“I see your bloodline. Sylvanwild to Highmark, an archer and a lowborn. A lowborn and his small blond wife. And then you, given up to tradition, raised under the acid curse in exchange for a few gold pieces.”
No, he couldn’t see all that. He was bluffing.
But how else to explain the acid rain in the Eldermaze? In the meadow, when I stood before Rhiannon and watched the droplets tear her skin away?
A twisted tree brought me all the way back to that archer. All the way back to Carys setting her dagger to one woman’s fate line.
A fate changed. A daughter changed, and the one after that. One droplet of a dragon’s power given over, mixed into the blood.
Intomyblood.
Caustrix let out a one-note laugh. “The world turns for a bit of coin, one night’s food. And you, daughter of scorn, must pay its price.”
Before me, the flames shimmered like a spell. Like magic. Inside them, I saw the Dip. My street. The sun emblazoned on my mother’s front door.
“Step in,” the dragon said. “Step in, and give so that you may take.”
I unclasped my cloak, let it drop to the cavern floor. One step forward, then the next.Wait for me, Dorian. Just wait a moment.
The heat rose until it felt cool, until it swept over me like a frigid breeze. The past beckoned; the future called.
If the dagger depended on knocking on the door of my childhoodhome, on seeing my mother’s face one more time, I could do that. I could do that a million times.
I stepped into the flames.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eurydice
I stoodbefore the old door with the sun painted on its face. Already I smelled the flour; already I felt her fingers in my hair. I set my hand to the knob, turned it, and pushed in.
“Mama.”
Faint sunlight cast bands on the gleaming kitchen floor. My mother stood with her face to the window, her fingers dug deep into dough. She hummed that song she’d taught me when I was four, the one about the deep forest.
“Eury.” Her face turned, and a softness came over it. Brown eyes, hair pulled back tight. “You’re just in time for the rain. Take your boots off.”
I shut the door, kicked my shoes off one after the other into the corner. “What’s to eat?”
“Guess.”
The faintest tapping began at the windowpanes, the first droplets of afternoon rain. Each droplet hissed with acid where it touched the glass, and a green hue overtook the sunlight on the floor.
“Pork,” I said. “The fat hind end.”
“Oh yes.” Her smile didn’t leave her as she turned back to her work; her fingers kneaded deeper into the dough. “The fattest in the Dip.”
I dropped into the chair at the table. It creaked, wobbled under me.
The dough thudded, then squelched. “What did you learn from Elisabet today?”
I rolled my eyes, examined a hangnail on my index finger. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
“I never took you for a liar, Eury.”
“I’m not lying.”
She snorted, half-turned to me. “A mind like a trap, and you’d rather roll in the dirt.”