Nerra went to the woods, because she didn’t know where else to go. She could feel the tears falling from her eyes as she walked, but they just blended in with the damp and the strangeness of the forest. Her hands trailed over the trees around her, identifying the plants there by touch: fungus and trailing leaves, flowers and bark.

Her dress was torn, because her bleary eyes hadn’t allowed her to move with her usual fluidity through the trees. Nerra didn’t care: fancy dresses were Lenore’s obsession, not hers. No, that wasn’t fair, not when her sister was one of those who had tried to stand up to their father. She and Rodry had done it when their other brothers had stood by, even though it risked their father’s wrath, and that of the nobles around.

That had been part of why Nerra had carried herself away to the forest. If she’d stayed, her siblings would have kept trying to push the issue, and would only have found themselves in trouble for it. Those helping the ones with the scale sickness were reckoned almost as bad as the sick themselves.

“I’ll not see them hurt,” Nerra said. She didn’t want anyone hurt over her. She didn’t want anyone hurt at all. The threats the southerners had made of war seemed worse than anything that could happen to her; bad enough that she knew she shouldn’t be worrying about being cast out like this. What did that matter that she was cast out, when there was something happening that could threaten everyone?

“I don’t matter,” Nerra said, although it still hurt, still felt worse than anything in her life had.

The hardest part of it was the sense of betrayal. All through her life, her father had been there for her. He’d known that she was sick, had known about her sickness. Hadn’t he been the one to ask Master Grey about it? To send for the best doctors that the House of Scholars could find? Yet in the hall, he’d acted as though he had never seen her arms before, as if it were all some great shock to him.

“He had to,” Nerra tried to tell herself, but it was hard to convince herself, so hard. She couldn’t believe that a father would just cast out a daughter like that, would refuse to listen.

What was so bad about the scale sickness, anyway? Nerra looked down at her arm, realized that her sleeve was still loose, and ripped it away completely. What did it matter, now that people already knew? She stared down at the black, scale-like lines that traced over her arm, more solid now than they had been, palpably different from the rest of her skin. They were as much a part of her as anything else, so what was so wrong about them?

No one had ever answered that question for her, or even come close to it. The doctors her father had found had looked as though they hadn’t even considered that question, and certainly didn’t know the answer. Master Grey… well, who knew what the sorcerer really thought about anything? He spoke little at all, and about this, he’d said nothing to her, only offered her a poultice that had taken away some of the itching that came with the scales’ growth.

“There has to be some reason why people are cast out,” Nerra said, as she continued her way through the forest. People wouldn’t do it for no reason, would they? Or would they? It was hard to fathom half the things that people did. She didn’t understand the way Vars treated people, or why Rodry felt the need to fight all the time. Maybe it was just because she was different, or maybe it was just the fear of ending up like her, turned into something larger.

It didn’t matter now, of course. The reason for her banishment didn’t matter so much as the simple fact that she was banished. Anyone who saw her would be entitled to try to kill her, or do whatever else they wanted, and she would have no protection from the law. It was a terrifying thought.

“You’re safe here,” she told herself, leaning against one of the trees and feeling the solidity of it. She knew the forest better than anyone, knew every twist and turn of it. She could survive here, could even thrive here…

…and she had her secret here.

Nerra realized that even without thinking about it, she’d been heading in the direction of the cave where she’d hidden the dragon. She wanted to find it, wanted to see it again. She had been looking after it, and now it was likely to be the only companion she would have. They could live in the forest together, hunting down food, staying safe from the view of men.

It was a nice thought, but it was also one that was interrupted. Nerra knew this feeling; knew the dizziness and the sense of sickness. On another day, she would have retired to her rooms so that no one could see her like this, maybe sent for hot drinks as if it were just an ordinary kind of sickness. Now she had no rooms to go to. There was only the thought of the dragon, somewhere ahead of her.

