Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Blood Price

Elowen feeds Morvran from her own palm in the menagerie infirmary and tells Leofric to find another vein, then finds his name beside her best friend's on the feeder roll.

Nobody had told him my name.

Beasts don't know names. They know blood.

I opened my mouth to ask how, and he pitched forward onto the floor of the Waking Hall.

I caught his head before it hit the plinth.

He weighed almost nothing.

"Somebody get a stretcher," I said.

Nobody moved.

The whole hall was staring at the fresh mark on my palm, a black scale shape, glowing faintly where his stone had been.

"A stretcher," I said again, louder. "He's starving. Are you all going to watch him die on the tiles?"

The two orderlies who'd brought the collar finally ran.

Aveline stood with Leofric's hand on her waist and her mouth hanging open.

For once in her life, she had nothing to say.

I didn't wait to give her the chance.

The menagerie infirmary smelled like straw and carbolic and wet dog.

I'd spent three years in it. I knew every drawer.

The orderly helped me roll him onto a cot and then backed away.

"Is it safe?" he asked.

"He's barely breathing."

The man on the cot opened one green eye.

"I could eat him," he said. "Just a little. Start with the hands."

The orderly fled.

"You can't eat the orderly," I said.

"Says who?"

"Says the woman holding the only food in this building." I sat on the edge of the cot and opened my cut palm. "What's your name?"

"Morvran."

"Morvran. Drink."

He looked at my hand for a long moment.

Then he took my wrist in both of his, so gently it was barely a touch, and put his mouth to the cut.

It didn't hurt.

It felt warm, and then very warm, and then the warmth went all the way up my arm.

The scales on his throat lost their gray dust and turned glossy black.

His fingers on my wrist stopped shaking.

After a minute he lifted his head. There was a smear of red on his lower lip.

"That's enough," he said.

"You can have more."

"I've had ten years of one drop a night. I'm not going to gulp you like a drunk at a wedding." He lay back. "Bandage that. You're dripping on my one blanket."

I wrapped my hand.

He watched me do it with his head on the pillow.

"How did you know my name?" I said.

His eyes closed.

"You told me," he said. "You talked the whole time. Every night. Ten years. You told me about your exams and your sister and the boy in the second year who smelled like onions."

My face went hot. "I didn't think you could hear."

"Clearly."

The door banged open.

I knew the footsteps before I turned. Aveline walked like she was crossing a stage.

Leofric came in behind her, ducking under the lintel, and the whole room seemed to get brighter and colder.

"Look at this," Aveline said. "My sister, the hero. Nursing a mud snake on a cot."

"Your mud snake," I said. "You fed it nothing. That's why it's on a cot."

"It's yours now. Congratulations." She looked Morvran up and down. "It suits you. You've always liked things nobody else wanted."

Leofric didn't look at Morvran at all.

He looked at my bandaged hand.

"Ten years, Elowen," he said. His voice was warm and low and reasonable, the way it had always been. "You know your blood is the only blood that's ever fed me properly."

"I know."

"So nothing has to change. Your sister is my Warden. You'll be on my feeder roll by winter, like the scholarship girls. A cup a week. I'll even sign your sponsorship."

Last time, I'd said yes.

Last time, I'd been so grateful he still wanted any part of me.

"Find another vein," I said.

Aveline laughed, high and surprised.

Leofric didn't.

He tilted his head and looked at me.

"You'll come to me," he said. "They always come back to what raised them."

"You didn't raise me. I raised you."

On the cot, Morvran said, without opening his eyes, "I could eat him too. He's bigger. More meat."

Leofric's lip curled.

"Get it a collar," he said to nobody, and swept out.

Aveline followed, laughing.

The door hadn't finished swinging when it banged open again.

Kerensa Polglase came in with her red curls falling out of their pins and a bun in each hand.

"Is it true?" she said. "You woke the mud snake? Everyone in the Great Hall is losing their minds. Your mother fainted. Well, she pretended to."

She stopped dead and looked at the man on the cot.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, he's tall."

"He's starving," I said.

She held out a bun to him without a word.

Morvran opened both eyes, looked at the bun, looked at her, and took it.

"I like this one," he told me. "This one can stay."

Kerensa grinned. "I'm her roommate. I come with the room."

Then her face changed.

She pulled a folded paper out of her apron and handed it to me.

"I tore that off the Great Hall door," she said. "You need to see it before you hear it from someone else."

It was the feeder roll.

Forty scholarship names in a column, and beside each one, the Warden who'd paid for their tuition in blood.

Halfway down, in fresh gold ink, Leofric had signed his name.

Beside it was Kerensa's.

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