Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: One Cup

The whole beach was waiting.

Two hundred students. The teachers. The fishermen who'd come down from Lowtown to watch.

Leofric lay on the podium with his eyes half open, gray and shaking.

Morvran had shifted back beside me. He didn't say a word.

But I could feel him go cold.

"No," I said.

The Headmistress blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"You said 'will.' I won't be ordered to bleed. Not by you, not by him."

"Miss Tremayne, he will die."

"I didn't say I'd let him die." I knelt down by the healer. "I said I won't be ordered."

The healer looked at me sideways. She was a hard old woman who'd taught me sutures.

"What are you thinking?" she said quietly.

"He's dependent on one blood," I said. "Like a drunk on one bottle. If I feed him straight, he lives today, and he needs me again next week, and the week after. Forever."

"Yes."

"So I don't feed him straight. I make a tonic. My blood cut with other blood, from paid volunteers, a little more of theirs each week. I wean him."

The healer's eyes went sharp. "Over how long?"

"Months. Until he can take anyone's. Until he doesn't need mine at all."

She was quiet a moment. Then she nodded, slowly. "It's in the old texts. For hounds. Nobody's tried it on a dragon."

"Then I'll be the first."

I stood up and turned to the Headmistress.

"I'll treat him," I said, loud enough for the rocks to hear. "As a beastwright, not a feeder. I'll make the tonic. I'll pay the volunteers myself, a crown a cup, from my clinic. And he asks me for it."

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