Chapter 60 Protect This City
Daisy woke in the ruins of Ravensworth Castle, ribs aching like a tuning fork struck by the world’s worst conductor. For a second, she lay still, staring at the mosaic of cracked sky through the bones of the ceiling, her breath condensing in the chill. The castle was all sharp edges now—every arch and column stripped bare by fire or dragon claw, nothing left but a skeleton picked clean.
She rolled to her side. Her skin felt wrong: too tight in some places, raw in others. Daisy looked at her arms and flexed. Crimson scales patterned her left forearm, fanned out from wrist to elbow like they were planned, almost pretty if you ignored the blood. They pulsed with her heartbeat, a dull red, then brighter, like the warning light on a kettle about to boil. She traced them up to her shoulder, where they thickened into a patch of armored plating over the bone.
A memory flickered, Xeris, a wash of fire and wings, the link between them like a wound. She reached for him through the bond, but he was quiet, content, coiled in the ruins somewhere above. Daisy grinned. If he could be lazy, so could she.
She tried to sit up and nearly blacked out. The movement sent a shock through her torso, and she saw, with detached amusement, that the scales had started tracing lines across her ribs, almost symmetrical, like someone was drawing a new Daisy from scratch and hadn’t bothered to erase the old one. A stripe of gold crept up her neck, invisible unless she turned her head just so.
She wasn’t a monster. Not yet. But she could see the future from here.
The wind shifted, and the air filled with voices. Human, not dragon, low and rumbling, punctuated by the slap of boots on wet stone. The sound came from the great hall, or what was left of it. Daisy forced herself up, staggering toward the noise. She held her arms in tight, wary of brushing the fresh scales against anything rough. The new growth was tough, but the skin underneath was tender, like a bruise that was also an open secret.
The great hall was a disaster zone. At the far end, someone had propped a table on a stack of broken stone, the surface marred by blood and ash, the edges warped by heat. Around it gathered the survivors, a war council patched together from the city’s dregs and whatever nobles hadn’t fled, died, or been eaten by their own.
Samuel presided at the head, faded scholar’s robe thrown over his hunched shoulders, hair stuck to his scalp with sweat. His hands fluttered over the table, arranging and rearranging scraps of paper, chalking runes onto the wood in a nervous loop. He looked more like an undertaker than a leader, but when he spoke, the room stilled to listen.
To his right, Eleanora Ravensworth: still regal, though the collar of her blouse was torn and her face streaked with soot. She’d swapped silks for the boiled leather of a city watchman, but the way she sat, upright, spine unbroken, said she still expected to rule.
Oliver drifted at the edge, arms folded, a bandage wrapping one forearm where the skin had been scalded off in a previous night’s brawl. He picked at the bandage with his good hand, eyes sharp and lazy at once. Two seats down, Delia patched up a line of new recruits, her own hands trembling, lips pressed white with worry.
Cornelius Blackwood, the mercenary, loomed over a map at the opposite end of the table, finger tracing lines through the city’s heart. His coat had been replaced by bandoliers of vials and warding stones, and he spoke with the calm of a man who’d already decided how many would die.
Daisy entered, and every head turned.
“Look who finally grew out of her skin,” Cornelius called, voice cutting.
Daisy showed teeth. “Look who still hasn’t grown a conscience.”
Eleanora smiled thinly. “We were just about to start. You’re late.”
Daisy took a seat, letting the new scales clatter on the table top. “I like to make an entrance.”
Samuel spoke first. “The city is holding. Barely. The attacks have slowed, but so has food, power, everything. The outside is worse. Our spies say the neighboring kingdoms have sent their own mages. They want to take the city while we’re weak.”
Cornelius nodded, stabbing the map. “Here, here, and here. They’re massing on the ridges. Waiting for our wards to collapse.”
Eleanora’s lip curled. “The wards are already gone.”
“Not all of them,” Delia spoke up, her voice a whisper, but the authority in it was apparent. “There’s a line around the old quarter. It’s frayed, but if we can reinforce…”
Samuel cut her off. “We can’t hold forever. We need a real solution.”
