Thorne woke in darkness.
Pain. Intense, blinding pain, as if countless knives were twisting inside his body, as if his flesh had become a battlefield where poison and magic fought for control. He tried to sit up, but his body felt heavy as if filled with lead, as if gravity had increased just for him, as if the earth itself was trying to keep him down.
"Don't move," a woman's voice said from somewhere in the darkness, soft but firm, the voice of someone who was used to being obeyed. "Your wound hasn't healed yet. The poison's still in your blood, still fighting. If you move, you'll tear it open, and I don't have enough strength left to heal you again."
Thorne opened his eyes, and for a moment, he didn't know where he was. The ceiling was unfamiliar, wooden beams blackened by age and smoke. The walls were lined with dried herbs, bundles of sage and thyme and lavender that filled the air with their scent. The bed beneath him was soft, softer than anything he had slept on in years.
"Where am I?" Thorne asked, his voice still rough, still damaged by the screaming he had done when the bolt struck him, by the days of riding with that wound tearing at his insides.
"Thornwick," the woman said, and he turned his head to see her. Silver hair, purple eyes, silver light still flickering faintly around her wrists. The woman from the tavern door, the woman he had seen as darkness took him. "I'm Lyra. You've been unconscious for two days in my tavern. The poison nearly killed you, but... something in you fought back. Something stronger than the poison."
Two days. Thorne's heart sank, and for a moment, the pain in his side was forgotten, replaced by a colder fear. They had caught up. The pursuers, the Church's inquisitors, the hunters who had chased him for seven years across seven kingdoms. Two days—he had lost two days. They would be here soon. They would find this village, and they would burn it, and they would kill everyone in it, and they would take him, and they would burn him too.
"I have to leave," he struggled to sit up, his muscles protesting, his wound sending fresh waves of pain through his body, but Lyra pressed him back down, her hands surprisingly strong for someone so slight.
"You can't," she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Your wound will tear open, the poison will spread faster, and you'll die before you reach the edge of the village. You're not strong enough yet."
"If I don't go, someone will die," Thorne stared into her eyes, into those purple eyes that seemed to see too much, that seemed to know secrets he had spent seven years running from. "Not you. Me. They're coming for me, Lyra. The Church's inquisitors. They've hunted me for seven years, and they won't stop until I'm dead. If I stay here, they'll find me, and they'll burn this village, and they'll kill everyone in it. I can't let that happen."
Lyra was silent for a moment, her eyes searching his face, seeing the desperation there, the acceptance of death that came from seven years of running, of hiding, of fighting. Then she said, "I know."
Thorne froze, his heart skipping a beat. "You know what?"
"I know someone is hunting you," Lyra said, her voice calm but with deep meaning, with a weight that went beyond simple knowledge. "Seven men in white robes, their faces hidden behind silver masks. They're coming this way, following your trail. They'll arrive here tomorrow noon."
Thorne's hand instincted went to the sword at his waist, a reflex born of seven years of fighting, of running, of never being safe. But the sword wasn't there. He had lost it when he fell from his horse, when darkness took him. "How do you know?"
"I can see," Lyra said, and she raised her wrist, showing him the silver runes that glowed there, faint but steady, ancient symbols that had been in her family for generations, for as long as the Moonwhisper line had existed. "I can see death. I can see death shadows coiling around people like snakes, showing me how they'll die, when they'll die. I saw yours the moment you rode into the village. Three shadows—one from the wound, one from the pursuers, and one... different. One that's not death. One that's transformation."
Thorne stared at her for a long time, his mind racing with implications he didn't want to face. Then he laughed, a tired, resigned laugh that held no humor, only the weight of too many years running. "So you're a witch. That's what the Church would call you. That's what they'd burn you for."
"I'm not a witch," Lyra said, her voice firm, her eyes meeting his without fear. "I just... see things others can't. Like you," she pointed at his eyes, at his right eye, the one that had always been different, the one that had always made people uncomfortable, that had always made the Church's hunters certain they had the right man. "Your right eye. It's not a human eye. It hasn't been human since the day you were born, since the day the dragon blood first woke in your veins."
Thorne touched his right eye without thinking, a reflex he had developed over years of hiding what he was, of pretending to be normal. In anger or extreme danger, that eye would turn burning gold—the dragon's eye, the eye of the Great Dragon Ignis, whose blood ran in Thorne's veins. It was his greatest secret, and his greatest curse, the thing that had made him a heretic, the thing that had made the Church hunt him, the thing that had destroyed his life.
"What do you see?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Fire," Lyra said, and her eyes seemed to look past him, to see something deeper, something ancient. "In your blood. Slumbering for a long time, waiting for the right moment to wake. But now it's awakening. The poison woke it, and now it's hungry."
Just then, a wolf howled outside the window, a sound that cut through the quiet of the tavern, that made the hair on Thorne's arms stand up. But it wasn't an ordinary wolf—the sound carried something inhuman, something wrong, as if its throat was filled with burning coals, as if its voice came from a place that shouldn't exist.
Thorne sat up abruptly, ignoring the pain, ignoring Lyra's attempt to hold him back, and this time she didn't stop him. She could feel it too—the wrongness of that howl, the darkness in it.
"That's not a wolf," he said, his voice turning cold, turning into the voice of someone who had seen too much, who had killed too much, who had survived too much. "That's a hound. The Church's hounds. They found me faster than I thought."
He turned to look at Lyra, and for the first time, she saw fear in his eyes—not fear of death, but fear of something worse. "They're coming earlier than I expected. Tomorrow noon, she said, but that howl means they're already here. They're already in the village."
Lyra stood and walked to the window, her movements careful, quiet. Moonlight broke through the clouds—not ordinary moonlight, but dark red, as if a drop of blood had been spilled across the sky, as if the moon itself was bleeding.
Blood moon.
"Tonight," Lyra whispered, her voice carrying a sense of destiny, a weight that went beyond the moment, beyond the village, beyond even the danger that was coming. "Tonight, someone will die."
Thorne stood up, forcing down the pain of his wound, forcing his body to obey him despite its weakness. His right eye began to glow, golden light burning in the darkness, and for the first time, Lyra saw the dragon fire fully awake, saw the power that had slept in his blood for twenty-six years.
"Not us," he said, and the golden light intensified, and for a moment, the room was filled with the heat of a dragon's breath, with the power that had destroyed kingdoms, that had ended ages.
And Lyra knew, with a certainty that went beyond her sight, beyond her magic, that the world had changed forever.