Nerra kept walking, ignoring the unsteadiness. She would feel better soon, because she always did. She would feel better once she found her dragon, because at least some of this was the pain of loneliness and separation; it had to be. Maybe if she found something to eat.

Back home, she would have sent for a servant, but out here Nerra knew she would have to find her own food. She knew what she was doing, at least, knew which fungi and plants were edible, and which were poisons. She took a handful of berries, eating them one by one even though her dizziness made them taste like ash in her mouth.

It didn’t help, so Nerra found herself looking around for leaves that she could make into a tincture to slow down the feelings of weakness that were making her limbs start to shake with every step. The effort of looking, though, made it seem as though she was wading through the depths of the great river that divided the kingdom, every step an effort.

“Maybe I’ll sit for a while until it passes,” Nerra said. She found a solid-looking oak to sit against, setting her back against it as she sat there and waiting for the feelings of weakness and dizziness to pass. They always had in the past.

She sat there and tried to think of all the things she might do with her life. All that she had lost hurt so much, but Nerra was determined to think about all the things she might still do, all the things that might still happen for her. She’d hated court life, had always wanted to be out in the forest, had always wanted to spend her time apart from people, only offering help where people needed it. Maybe this was her chance.

Maybe, except that even those thoughts didn’t encourage the feelings of sickness to pass. Nerra felt it in the dizziness that threatened to consume her, in a tingling in her mouth, in a pulsing in her arm from where the scale patterns felt as though they were about to burst from her skin.

“Help,” she called out weakly, but there was no one to help her out there. Even if someone had come, they’d have seen her arm, and killed her for it. At the very least, they would have shied away from her, leaving her to the mercy of the shivering and the weakness and…

Somewhere in the course of it, Nerra realized that she had fallen over to her side, her cheek scraping against the leaves and twigs of the forest floor. Her breathing was shallow now, and the world felt as though it was coming from behind a veil that meant Nerra could barely see it. Her eyes flickered open and closed, and this felt different from all the other times she’d felt unwell, different, and worse.

There was a pressure building in Nerra’s skull now, as if a whole world was there inside it, fighting to get out. She screamed, then realized that no sound had come out; she was just twitching there on the ground, staring up at the canopy of the forest, sure that she would die there alone and unheralded. Would someone find her there, or would her body simply stay there to be scavenged by the animals? Would she even be dead before that happened?

Suddenly, Nerra felt very afraid. She found herself thinking of her brothers and sisters, of the dragon abandoned in the cave. She wished that any of them were here, that someone were here.

“Help,” she called again, and to her shock, there was someone there now.

There were several people, gathered around in the woodland and staring down at her. The largest of them was at the front, bald and tattooed, muscled like a bear and looking at her like he’d just walked into a room full of treasure.

“Princess,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Greave lay in bed, panting, and, for almost the first time in his life, truly happy. Sunlight spilled in through the window, shining down on the sleeping form of Aurelle Hardacre. She looked perfect lying there, but then, she looked perfect everywhere.

Greave’s mind flashed back to how she’d looked before, in the moments when they’d been making love. It had been an experience that had been beyond anything he could have imagined, beautiful and wondrous, pleasure filled and somehow complete in a way that almost nothing else ever seemed. Greave could see now why men wrote poetry about such things, and sang songs about the beauty of love.

She had grabbed him almost the moment he had left his father’s chambers.

“You’re angry, my love,” she had whispered.

“I…” He hadn’t had the words for how upset he was. “I need to find a way to make this right, to make this better.”

“I can’t help with that,” Aurelle had said. She had pulled him back in the direction of his rooms. “But there’s one thing I can do.”

Now she lay beside him, breathing softly in her sleep.

“Aurelle, my love,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

There was no answer, and Greave did not wish to wake her now. He stared at Aurelle as she lay there, feeling luckier than any man had a right to be that she had simply walked into his life like that. Previously, women had always thought his features too effeminate, or his personality too dour. Aurelle had seen something in him that had lifted Greave to more than that, made his heart sing in a way that he hadn’t known was even possible.

