Chapter 79 Xeris and Daisy
Daisy found Xeris on the highest roof of the ruined keep, perched on the broken edge where centuries of rain had worn the black stone to something close to bone. The dragon preferred the form of a monster wings and horns, scales that could shrug off artillery, but he’d compressed himself tonight, boiled down to the essence of threat. He stood seven feet tall, hunched and all sinew, his scales the color of fresh blood just as it hit air. His eyes still burned gold, but the pupils changed, slow and predatory, watching the horizon as the city’s lights flickered to life one by one.
She took a seat beside him, letting her boots dangle off the drop. A lazy breeze scraped the scent of dust and spent magic off the rooftops below. Xeris didn’t look at her, but she felt his attention shift in a way that was more force than movement, a pressure in the chest, the feeling of standing too close to a live wire.
“You should rest,” he said, voice a vibration that rattled her teeth as much as her ears.
“Can’t. Too many people watching.” Daisy flexed her left hand, the scales at the base of her thumb still raw from the day’s work. She’d healed the wound with her own magic, but the patchwork itched, and the skin pulsed with an aftershock that wouldn’t quit.
“Then you should eat,” Xeris countered. He flicked his claws and produced, with sleight of hand, a sack of meat pies he must’ve stolen from the castle kitchens. He passed one to Daisy, who accepted it on principle, tearing a bite with her teeth. It was still warm, flecked with some spice she couldn’t name.
They ate in silence, watching the city below. The streets glowed with a hundred different kinds of light: blue from mage lanterns, red from the hot glass of blood magic, white from improvised gas globes scavenged from the rich quarters. Sometimes, the colors fought each other, boiling together into ugly, beautiful confusion.
After a while, Xeris spoke, but inside her mind, as clear as if he’d gripped her skull and shouted directly into the grey matter. “Before I was bound here, there were kingdoms without spirals. No chains, no hierarchies. Power flowed wild, unmeasured, and it was… better. Not kinder, but honest.”
Daisy grunted. “Didn’t last, though.”
“No. They preferred order. It’s the same everywhere, in every era. The new order is just a cage made of different bones.”
She finished her meat pie, wiped the crumbs on her jacket. “So what’s the play? Let them all kill each other until someone builds a better cage?”
Xeris considered this, the gold in his eyes shifting with the sun’s last gasp. “You could leave. Let the city solve itself.”
Daisy didn’t respond right away. The urge to run was real, but the old compulsion, her mother’s voice, the memory of every broken promise- wouldn’t let her. “I owe them something,” she said. “Even if it’s just a chance to screw up their own future.”
Xeris laughed, a sound like old stone splitting. “You are a contradiction. Most who carry the spiral crave nothing but survival or dominion. You choose neither.”
“Maybe I’m defective.”
He shook his head. “No. The spiral was a shackle for centuries. But you wear it like a badge. That terrifies them.” He pointed down at the city, where a crowd of children chased a glowing orb up the main avenue, laughing as they took turns making it float higher, then deliberately crashing it into a lamp post.
Daisy traced her finger along the rooftop’s edge, scoring lines in the soot. “They’re afraid of what I am. Afraid I’ll lose control and flatten the city.”
“Will you?”
She thought about it. “Only if they make me.”
Xeris smiled, then, and touched one of his own scales, near his wrist, a mark nearly identical to the ones blooming along Daisy’s skin. “Before my imprisonment, I believed that might could enforce justice. That power would always demand its price, but it could be a fair exchange.” His tone softened, less god and more ghost. “I was wrong. It always takes more than you’re willing to pay.”
Daisy matched his gesture, running her thumb across her own wrist. The skin there was still soft, the scar a barely-there memory. “So what now?”
“Now we watch,” Xeris said. “See if your compassion can do what my centuries of rage could not.”
Daisy snorted. “Don’t bet on it.”
They sat for a while, letting the world keep spinning. The sunset ignited the sky in a wash of red and orange, both colors mirrored in the dragon’s hide. Daisy watched it fade, letting herself relax for the first time in days.
It didn’t last.
A skinny boy, desperate, not much older than Daisy had been when she’d started running the alleys, climbed onto the roof, panting and wide-eyed. He made a noise halfway between a cough and a sob, then blurted, “Miss Daisy! The scholar needs you, Samuel, he says it’s urgent!”
Daisy rose, wiped the soot from her pants. “Tell him I’m coming,” she said.
The boy vanished, grateful to be dismissed.
Xeris stood as well, wings unfurling just enough to catch the wind. “Duty calls,” he said, and the wry amusement was back.
Daisy started toward the access hatch, then paused, looking back at the dragon. “You could leave, too, you know.”
“Not yet.” His gold eyes locked on hers, ancient and unblinking. “This time, I want to see how the story ends.”
She nodded, then climbed down, the weight of the city and a thousand watching eyes settling onto her back.
Above, Xeris watched the night, silent and, for once, hopeful.