Chapter 29 Training Day
She tried to focus on the pain, on the grit of the mountain air in her lungs, but Xeris’s thoughts crowded her own. There was no privacy. Every time her mind wandered, to the city, to the hunger in her belly, to her mother’s last words, a cold echo doubled her feeling, folded it back on itself. Sometimes it was cruel. Sometimes it was curious. It was always present.
The first lesson began with blood.
Daisy fumbled through the far edge of the cave, looking for anything that would serve as a blade. She found a chunk of stone, sharp enough on one side to split skin, and set about carving a better tool. It was an old habit: stay busy, don’t think, don’t cry. Xeris watched, unmoving, eyes half-closed, but the pressure in her mind ramped with every minute.
She dug at the edge of the stone, chipped her knuckles, cursed, and then, on the third try, dragged the sharp edge across her palm by accident.
She hissed and dropped the rock. Blood welled up, bright and thick, and the pain was so clear, so immediate, that it overrode the headache Xeris had left in her skull.
Except the blood didn’t fall.
It hung in the air. Five perfect droplets, quivering like a string of garnets, hovered between her hand and the floor. Daisy blinked. She closed her fist, opened it again. The droplets shifted, then elongated, stretching into thin, twisting lines. The memory of her mother’s journal flared, spiraled, always spirals, drawn in the margins, etched on the inside of the old book.
The droplets spun, joined, and formed a perfect spiral in the air.
She gasped, and the blood froze, then broke apart, showering to the floor as if gravity had just remembered to work.
Xeris’s voice did not sound in her head, but echoed aloud in the chamber, the air vibrating with every syllable. ‘You do not hide it well.’
“Hide what?” Daisy pressed her palm tight, not caring about the blood on her shirt. “I’m not doing anything!”
He moved for the first time, crawling across the cave until his head loomed over her, scales scraping like shovels across the stone. ‘Your blood is power. Forbidden, old. The last who wielded it became kings and monsters.’ His nostrils flared. ‘It was a favorite toy of my kind, before your city outlawed it.’
She stared at the blood, then at her wrist, then at him. “Blood magic,” she said, the words like a curse from childhood stories.
He nodded, and the tip of his tongue slipped between his fangs. ‘Your mother knew. Why else would she hide her true name, her true power, in a book?’
“She was nothing special.” Daisy flinched at how weak it sounded. “She shared herself with a lot of people before she got sick.”
Xeris’s laughter was a roll of thunder, bouncing off the cave walls. ‘Family and blood come through no matter what they did in their lives. She had the fire, and your father had the blood. That is more than special. That is dangerous.’
The memory of her mother’s hands, rough and red, folding over hers as she traced spirals in the air: this is how you remember, she used to say. Daisy felt the heat creep up her face. “If it’s so dangerous, why am I not dead?”
The dragon cocked his head, smoke curling from his nostrils. ‘Because you made a pact with a devil.’
She glared at him. “And you’re the destroyer, or the devil?”
‘I am whatever you call me, little spiral. But your city calls me worse.’
She sat down, legs shaking. “What now?”
‘Now, you learn control.’ He watched her, eyes never blinking. ‘Unless you want the city to find you first.’
She remembered the way the trackers had followed her, the guards, the men in mirrored masks. She remembered Blackwood’s voice: She’s dangerous. The truth of it was a cold thing in her gut.
“Fine,” she said. “What do I do?”
The first step is to feel. He didn’t move, but the pressure in her head tripled. Daisy thought it would split her skull, but then it stopped. In its place: silence, so profound she almost cried.
She felt the blood in her hand, pulsing, hot and bright. She focused on it, and the pain became something else, energy, alive and wild.
The second step is to shape. Xeris’s voice was distant, as if he’d pulled away. She tried to imagine the spiral, but all she got was a wobbly line in the air. The blood responded, barely, forming a crooked loop before falling to the ground.
She glared at the dragon. “This is stupid.”
‘Magic is rarely clever. Only hungry,’ he replied. ‘Try harder.’
She gritted her teeth, tried again. This time, she thought of the city, the way the lights arced over the rooftops, the pattern of the alleys. The blood responded, forming a twisting line that sketched the city’s outline. Daisy nearly smiled, but the moment she lost focus, the blood splattered on the stone.
Xeris’s eyes glinted. ‘Better.’
She wiped her hand on her shirt. “Is it always this messy?”
‘It is a weapon,’ he said. ‘Not a toy.’
They practiced for hours, maybe days. Time lost all meaning in the cave. Daisy learned to sense the blood of the mice that lived in the cracks, to call it toward her in a slow, lazy wave. She learned to make a shield, thin but bright, that shattered the first time Xeris tested it. She learned to touch the veins of a withered plant, force it to bloom for a heartbeat, then crumble.
Each trick left her weaker, scales spreading higher on her arms, across her back. The spiral on her wrist turned black at the edges, the pattern burned into her skin.
Every failure made her more furious, every small success a hunger that wanted more.
Xeris taught with insults, with pressure, with the threat of teeth. But sometimes, when she managed something new, he rumbled with a low, deep pride that made her chest ache.
She hated how much it mattered.
She thought of her mother, of Delia, of the city. Each time she let herself drift, the dragon’s presence nudged her back to the task.
“Why are you helping me?” she demanded once, after a session left her so dizzy she could barely see.
He paused, and for the first time, she felt him hesitate. ‘Because you are the key,’ he said. ‘Your blood can break the city, or save it.’
“And you want it broken.”
His eyes narrowed. ‘The city bled my kind dry. It chained me for centuries. It used my power, then feared me when I asked for mercy.’
She stared at him, at the monster everyone else wanted dead. “You want revenge.”
‘I want memory,’ he said. ‘I want the world to remember what it is to fear.’
Daisy looked at her hands, at the scales, at the spiral. “I’m not your weapon.”
‘You are your own weapon,’ he said, and for once, the words were gentle.
She believed him.
She curled up on the cold stone, eyes heavy. “I need to sleep.”
Xeris nodded, folding himself around the cave, a wall of red and black and heat.
As Daisy drifted off, she felt the blood in her veins move with her breath, slow and steady, like the current of a river.
She dreamed of the city, burning, and of her mother, waiting with open arms.