He thought about waking her with a kiss, but slipped from the bed instead, dressing in silence. He’d been so caught up with Aurelle in the last few days that he hadn’t done even the one thing that he’d promised himself he would do. Now, with the reminder of his sister being sent away, and the argument with his father, he needed to do it.

Greave slipped from his rooms and headed through the castle in the direction of the library. Now that the last of the feasting was done with, it was a quiet place, almost an empty one. Greave could feel some of that emptiness inside him, at the thought that one of his sisters had been cast out, while another was missing. Greave could help with one of those, though, if he could only find what he was looking for.

He stepped into the chaos of the library, which looked even more out of order than when he’d left it. Had servants been in trying to find things, or maybe a noble bored from the feasting? It didn’t matter, so long as he could still find the book he wanted.

What had it been called? For a moment, Greave thought perhaps he might have forgotten the title, and he had an instant of panic at that thought. What if he couldn’t remember? What if the chance to find out what his stepmother was involved in had slipped from him through simple thoughtlessness?

No, he remembered it: On the Body. There, it seemed that a mind used to remembering vast tracts of poetry and plays had its uses. Idly, Greave wondered what his father might make of that thought.

He couldn’t tell him, of course, couldn’t tell anyone. Until such time as he found a cure that might save his sister, then just by telling people that he was looking, Greave would place them all in danger.

“No,” he said. “I need to find the cure first.”

That meant finding the book, and that was easier said than done in a library like this. Greave started to search the shelves.

It took what seemed like forever, with book after book tossed aside. Observations on philosophy went the way of Fauna of the Third Land and Notes on River Navigation. On another day, maybe Greave would have glanced at them, reasoning that all knowledge was worth having, but not today.

On another day, of course, he would have given up by now, his efforts washed away in the sense that all was worthless. If there had been one thing Aurelle’s arrival in his life had shown him, though, it was that some things were worth the effort. Greave kept digging through the library.

And then, it happened.

He froze.

Greave caught sight of the book he wanted almost by accident, buried behind a collection of works on the architecture of the kingdom back in the days when it had been unified.

With trembling hands, he reached out and took it.

It was so frail in his fingers.

On the Body was a slender volume, so old that Greave barely dared to open it. He did so with trembling fingers and started to read.

What he read there made no sense to him. He had read many books in his time, but here there were notes on dissections and the chemical processes of the body. There was a whole section on the scale sickness, detailing the process of the transformation, and the damage to the body that it could do, tearing people asunder as it sought to reshape them into… into…

…things. Greave stared at the pages, unable to believe the horror of some of the things there. Would his sister become one of these? No, not if he could do anything to stop it.

But despite all the horrors of the disease, a cure exists. The process for producing it is complex, but…

It ended there.

“NO!” Greave shouted. “IT CAN’T BE!”

Greave roared with frustration. Someone a long time ago had torn pages from the book.

Who? Why?

No, as crucial as that question was, it wasn’t the one that mattered right then. The thing that mattered was finding out the contents of those missing pages. Finding who had taken them could come later.

First though, he had to find the cure. How could he do it when this was all he had to go on? Greave read the book again, and there seemed no more clues, until his eyes fell on a small, crabbed note at the front.

Based on notes at GLA.

GLA, Greave wondered. GLA…..

Then it came to him: the Great Library of Astare.

Greave had heard of the library. It was a place in the northeast of the Northern Kingdom. It was closer to the dead, volcanic lands of the far north than it was to Royalsport, and would represent many days of travel. Even then, Greave didn’t know if he would be able to get in, because it was a place belonging to the House of Knowledge, and none but their number were supposedly allowed within. Even a prince might find himself refused for not being one of them, especially asking about something as sensitive as this.

Greave knew though that he had to go anyway. The contents of the book told a story that would have shaken most people, but to him, they were crucial to saving his sister. If a cure existed, then he had to find it, whatever the difficulties or the dangers. He knew then what he was going to have to do.

