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Even Lyn looked sceptical, but before any of them could speak, Creon rose, leaving the maimed corpse of his test subject behind on the cobblestones. With a last glance down, he signed,Pretty ugly.

‘Glad you managed to confirm that through diligent examination,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you could double check if they’re really dead, too?’

Had there been no one else around, I suspected he’d have swatted a wing at my face, then taken his revenge by kissing me until I begged for mercy. Now, under the close scrutiny of the two males who’d appointed themselves defenders of my honour, Creon allowed himself nothing but a grin drenched in indifference.Clothes have melted into their skin. So even if it doesn’t reach deep, I don’t think wrapping yourself in a blanket will be enough to survive this magic.

I pulled a face. ‘Gross. Good to know, though.’

He nodded slowly.We should look into water. There must be a reason it never reached the islands.

‘But if you and Naxi can keep it at bay anyway …’

Want you to have options if anything goes wrong.

‘Would anyone care,’ Agenor said tartly, watching our conversation with narrowed eyes, ‘to summarise their conclusions in a manner all of us can understand?’

I was just introducing the idea of water as a plague-stopping barrier when Edored came jogging up to us from the other side of the avenue, sword in hand, grey eyes shining with boyish excitement. ‘Beyla thinks she found dragon traces!’

Melted clothes abruptly forgotten, we followed him to a narrow alleyway where Naxi stood waiting for us. Heaps of rubble barricaded the sand coating the street. It must have been a lively place full of shops once; painted wooden signs still swung gloomily from the facades, the creaking of their chains uncannily reminiscent of moaning humans. But the doors had rotted from the storefronts, the wares behind the broken windows had withered to dust, and all that remained of the former glory of the place was the occasional gleam of coins left behind.

There were fewer bodies here. No one, it seemed, had run to the barber in an attempt to save their hide.

We found Beyla clambering over the rotting balustrade of a balcony, her ash blonde braid already dusty from whatever places she’d been exploring. She jumped down as she saw us, landing like a cat in the sand and rubble ten feet down.

‘There’s a nest in the attic room,’ she reported before anyone could ask what in hell she was doing climbing over buildings on the brink of collapse. ‘About the size of a double bed, which seems large for a dragon – but then again …’ She dug something from the pocket of her grey travel coat, handing it to Lyn. ‘What do you make of this?’

Agenor’s breath faltered next to me as the object in Lyn’s fingers caught the sunlight. It was a scale – smooth and gold and about the size of my entire hand.

‘Perhaps,’ Tared suggested, ‘it’s time to get the hell out of here.’

‘It was an old nest,’ Beyla said, throwing him a wry smile. ‘And I’m notsureit’s a dragon’s in the first place. They’re practically extinct, for a start – and I don’t think they’re supposed to grow that big?’

‘They’re not.’ Agenor gave the impression that he still wouldn’t mind getting the hell out, old nest or not. ‘The largest I ever saw was about the size of a sheep, and most were much smaller than that. This would be …’ He grimaced. ‘An unpleasant creature to encounter.’

‘But itdoeslook like a dragon’s, doesn’t it?’

‘It is a dragon scale,’ he said, rubbing his temple. ‘No doubt about that. The question is—’

‘It could be the plague magic,’ Lyn suggested, sitting down on a nearby pile of bricks and stone-dust as she frowned at the scale. ‘Like those arm-sized worms you said came crawling out of the ground where Etele’s blood hit at the Golden Court. Either it kills or it results in monstrous proportions – that would fit the dual nature pretty well.’

Agenor looked even unhappier.

‘So,’ Edored said, brightening, ‘are we going to hunt a dragon?’

Tared let out a long-suffering groan.

‘I suggest we get out of the city first,’ Beyla said, her wistful glance at the many unexplored windows notwithstanding. ‘No use in wasting days charting this labyrinth if we have better things to do, and at least in the open field we’ll see any dragons coming for us. We can always come back later.’

No one argued with that logic, although Edored grumbled under his breath until Lyn flung a handful of sparks at him.

We returned to the street we’d come from and walked west from there, past neglected parks and collapsed bridges, canals full of weeds and abandoned carts along the streets. A temple towered above the roofs, built in that familiar pentagon shape of the holy buildings I knew from home. Small offerings still lay piled up on the marble stairs, tattered ribbons fluttering on the autumn breeze.

There were even more bodies there, scattered over the pavement, their burned faces showing deep holes where their screaming mouths had been. The inhabitants of Lyckfort must have run for the protection of their gods as the magic washed over them, not knowing that the gods who’d kept them safe as long as history remembered would never help them again.

Agenor’s directions grew curter and curter as we navigated the maze of destruction, until he gave up speaking entirely and just pointed wherever we needed to go, dread bleeding through his every gesture and expression. Most of the group was similarly quiet behind me. Naxi, on the other hand, drifted around in a flurry of pink-blonde curls and flapping skirts, and Creon strolled along beside me as if we were visiting a boring autumn fair, carelessly flicking a knife between his fingers.

Had just the two of us been there, his confident calm would have been comforting. Now, with the eyes of the others on our necks …

‘Perhaps,’ I muttered, looking away from the burned shapes of two people clutching each other on the street, ‘you should try to look a little less … murderous.’