Blood of Dragons

For a moment, she bit her lower lip. Then she shrugged. ‘My father has been ill for a very long time. Or so he says. Others, I think, would simply accept it as ageing. But he has done all he could to stave off death. Many a learned healer he has brought here and many rare cures he has consumed. But over the last few years, all efforts have failed him. Death beckons, but he will not answer its call. Instead, he threatens his healers and in turn, fearing death just as much as he does, they have told him that they cannot cure him unless he can procure for them the rarest of all ingredients for their medicines. Powdered dragon liver to purify his blood. Dragon blood mixed with ground dragon’s teeth to make his own bones stop aching. The ichor from a dragon’s eye to make his own eyesight clear again. The blood of a dragon, to make his own blood run hot and strong as a young man’s.’

He shook his head at her. ‘I don’t even know where my dragon is right now. In the past three years, I have felt her mind brush mine only twice and never have I been able to reach out to her. She does not come at my call, and even if she did, she would not give up her own blood to save me. I feel sure she would be roused to killing fury at the thought of a man wishing to drink her blood or make medicine from her liver.’ He shook his head more strongly. ‘I am useless to him! He should ransom me and demand his healers find other cures for him.’

She cocked her head and the pity in her eyes became unmistakable. ‘You did not hear me out. He could not get his dragon’s blood, but what my suitor gave him woke his curiosity. A small square of scaled flesh. Flesh cut from your shoulder, if I am not mistaken. Which he ate. And it made him feel better than he had in months. But not for long.’

Selden sat up. The room began a slow turn, rotating around him in a sickening way. He shut his eyes tightly, but it only became worse. He opened them again, swallowing against the vertigo. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked her hoarsely. ‘He told you such a thing, that he ate my flesh?’

‘My father did not tell me, no. My suitor … Chancellor Ellik … bragged of it. When he … came to … tell me that you would be put in my care.’ The smoothness had gone out of her speech. Her words hitched along and he sensed a terrible story behind them.

Her eyes had gone distant and dark. He reached out to touch her arm. She gave a small shriek and leapt away from him. She stared at him wildly. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me what you know.’

She retreated from him, reached the covered window and halted there. He feared suddenly that she might fling the cover wide and throw herself through the window. Instead, she turned back to face him, a cornered animal, and flung the words at him as she might fling stones at hounds baying after her. ‘He cannot have dragon’s blood, so he will have yours! He will consume you, as he consumes every living being that comes near him. Consume and destroy, for his own dark ends!’

To hear her speak the words made the unthinkable something he must confront. A strange coldness filled him slowly, flowing out from his bones. When he spoke, his voice was higher than usual, as if air could not quite reach the bottom of his lungs. ‘It won’t work,’ he said desperately. ‘I am as human as you are. My dragon has changed me, but I am not a dragon. Drink my blood, eat my flesh, it will not matter. He will die just as surely as I will.’

Full knowledge of the fate the Duke intended for him penetrated his mind. He had not, at first, comprehended why they had taken a sample of his flesh and skin when he was being sold. He had thought then that it was to prove that he was scaled. The wound on his shoulder from that ‘sample’ still oozed through the clean bandaging the woman had applied to it. He had thought it was healing and left it alone, but the girl had abraded away the thick scab to reveal the festering infection beneath. He wrinkled his nose as he recalled how bad it had smelled.

Even the meaning behind the Duke’s words when he had first been brought before him had slipped past Selden’s cognizance. But this woman who had been entrusted with his care seemed determined to make him confront it. She studied him from across the room, then, as abruptly as she had taken flight, she calmed. Her voice was low as she crossed the room to sit by his couch. ‘The Duke knows that your flesh and blood will not serve him as well as a dragon’s would. Knows it, and does not care. He will spend you ruthlessly, using you as a stopgap measure to keep himself alive until he can obtain the genuine cure.’

She tugged his blanket straight, her lips folded. Then spoke without hope. ‘And so I must heal you of infection, and clean your body, and ply you with food and drink, just as if you were a cow being fattened for the slaughter. We are both his cattle, you see. Chattel to be used however it best suits him.’