.
‘It rarely is.’
She reached up and touched her face, feeling for more scales. They’d crept onto her cheekbones, complex and smooth, as if her own skin had been replaced one cell at a time while she slept. Daisy looked at the dragon, then at the shallow puddle in the middle of the cave, trying to see her own reflection.
Her face stared back, half girl, half something else, eyes brighter than she remembered, rimmed in red.
“I’m not yours,” she said. “I didn’t sign up for this. I just wanted to get out.”
He bared his teeth, a slow parade of fangs, then settled back. ‘But your blood signed a contract.’
She felt the memory: she was back at the menagerie, her palm slashed, the spiral on her wrist lit up like a brand. She remembered the chain, the heat, the blood dripping onto the runes. She remembered the dragon’s voice: Blood calls to blood.
Daisy fought the urge to curl up and scream. Instead, she glared at him. “You owe me. You’d be dead or chained without me. You said so.”
‘Owe is a word for those who live in fear,’ Xeris replied. ‘I live in hunger. But I am not without honor.’
He straightened, stretching his body, wings unfolding until he filled half the cave. Daisy stumbled back, heart jackhammering. His scales glimmered with a sick radiance, each one an armor plate of red-black glass. He regarded her, the way a butcher regards a rabbit: impersonal, already tallying the outcome.
‘Your world has changed,’ he said. ‘You are no longer prey. You are kin.’ There was something like respect in the thought, or maybe it was just resignation.
She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. The scales dug into her biceps, but she didn’t care. “How long was I out?”
‘Three days. You nearly died twice. The poison wanted your heart. So did I, at first. Now it is too late.’
The admission startled her. “You wanted to kill me?”
‘It was safer. But I was curious.’ He paused, as if tasting the word in his mind. ‘Curiosity is a disease in my kind. It has killed more dragons than any spear.’
Daisy wanted to laugh, but it came out a cough. Her ribs ached, lungs too big for her chest. She tried to remember her mother’s face, Delia’s hands, but the memory felt distant, faded behind a haze of dragonfire and new pain.
The dragon’s gaze sharpened. ‘You have questions. Ask.’
She steadied herself. “What is this?” She held up her arm, the scales catching the torchlight. “What’s happening to me?”
‘You are a hybrid, not by choice. The poison from the beast broke your blood. My blood rebuilt it.’ He sounded almost pleased.
Daisy looked at the scales, at the spiral, at the way her nails had grown sharp and red at the tips. “Is it permanent?”
‘Is a river permanent? You can dam it. You can poison it. But it always flows the same way.’ Xeris snorted, a lazy curl of smoke drifting from his nostrils. 'You are yourself, but more.'
“Are you going to kill me if I try to leave?”
He considered, head cocked. ‘Perhaps. But you would not get far. The world will hunt you now. It hunts all things it cannot control.’
Daisy glared. “I survived them once. I’ll do it again.”
‘Then you are more dragon than I thought,’ he replied, and there was a glint of amusement in his eye.
She slumped to the cave floor, letting the chill sink into her bones. “What now?”
‘That depends. Do you wish to be free, or to rule?’
Daisy nearly laughed, but her mouth was dry. “I’m not a ruler. I’m not even a hero. I just want my family safe.”
‘Then you have a problem.’ He spread his wings, blocking the light, casting her in shadow. ‘All those with power must choose. Rule or die.’
“Or run.”
For a moment, Xeris was silent. Then: 'Running is dying in slow motion.’
She looked at her hands again, the scales, the bloodline she’d never asked for. “You think I want to be like you? Chained up, bled dry, used for someone else’s war?”
His lip curled. ‘I was a fool. I believed in bargains. I believed in mercy.’ He leaned close, and Daisy smelled the rot and fire of his breath. ‘Mercy is the greatest lie ever told.’
She stared at him, refusing to flinch. “So what’s your plan? Burn the world?”
‘If necessary. But there are other ways.’
He shifted, folding himself small enough to look her in the eye, predator to predator. ‘You are not like them. Your magic is old, outlawed. Your city fears what it cannot buy.’
She spat on the floor, the blood bright against the stone. “Good. Let them be afraid.”
The dragon bared his fangs again, this time in something close to a smile. ‘You will need training.’
She shook her head. “I need to get home.”
‘Home is gone, little spiral. The city is searching for you. The man with the scar hunts your blood. And now, the city knows I am free. Everything you love is bait for the next trap.’
Daisy felt her rage coil tighter. “If you touch my family…”
‘Then you will kill me. I know.’ The dragon sounded almost satisfied. ‘But I am not your enemy.’
“Then what are you?”
He looked at her for a long moment, and the answer came cold and clear.
‘I am your future.’
Daisy blinked. The scales on her arms shimmered, and she felt the first shiver of power under the skin, a flicker, a warmth, like the sun behind clouds. It scared her, but not as much as it should have.
She glared at Xeris, then at her own hands, then at the sky above, unreachable. “Fine. Teach me.”
The dragon nodded, and his thoughts echoed in the cave, binding them together.
‘As you wish, little spiral.’
And so it began.