I shook the snow from my hair, glancing around at the endless white powder that surrounded us as Yssac shivered under his coat. He quickly moved to join me, glancing toward the frozen river.

  “I’ve never been to Driria before,” Yssac mumbled, his eyes staring where the moving water turned to ice. “Those ice spirits really did a number here.”

  I didn’t offer an answer, simply turning to continue our walk as Yssac fell in step beside me, his boots crunching unevenly in the snow. The plains stretched for miles, flat and blinding under the cloudy sky, but it was a scene I knew well. Those years of joining my father on his trips meant I was familiar with this part of Driria, but I knew better than to follow my father’s route.

  It had been a week since Yssac received the letter, and while we had managed to gather most of the compounds he needed, dragon blood had proved elusive. For his part, Yssac had tried several different antidotes without it, but with only a week left, it was becoming increasingly obvious he would have no success. Kapral and Illythia were the only dragons I knew of and despite knowing that the latter would likely be visiting the palace soon to confirm what I was, I had no desire to see her again.

  “So, do you… know where it is?”

  “I have an idea,” I sighed, wishing Yssac wasn’t so intent on creating conversation. I would have preferred to simply look in silence. “My father always took the long way.”

  “Oh, to avoid it,” Yssac agreed and I glanced back to see his expression. He seemed deep in thought, likely still considering the outcomes of his various trials and trying to come up with ways to incorporate the dragon blood. It had been strange to see a side of him that wasn’t cruel, even stranger to see a side of him so determined. While Tritetia attempted to help him sometimes, Yssac worked the hardest, the bags under his eyes proof of all the sleep he had lost. “I guess… that makes sense.”

  I didn’t answer, but I noticed the way his fingers twitched, clutching the bag he wore over his coat. We both knew we wouldn’t be able to gather much, considering it would likely only flow slowly, and Yssac had to treat every drop as precious. To my surprise, he was almost an expert at managing the small amounts of sandwalker blood the merchants had gotten us, barely wasting any of it during his tests.

  “Sorry, I usually get shakes after using magic,” Yssac’s voice made me look up at his face again, and I shrugged, turning my attention back to the empty white in front of us.

  “Why?”

  “Huh? You don’t know?”

  “Draconids and other magical beasts can’t use spirit magic. Only humans can,” I scoffed, my eyes scanning for anything to break the continuity of the frozen grasslands. “So no, I don’t.”

  “Oh, shakes is common for people who have low spirit affinity. It’s not fatal or anything, just uncomfortable,” Yssac explained, and I listened as he took a deep breath, clearly struggling to breathe in the thin air. We weren’t at a higher elevation than we had been in Theralis, but the ice magic that kept Driria frozen also thinned the air. “It’ll pass in time for me to get us home.”

  “Why do you have a low affinity?” I asked, determined that if Yssac wanted to talk, it would at least be about questions I wanted answered.

  “Well, some people naturally have low or high affinity, like Princess Valaine. Her affinity is high enough that she can see the spirits around the Imperial Palaces, but I… I’m just out of practice,” Yssac’s pause made me glance back, and I caught the way his expression flickered. “I didn’t use magic growing up, and if you don’t practice, spirits will naturally tune you out. It can take a while for them to pay attention again.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, my mother didn’t like it when I used magic, so I didn’t for her,” Yssac chuckled, but it was in an empty way. I didn’t need him to say it to know his mother was no longer around and I let the silence linger. Given that Yssac had never left for a funeral and his mother had already been absent by time my mother and I had joined the Marquess’s household, I could only guess she must have died before I was reset. It explained more than I wanted it to. “Caspian made me begin practicing when I became his aide.”

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  “Not surprising,” I shrugged, not sure what else to say. It was a Caspian thing to do; to see potential and to try and guide it toward something useful. To use respect and honesty to allow others to see and learn for themselves. I had never thought of him as someone nurturing, not like Isadora or even my mother, but now I realized how much of his strength was quiet protection. Even people like Yssac had benefited from it. Even me.

