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A single word lifted over the crowd, rippling through the room again and again, on the tongue of everyone.

Dragon.

I didn’t believe it. It was a lie. A trick.

My father stepped close. “What do you make of this?”

“He’s killed her. There is no dragon. It was him, and he invented this ridiculous story to cover his actions.”

My father nodded grimly. “I think you’re right.” He added in a sneer: “Dragon. He must think us fools. Well. We can’t let this stand.”

“No,” I agreed. Tamsyn was lost. Gone. And I was lost, too.

I would not let it stand. She would be avenged.

25

Tamsyn

IWOKE SLOWLY, SWIMMING TO THE SURFACE, EMERGINGfrom a deep, milky fog, so like the fog I perpetually found myself folded within these days.

I shifted, and a piece of hay jabbed me in the side. Grimacing, I readjusted, seeking escape from the needle prick, wondering where I was.

As much as the hay poked and prodded at me, it smelled sweet. Faintly herbal. Slightly tangy. It did not reek of mold or, worse, manure. There was that, at least. As far as beds went, it could be worse. So much worse.

And then I remembered just how much worse it actually was.

As my world came into focus, I lifted my hand, held it up in front of me, bracing myself with a sucked-in breath, needing to see what horror awaited me this day, needing to know, fearing, hoping...

The familiar fingers were there, the nails as short and jagged as ever, but I stared at them like they were something new, a marvel, slender digits flexing in front of my face, my movements experimental, shaky and juddery as a new colt gaining its legs.

I am me again.

My arm. My hand. My fingers. No clawlike appendages. No talons. No scaled flesh.

No dragon here.

My hands roamed over my body, assessing, reassuring. I wasmyself again. In the truest sense. Naked in the hay with a wool blanket twisted around me, exposing far more than it shielded from the raw morning air.

I blew out a breath of relief that immediately steamed when it hit the cold.

“Yes. You’re you.”

Apparently I had spoken the words aloud, put the thought out into the world, let it materialize and take shape like something real, something I could touch and hold in my hand.

My gaze snapped to Thora. “You.” Apparently I hadn’t dreamed her up.

The events of yesterday flooded back over me. Arkin. Me... bursting from my skin. Fire like saliva in my mouth. Fell. His bellow of rage filling my ears, trailing me like smoke up into the sky. My wild, directionless flight before I landed, before Thora collected me—something broken and in need of repair. She’d led me back to her home with a casual manner, as though she came across dragons all the time in the course of her day.

When I didn’t fit through the door to her house, she guided me to her barn, where I bedded down alongside the rest of the livestock. Two milking cows, a horse, and a mule. They all eyed me with understandable distrust. In the soft light of morning, their gazes still reflected that distrust, although the mule looked a little less wild-eyed as it munched on a bucket of feed.

Thora angled her head thoughtfully as she peered at me within the pile of hay. “But perhaps I should say it is theother you. Because the dragon is you, too,” she said so absolutely, so matter-of-fact that it sparked the panic inside me. The panic not so very different from what I had felt while careening wildly thousands of feet above the ground.

No no no no no no no.

“I am not a dragon.” Fear sharpened my tongue. “I would know!”

She gave me a pitying look.