He would risk his life if he had to. He was riding to Astare.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Vars had planned to get Rodry to take over the duty of leading his half-sister’s guards. He had planned to listen to whatever nonsense his brother wanted to spout about him shirking his duties, then head off to the warmth of one of the House of Sighs’ establishments while his brother trudged through the rain after Lenore’s carriage.

Instead, something had gone wrong. Nerra had been sent away, not that Vars cared. Rodry had gone away on a hunt or something, at Lenore’s insistence. Now he found himself riding at the head of a marching column of men, all willing, even eager to protect his half-sister on her wedding harvest. Vars suppressed a sneer as he looked back at them. There must have been a hundred men there, and for what? To protect a sister who didn’t even matter as far as the succession went? Would they spring to his defense with such eagerness?

Vars really didn’t understand why he was being placed at risk for a task like this. His father could send the men if he had to, but to send Vars, the second in line, to the throne? It was madness. If there was trouble, he was the one who would be at risk, while his half-sister sat safe behind all the soldiers there. Vars shook his head, took a swig from a wineskin, and kept going.

Ahead, he could see a fork in the road. There had been a sign there once, but it had clearly blown down in a storm, so that it was impossible to tell which way was which. Riding up to it, Vars brought the column of men to a halt, giving them brief leave to sit and rest, readying themselves for the rest of the march. To his irritation, they didn’t break ranks while they did it, which put his own near slump from the saddle to shame. If a few had started dicing or drinking spirits, Vars would have felt a lot more at home.

“Which way, your highness?” the sergeant at arms who was supposedly second in command of the men asked.

“I’ll check,” Vars said. He got out the map, checking it and the route, wanting to make sure he knew where he was. The route stood out as a red ribbon leading around the kingdom; around far more of it than Vars cared for, through long sections that were nothing but villages, probably without a decent inn between them. Oh, Rodry was supposed to come help, but that just meant having to put up with his insufferable comments about how little Vars did that was brave or good.

If only there were some way to get out of this nonsense.

“Do you require assistance, your highness?” the sergeant asked.

“No, I do not,” Vars snapped back, realizing that the man probably assumed he was going to make a mistake about the route. He paused for a moment, thinking about that. He was the only one who had seen the map, after all, and the sign was down, so there was no way for the men to truly know…

“This way!” he said, pointing to the left hand fork with all the confidence that he could muster.

“Your highness…” the sergeant began, in a tone that was clearly about to question Vars. “Are you certain that’s the way? I thought that we were due to go through Neddis, and that’s—”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Vars said. “The route we are to follow is clearly marked. We are to go to the left and continue until we meet my sister. Now, stop questioning your prince and have the men ready to march, before I decide that you would be better off back in the ranks.”

“Yes, your highness,” the man said.

Vars smiled to himself. Manage this right, and he could take a tour of all the best places to drink before he headed back. Lenore would be fine; after all, she had that fool Rodry coming to protect her.

***

“A little to the left, Hershel,” Rodry called out to one of his companions. “You’ll never hit what you’re aiming for at this rate!”

He pretended joviality, although right then, he could only think of Nerra, and what he could be doing that was more useful.

“I bet that’s what the last woman you were with said,” the young nobleman called back, and nocked another arrow, firing it off in the direction of the pheasant that had just eluded him.

“Are all your hunts like this?” Finnal said, sitting atop his horse so primly and so calmly that he might have been riding in a courtyard and not across open fields.

“Like what?” Rodry demanded.

“So raucous?” he asked, and not for the first time that day, Rodry had to remind himself that this was the man his sister planned to marry, and that they would need to get along. He had promised Lenore.

“It’s not that raucous,” Rodry said. To be fair, it was quite raucous. Of the Knights of the Spur who had been co-opted into this, Halfin and Ursus seemed to be arguing about whether strength or speed was better on a hunt, Sir Twell was disagreeing vehemently and saying that they should set traps, while the younger noblemen seemed to be riding and shooting, or practicing sword blows with one another while looking on and hoping that the older knights would notice them.