  After walking in silence for a while, I finally noticed a shape forming on the horizon in front of us. At the distance it merely looked like a hill of snow, but I turned toward it anyway, my footsteps growing more deliberate as we veered off the faint path of compacted snow we’d been following. Yssac didn’t ask questions, just adjusted his grip on the bag slung across his chest and followed behind me, his steps careful now, like he could feel the weight of what we were about to find.

  As we grew closer, the shape of it grew unmistakable. I could see where the end of the wings were starting to curl up, where the tail had broken off, discarded from a body that no longer needed it. A faint layer of snow and ice sat over the shape, untouched and unmoving, as if he had merely fallen asleep in the frozen wasteland.

  Kapral.

  “Oh…” Yssac’s voice trailed off in awe as we finally stopped near the wing, finally standing beside me as he stared. “It… really does look the same.”

  “Huh?”

  “My mother has… well had, a painting of Kapral before he went mad,” Yssac revealed, slowly reaching down to brush the slush from the membrane of the wing. “I knew that dragon corpses take thousands of years to decompose, but I thought it would look less…”

  “Alive.” I finished, staring at the main body a few feet from us. It was strange to me that it didn’t look like any wild beasts had attempted to consume the body and I began to walk toward where the head should be. “We need to find where my father cut from.”

  “Oh, yes, that’ll be easier than trying to make a new wound,” Yssac quickly stood and hurried after me, his steps crunching softly behind mine as we moved toward the dragon’s head. Even beneath the crust of ice and snow, the shape of Kapral’s body was smaller than I thought it would be. I had always assumed my dragon form was small because I was still young by dragon standards, but his body was only slightly bigger than mine had been, and I found myself staring into the glassy orbs that no longer saw. Color had long since faded from his eyes and I frowned, not likely the strange feeling in my chest.

  “Here!” I glanced up as Yssac rushed further down Kapral’s other side, reaching into his bag to pull out a thin knife. “The slush is more watery here, so it must be a wound.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but as soon as Yssac brushed some of the snow away, my words died in my throat. The scales that Yssac revealed were a brilliant bronze, the same shade that I had seen captured in the painting of Thorne. My hands shook by my side as I glanced back down at the lifeless head next to me, almost wanting to demand answers to the questions in my mind.

  It almost made too much sense; Isadora had already admitted Thorne was her half brother, and that meant a dragon had conceived him with the Imperial family. Kapral had been the empire’s sworn protector, so who better to father a Draconid child. But why? Why would he agree to such a thing, only to turn against that same empire later?

  “Cyran, help please,” Yssac’s voice pulled me from my thoughts as I finally moved to join him, seeing that he had gotten the blade stuck trying to cut through the muscle. I quickly pulled out the blade, searching for a better entry point to cause a bleed. Despite the years since his death, his body was still warm and I quickly dug the blade deeper into the divet. As I hoped, the blade slid through easily, and I worked it up and down a few times until I saw the first bead of amber.

  “You’ll have to keep moving it to keep the blood flowing.” I stepped back as Yssac swooped in, one of the bottle in hand as he nodded quickly. I watched as he carefully spooned the drop into the bottle, the reverence and awe obvious on his face.

  Was that what I was supposed to feel? Reverence and awe? I glanced back to Kapral’s head, his expression almost laughably peaceful under the slush. I didn’t feel that way; all I had were questions for a dragon that could no longer answer them. Why had I become a Draconid when it was my parents who ate his flesh? If Thorne was his son, then why did we look alike when I wasn’t?

  Just as I was going to check on Yssac’s progress, I heard it; the snap of snow that neither of us had caused. I turned sharply, and could just make out six shapes moving across the plains behind us. Their movement was deceptively smooth—each beast the size of a warhorse, but heavier, lower to the ground. Six legs churned methodically through the drifts, unbothered by the uneven terrain or the shards of buried ice that would have lamed a lesser creature. Their fur caught what little light bled through the clouds: ash-gray, then pale violet, then that strange shimmer like oil on water.

  Muxleons.