The air in the library was heavy as we all sat in silence, each of us combing the books in front of us. I hated having so many people in a space I was used to having to myself, but given the urgency of Tritetia’s visions, I swallowed my discomfort. The mid morning sun shone through the high window, and I could feel its warmth against my back, catching the edge of my shoulder as I leaned into the desk.
I tried to focus on the text in front of me; it was an old medical record from the coastal wars of Naera, detailing various battlefield poisons and their known antidotes, but my thoughts kept drifting. Tritetia had done her best to recount the symptoms she’d seen, but her visions were only ever flashes from moments in time and what she described was both horrifying and vague. The burning blood, the bleeding from the face, the slow agony that seemed to stretch Caspian’s final days out like a cruel joke, and the sudden, shattering collapse of my mother as if her body had simply given up. The sheer difference in how quickly the poison acted on them was something we all immediately latched onto and it meant whatever it was, it was an instant killer of humans. Caspain likely suffered for so long due his draconic blood, but since knowledge of dragons was limited, it didn’t help much.
My eyes drifted to Yssac, who was definitely more enthusiastic than me or Tritetia when it came to searching through the books. He had revealed that he had an affinity for poisons and their antidotes, a fact that I had initially dismissed as another attempt to seem useful. But the more he spoke, the more I realized it wasn’t just idle curiosity; that he was meticulous, even a little obsessive. It was strange to see Yssac as someone so different from he boy who used to spit cruel words at my mother.
Now, he sat across from me, hunched over a thick leather-bound tome, his mouth moving slightly as he read under his breath. Every so often he’d scribble something down, cross it out, then start over, like he couldn’t quite trust himself to get it right the first time. The ink had already smudged on one page, and he paused to wipe his fingers clean before flipping to the next. It wasn’t the posture of someone pretending to be useful. It was the posture of someone trying not to let anyone down.
Tritetia was on the floor near the low shelves, still wrapped in a blanket as she leafed through a small stack. I had made sure to replace the dirty blanket with a clean one once we reached my palace, but until her pool could be moved, there wasn’t much I could do to help regulate her temperature. Tritetia insisted it was fine, but I noticed how she still shivered, even under the heavy material. She was my only source of information about the poison, and Yssac was my only hope of finding a cure.
The words kept circling, squeezing tighter every time I thought about them. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t add up; of all the people to poison and kill at Caspian’s funeral, why my mother? Why not Isadora, who was both the crown princess and my adoptive mother? As far as most people knew, my mother was just a servant who watched over me and Valaine; only those inside Isadora’s palace knew the truth. That would suggest it had been someone there who had done the deed, but Caspian was poisoned while at the border. If it had been a servant of theirs, Caspian would have identified the culprit already.
I shook my head, attempting to focus, dragging my eyes back to the brittle, yellowed pages. It didn’t matter who had done it; what mattered now was figuring out how and with what. I pressed my fingers into my temples, trying to will my thoughts to order, to carve out a path from all the noise.
Across from me, Yssac scribbled something again, then frowned. “It’s describing something that sounds close—flamevein. Causes bleeding from the orifices, internal burning sensations, and the person falls unconscious in only a few days.”
“It can’t be that. Caspian is part dragon like me,” I sighed heavily leaning back in the chair. Despite Isadora’s warning, both Tritetia and I agreed we had to tell Yssac what we saw. If he was going to help us save the crown prince, then he needed to know what Caspian was. “I’m immune to flamevein, so he should be too. Besides, Tritetia said my mother died in minutes, not days.”
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“Makes sense. Dragon blood is used as an ingredient in most antidotes,” Yssac muttered, and I watched as he played with the pen, chewing on the tip. “That’s what is so confusing. Caspian should be immune to almost any poison if he’s part dragon.”
“May… Maybe it’s because he’s not a full dragon?” Tritetia offered softly, and I glanced at her as she shifted on the floor. “After… after all, Cyran said he doesn’t feel like one.”
“No, Caspian seems to be a Draconid like me, despite being old enough to be a dragon,” I frowned, doing my best to hide my confusion. As far as I understood, Draconids always became dragons at physical maturity, but Caspian was well into his thirties and clearly not a dragon. I had only felt a dragon’s presence from him once he started to transform, but if he had been a full dragon, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. After all, Illythia had also been in her human form, and I had felt her power immediately. “I don't know how that's possible, but I still haven't been taught about dragons.”
“Hmm, so little is known about Draconids and Dragons that we’re still guessing at best,” Yssac muttered, turning his eyes back to the book. “It has to be a poison strong enough to kill a human in minutes, but weak enough that it's not one of the few that affects full dragons.”
Yssac began to flip through the pages of the book in his lap again, and I rested my chin on my palm, watching him move like he was unraveling a knot only he could see. The way he smoothed the hair from his face, chewed on the end of his pen; it was all so jarring to see. Despite living in the same palace as Yssac for three years, I made it a point to keep distance between us, never completely able to squash the anger and hatred I had for his hand in my mother’s death. But as I stared at him, watching him desperately look for the answer to save Caspian and my mother, two people he had wanted to destroy in my first life, I couldn’t help but question if I hated the wrong man.
After all, Marquess Blackwood was obviously a bigger factor than I ever gave him credit for; in my previous life he was distant, a looming shadow who only ever interacted with me when necessary. Always cold, always polite, always playing at civility while he maneuvered us like pieces in a game he never bothered to explain. It was easy to hate Yssac back then because he was the one standing in front of me, delivering the blows, but now… now I was beginning to see the edges of something more complicated.
“Young Star,” Nyssara’s voice made us all look up as she opened the door, her silver hair let down around her shoulders as if she hadn’t had time to put it up yet. Even her expression was tired, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. Tavian and Nyssara often split duties evenly and both had greeted us when we returned last night. Had Isadora given them some other task that explained her exhaustion? “Her Highness is here to see you.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.” Nyssara bowed her head and I sighed, closing the book as I stood. Nothing was going the way I wanted. “She is waiting for you in the drawing room.”
“Alright, I’ll go,” I walked out of the library without offering a word to Yssac or Tritetia, trusting they would understand to keep looking while I dealt with Isadora. I had assumed she would cancel all my lessons considering Caspian’s condition, but either she wasn’t here for lessons, or she was simply trying to distract herself. I followed as Nyssara led me through the palace, glancing out the windows as we walked. There were clouds gathering over the horizon, forecasting afternoon showers and I frowned as I saw them.
Hotter summers often meant more storms, but thunderstorms carried their own hazards; dragons and Draconids were magnets for lightning. It wasn’t much of a problem for me yet since I was still so young, but I vividly remembered being shoved into the cellar everytime a storm came to Polec once I started attracting lightning. Given Caspian’s state, moving him was likely impossible unless he was in one of his exhausted cycles of the poison, and being struck would likely do him no favors.
“His Highness, Prince Cyran,” I turned my attention to the opening doors, and Isadora sat inside, the exhaustion still evident from the circles around her eyes. Her expression was carefully neutral, and I stepped into the room, determined to gain something from the meeting.