“Okay,” Rodry admitted. “It’s a little raucous.”

“Just a little,” Finnal said. He held out a hand to an attendant, who passed him a loaded crossbow, since it was clearly too much work for him to draw it himself. Rodry saw him track a bird as it rose, then pull the trigger. There was a squawk as the quarrel struck home.

“A fine shot!” Rodry said. He would give his future brother-in-law that much.

“I suppose so,” Finnal said, apparently uninterested. He looked out over the knights and the noblemen. “So, is this what your companions do with their days? They ride and they hunt?”

“What would you have them do?” Rodry asked.

Finnal shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought there would be… more. Lenore has spoken of your heroism.”

Rodry smiled at that. “Let me guess, she was trying to get you to be better friends with me?”

Finnal paused for a moment, and then nodded. “Though I have no wish to be your enemy, and there is no need. After all, your sister is to be my wife. She is the love of my life.”

Rodry wished he could believe it; that he hadn’t heard the rumors that had been brought from the House of Sighs.

“So long as you treat her well,” Rodry said. “So long as you mean what you say about loving her.”

“Why would I mean anything else?” Finnal countered. “Lenore is the most beautiful of women, and the daughter of a king. Any man would be lucky to be marrying her.”

That was true, but Rodry still couldn’t escape the feeling that Duke Viris’s son wasn’t being quite sincere. Right then, he would rather have had someone else marrying his sister; someone worthy.

“Maybe we should go to find Lenore,” Rodry said. He wasn’t due to start accompanying her yet, but at least it would mean that he wasn’t stuck alone with Finnal any longer.

Finnal shook his head. “It is considered bad luck for the groom to accompany the bride on any part of the wedding harvest.”

“Probably because people might think that he’s counting up all the gold she brings in before deciding whether to marry her,” Rodry said, unable to keep a trace of bitterness from his voice. He knew he should have liked Finnal. He was clever, elegant, a good shot, a better horseman. He was the son of a duke, handsome and not boorish. Yet there was something about him that Rodry mistrusted, something that made him certain that the rumors weren’t just rumors, and that he couldn’t truly be trusted with his sister’s heart.

“You don’t like me, do you?” Finnal asked.

Rodry paused, and then shook his head. “You think I haven’t heard the rumors about you? About the House of Sighs?”

“Rumors mean nothing,” Finnal said.

“They do if they’re true,” Rodry shot back.

“And why have you decided that these are true?” Finnal asked. “I’m the son of a duke; I attract my share of jealousy.”

“A duke who stood with those who saw my sister banished,” Rodry said. He had to work to contain his anger now.

“I had no part in that,” Finnal said. “And my father… I suspect he was standing for the laws. Would your family overthrow them?”

“I wouldn’t see my sisters hurt!” Rodry all but snarled at him.

“I wouldn’t want that either,” Finnal said. He looked at Rodry levelly. “What will it take to convince you that I mean to do the right thing by Lenore? That I have no intention of hurting her?”

That was the problem; Rodry didn’t know. He couldn’t think of anything that would take away his suspicions, or that would make him see past all that he had heard about this man. He looked around, hoping for some distraction that would at least mean he didn’t have to answer. In the distance, he spied an inn; just a simple place, and probably the sort of establishment Finnal would never have set foot in. Suddenly, Rodry found himself needing a drink.

“Come have an ale with me,” he said, pointing to it. He called out to his companions, because he had no intention of that being an ale alone with Finnal. They might have to actually talk if they were alone. “I spy a tavern, men! I think we’ve hunted enough for one day, so let us celebrate our successes!”

He rode for it, wishing he could be riding to his sister’s side instead, but she’d asked him to take the time to get to know Finnal, and he was going to do that, even if he had to down a tavern’s worth of ale to manage it. She would be fine out on her journey. After all, she had Vars’s men to guard her.