style="font-size:15px;"> Right now though, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had survived. Did that mean… did it mean that she was cured? Had the fountain healed her?
Nerra barely dared to hope that it might be true, that she might have survived when so many others had died, but hope did start to rise in her. She was definitely alive, and all of the awful, bone-breaking sensations in her body were gone. If she was whole, was it too much to hope that she might also have been cured?
Then Nerra saw her arm. It was still a humanoid arm, not twisted into the hideous, misshapen things those with the dragon sickness became down in the village, but it was completely covered in iridescent scales of a deep blue. Muscles moved under the skin, far thicker than they had been before, and even as Nerra watched, she saw claws extend from her fingers, wickedly sharp-looking.
She cried out in shock at the sight of her arm like that, clawing at the scales, and there were claws with which to do it, which only made it feel worse. What was happening to her, what had she become? She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, and this had nothing to do with the illness and everything to do with the sheer strangeness of what was happening. She took a step back, but that only took her toward the pool of water. She couldn’t stop herself; she had to look.
The being that stared back at her was utterly changed from who she had been, and yet not the broken, twisted thing that she had been so scared of becoming. Nerra could only stare at it for long seconds, unable to make sense of it, horror, shock, and sheer fascination battling for supremacy within her.
Her skin was scaled, her eyes yellow as a snake’s, her features extended into something more draconic, yet there was an undeniable symmetry and beauty to those features. Nera would have rejected it all, even so, but there was still something about them that reminded Nerra of herself. Even the memory of her hair was there, in frond-like strands that were more like the crest of a lizard. Her body was just as scaled, and more muscled with it, able to move in sinuous ways thanks to the rearrangement of her joints, yet she didn’t look like a monster.
“Of course I’m a monster!” she said aloud, and her voice was the only part of her that didn’t seem changed. That made it worse, somehow, not better. How could that part of her be the same, when so much of the rest of her was so twisted? A thought came to her, that none of her family would recognize her now, that she had lost everything. Rage came up inside her, swift and sudden and total, and she picked up a lump of temple masonry and crushed it between her hands. It was only as she did it that she realized just how strong this new form had become.
The rage was still there, and Nerra could feel it fighting to bubble up, to take her over, the way all the transformed ones in the village turned into mindless things. Nerra fought back against that, against the shock, against the sheer grief of this transformation, forcing all of it down inside her, refusing to become anything like that. She clung to the side of the pool, staring down into the water, forcing herself to look at this changed version of who she was until she thought she could bear it.
The fountain hadn’t killed her, hadn’t healed her, it had changed her. It had been like a catalyst for the transformation the sickness brought, but it had taken her right past the twisted forms it usually created, into being something sleek and lithe, lizard-like and human all at once.
Nerra didn’t know what to do with that thought, didn’t know how to get past the shock of what she was, what she’d become. She didn’t understand this, didn’t know what to do next. She needed to know what was going on, and what had happened to her, but there was only one place she could think of that she might get answers, and that was one where they might kill her just for what she was.
Striding out over the surface of the volcano, Nerra set off back in the direction of the village.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stalking Finnal and his people was easy enough for Erin; after all, as a princess, she could go everywhere in the castle, and as a knight, no one looked twice at her for doing it with her short spear by her side, the head of it still sheathed so that it looked like a staff.
What would anyone truly see if they glanced her way? A girl shorter than her sisters, in chain and plate armor, dark hair cropped short so that it would be out of the way for fighting, features fixed with determination. They wouldn’t be able to guess what she was about, wouldn’t be able to fathom the part where, sooner or later, she planned on thrusting her spear through Finnal’s heart. People didn’t want to look at princesses and think that they might do something like that.
People were stupid.
For now, Erin was just following, moving among the crowds of the castle, going from the gathered knights to the clusters of servants as Finnal made his way across the courtyard toward the great hall. There were tents out in the courtyard at the moment, in the shadow of the high walls, soldiers camped there as they waited for new commands. Some sat around cooking fires in the open air, and Finnal paused at some of them, making jokes and laughing. At a few, he handed out coins, probably trying to buy affection.
Erin couldn’t work out what her sister had ever seen in him. Oh, he was pretty enough as these things went, all elegant grace, high cheekbones, and a ready smile. He dressed in dark clothes edged with silver, the better to draw attention to the shine of the rest of him. And certainly, everyone around him responded to him as if the sun itself had just come out from behind a cloud whenever he passed. Yet Lenore deserved more than that; deserved someone who actually loved her.
She certainly deserved someone who wouldn’t try to hold her a virtual hostage in their marriage, sending thugs after her just because she’d dared to go outside. Finnal would pay for that, and dearly.
Erin smiled as she saw Finnal’s path arc toward the stables on his way across to the great hall. With so many people in the castle at the moment, it was hard to find a good place for an ambush, but Erin was sure there would be a spot there. She knew just the place.
Abandoning her attempts to be a silent shadow behind him, Erin ran across the courtyard at an angle away from Finnal. She cut back around and, running up a flight of stone steps until she was on the lowest level of the walls, she slipped past one of the guards who looked out over the islands of the city, padding on silent feet before she dropped down onto the roof of the stables.
She’d hidden here plenty of times when she was younger, partly because it was a good place to crouch when she wanted to avoid the etiquette lessons her mother wanted her to learn, and partly because there was a space where it was possible to look down into the stables. Erin had used it to spy on hunting parties or knights getting ready to go out into the kingdom, always feeling jealous that they got to do all that when she didn’t. Now she waited and watched, gripping the haft of her spear.
Was she really going to do this? Nerves came as she waited, because while she’d killed before, she’d never done it in cold blood. Was she really going to cut down her sister’s husband, leave him for dead in the stables?
The answer to that was simple: if not her, then who? Oh, Lenore had spoken about her maidservant doing something, finding some piece of information that would convince people to be rid of Finnal more cleanly, but what were the chances of truly doing that? Even if they got information that might persuade most people, would Vars agree to the annulment of the marriage? He’d been the one pushing for it to happen quickly in the first place.
Maybe once their father woke up, but this was quicker, and cleaner, and… well, Finnal deserved it. No one threatened Erin’s sister.
She waited up there until she could hear voices below.
“…the largest bay,” Finnal said, somewhere below.