Daisy watched the room, the way every argument left a crack in the group. Old habits, she thought. Power made people stupid.
Oliver broke the tension. “We could negotiate. The city’s a ruin, but we still have leverage. If we send a delegation…”
“A delegation will be slaughtered,” Cornelius interrupted. “If we show weakness, we invite a siege. Best to strike first, thin their ranks before they know what hit them.”
Delia flinched. “That’s a war crime.”
Cornelius shrugged. “Not if we win.”
Eleanora ignored both. She stared at Daisy. “You’re the wild card. You and your pet. What’s the dragon say?”
Daisy felt Xeris shift in her mind, the hunger in him rolling through her bones like a tide. She considered, then said, “He wants to burn everything. Says we should raze the enemy camps, then negotiate when there’s nothing left but the ones too scared to fight.”
Samuel frowned. “That’s genocide.”
Daisy shrugged. “It’s also efficient.”
The council broke into bickering. Samuel and Delia on one side, arguing for restraint; Cornelius and Eleanora on the other, pushing for decisive action. Oliver said nothing, just watched Daisy, a private signal passing between them: this is all bullshit.
The argument didn’t stop until the doors at the far end crashed open.
A messenger, covered head to toe in cinder and blood, staggered in. He threw himself at the table, scattering Samuel’s notes, and gasped, “They’ve triggered the engines!”
Samuel went pale. “Are you sure?”
The messenger nodded. “We saw the sky go black. Felt it in our teeth. The ground…” He swallowed. “It’s not natural. They’re using the old magic, the kind that drains everything.”
Eleanora slammed her hand on the table. “They’ll kill the city to keep it from us.”
Cornelius bared his teeth. “We attack. Now.”
Samuel started to protest, but Daisy’s patience snapped. Her new scales flared, heat rising off her arm in a shimmer.
“Enough,” Daisy said, her voice thick with dragon.
The word echoed, rattling the glass in the windows.
Samuel fell silent. Even Cornelius blinked, caught off guard.
Daisy stood, letting her arms spread wide to show the scales in all their bloody glory.
“Argue later. We act now. If they drain the city, none of this matters. Not your wards, not your armies, not your pretty titles. We hit them before the engines finish charging, or we die like rats in a barrel.”
Eleanora nodded, the fire in her eyes matching Daisy’s own. “What do you need?”
Daisy looked at each of them, reading the fear and the hunger.
“A distraction,” she said. “Hit their camps, draw their mages out. While they’re looking at the dragon, I’ll take a team into the engines. Shut them down from inside.”
Cornelius grinned. “I like your style.”
Samuel was already scribbling notes, hands shaking.
Delia looked at Daisy, eyes full of both terror and something else, hope, maybe. “You’ll need backup. Someone who knows healing, in case…”
“In case I get blown apart,” Daisy finished. “Fine. But you stay behind me.”
The council broke, every member moving at once. Cornelius barked orders to his mercs; Eleanora gathered her nobles, their faces hard and ready. Samuel sent for runners, spreading word through the surviving districts. Delia found Daisy in the swirl, pressing a packet of herbs into her hand.
“Take this,” she whispered. “It’s not much, but it might buy you a few more hours if, if the scales start spreading again.”
Daisy squeezed her arm, careful not to cut her. “Thank you.”
Oliver sidled up, his voice a private murmur. “You sure you want to do this?”
Daisy glanced at him, saw the real worry in his eyes. “It’s what I’m for.”
He tried to smile, failed, then cupped her jaw with his good hand. “Don’t die. You owe me ten crowns.”
She kissed his knuckles, then slipped away into the chaos.
As she reached the main stair, Xeris dropped down from the upper landing, his eyes glowing gold in the dust. He shrank, just for her, so that his head was level with hers, not towering and monstrous.
“We’re really doing this,” Daisy said, not a question.
Xeris rumbled agreement, the link between them tight as a garrote.
She climbed onto his back, the scales fitting her own like puzzle pieces.
The city outside was burning again. She saw the black cloud on the horizon, the war engines already at work.
Daisy set her jaw, flexed her claws, and aimed the dragon at the end of the world.