Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Dragon's Offer

"How?" I said.

I hated myself for asking.

Leofric came down two steps, until he was standing on the landing above mine and I had to look up at him.

"Fire," he said. "Dragon fire. It's the only heat in the world that can reach a serpent's old scales. A little flame, kindly given, and the white burns off like frost off a window."

"You've done it before?"

"For a sea beast at the capital, a hundred years ago." He spread his gloved hands. "I'm the only dragon in this kingdom, Elowen. I'm the only one who can."

"And what do you want for it?"

"What I've always wanted." His voice went soft. "You. Your blood. Not a cup in a tonic, cut with fishermen. You."

"When?"

"There's no hurry. Think on it."

He started to step past me, down the stairs.

"No," I said. "Not like this. Not on a dark stair, with nobody to hear you."

He paused.

"I've been lied to by everyone I love this week," I said. "I'm not taking a vague promise from you. Tomorrow, at your tonic. In the menagerie infirmary. You tell me exactly what you want and exactly what I get. Then I'll decide."

He studied my face.

Then he smiled.

"Tomorrow," he said, and went down into the dark.

I climbed the rest of the stairs and woke Kerensa.

She listened, sitting up in her cot with her hair in a red cloud.

"He's lying," she said.

"Probably."

"Definitely. He's never given anybody anything." She frowned. "So why are you meeting him?"

"Because I want him to say it out loud. And I want somebody to hear him."

She was quiet a moment. Then she grinned.

"Oh, El," she said. "The feed loft."

The menagerie infirmary had a hay loft over the back stalls.

It had a trap door, and a gap in the boards you could see straight through.

Kerensa went up at dawn with a blanket and a pork pie.

At noon Leofric came in alone, in his gold-trimmed coat, and sat on the cot I'd once put Morvran on.

I mixed the tonic in front of him.

One part mine, three parts from the volunteers' jar. Down from one in two, the week before.

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