The Princess of Ash novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: What Fire Costs
Marit hit the ice, spread her copper wings, and took the weight.
The lake roared as it split behind her.
She had seen the arrows from the city walls, and she had flown the three miles faster than any dragon-kin in the Ashmarch.
"Hands," she said, and she was crying.
I put my brother in her left claw and Auren in her right, and she lifted all of us out of the cracking dark.
We reached the Emberhold at sunrise.
By noon the healers had cut the arrows out.
They laid the sovereign in the red light of his tower, and a woman with ash on her hands finished counting the wounds.
"Ash-root, refined," she said.
"Three heads of it.
"It is already at his heart, and it will stop it before tomorrow's dawn."
"Do something."
"We have." She wiped her hands.
"Charcoal and salt cannot reach this much.
"There is one thing that burns it out, an old, old cure, and it died with the Ember line."
I was standing at the foot of the bed with my brother asleep in a chair, his dragon on his chest.
I held out my left arm, the one with the thin white scar across the wrist.
"What does it need?"
"Blood of the line.
"Taken fresh, and given by mouth."
"Take mine."
The healer stared at my wrist, and at the face of the Sovereign's wife.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Princess of Ash are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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