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The sylph takes form as it latches on to Newt’s thoughts, its surface shifting like the face of a cloud. Newt takes his name from the funny little creatures that make their home in the river that meanders its way past his village. As the spirit links with him, it becomes that kernel at the heart of him.
A wispy white newt perches on his hand, blinking up at him.
“Find him,” Newt whispers in the spirit‘s own tongue.
The sylph trills back at him, and vanishes.
Newt lies on the kitchen floor, listening to the song of the gnomes playing beneath the foundations. A salamander crawls through the remains of the evening’s fire. Newt could use them, or the undines in the river, or the nymphs of the forest, or very nearly any elemental spirit. He’s one of the rare few who can speak to them all. But Hermann’s affinity is air, and nothing beats a sylph for speed.
Within the space of a few breaths, Hermann’s sylphself appears before him in the form of a tiny hawk. It’s fitted out in splintmail armor, which is new, and surprising enough that Newt casts his own big news aside to exclaim over it as it perches on his finger.
“Hermann! Look at you! Don’t tell me they knighted you already?”
“No, but I ride out tomorrow, by the king’s decree,” the hawk says, with Hermann’s funny accent and a sylph’s whistling intonation. Not for the first time, Newt wishes he could hear his friend’s voice in person. He’s grateful to the spirits of the air for allowing them to communicate across all this distance, but he can only imagine how it would be to hear him speak, and to see his face.
He has to revise his mental image of Hermann now. He’s known, all these months, that he was speaking to a squire, but he’d assumed that meant a boy his own age, not a young man at the cusp of knighthood. And Hermann will be knighted after his trial; there’s no other reason why his liege would send him riding out alone. The addition of armor to his mental image of himself would prove it even if logic didn’t. He must be eighteen or twenty, then, too old for Newt and his silly fantasies. And Newt shouldn’t feel betrayed or disappointed by that, because Hermann never said he wasn’t a kid just starting his training, and it’s not his fault if Newt’s imagination has been running wild. Hermann sure as the coldest hells didn’t encourage that.
And it doesn’t matter, anyway. Hermann is taking a step forward, just like Newt is about to do, and Newt should just be happy for him.
“What are you hunting?” he asks. “A wyvern? A drake?”
“Does it matter?” Hermann asks morosely, his sylphself’s wings drooping with unhappiness. Newt runs a finger down its insubstantial feathers, even though Hermann can’t feel the contact.
Hermann is like Newt. He wants to study dragonkind, not slay them. But in the Northlands where he comes from, where dragonlings are a constant threat to all the lands outside a castle’s walls, there is no other path for a younger son of a noble house. It’s unusual that Hermann was allowed to study both magic and swordsmanship, but his father is some kind of scholar who actually values a mind as sharp as Hermann’s, and Hermann, with an intellect as rare as Newt’s, proved himself capable of mastering both disciplines where most couldn’t even manage one.
Newt is awfully impressed with his friend, but a stab of unreasonable jealousy prevents him from saying so. Hermann is going out and doing things. He’ll be a hero, and as usual, Newt will be left behind. Forgotten, probably, because what would a dragonslaying hero want with a hedge witch’s apprentice like Newt?
“At least you’ll get to see one, alive and up close,” Newt says. “I’ll never get that. I’ll have to rely on your descriptions.” Assuming Hermann is willing to tell him all about this, the way he does with everything else. Newt has to remind himself that Hermann is not the type of person to cut ties with a friend over a little bit of good fortune. They’ll still be friends after this. They’ll still spend their evenings talking, just like they have for the last year, using the spells they’ve worked out together. Between Hermann’s magical formulations and Newt’s aptitude for spirit bonds, only the two of them could have refined this into a workable system. That has to mean something.
“I’ll be forbidden to reach out to anyone until the trial is done,” Hermann says. “If you don’t hear from me…”
“Please, it’s gonna take you an hour and a half, tops.” Most squires ride out three or four days before they find the object of their final trial, but, all joking aside, Hermann has resources few others can call on for tracking his dragonling. He’ll be at it for a day, two at the most, and then be home before anyone has time to miss him.
“Your belief in me is heartwarming,” Hermann says, probably rolling his eyes on the other side.
“Well, I know you. You’re a badass warrior with a sword of righteousness.”
“Hm.”
It’s hard for the sylphs to convey tone, but Newt thinks Hermann might be pleased. Knights-in-training don’t get a whole lot of praise, even in the joking way Newt does it. Hermann will get used to basking in his own glory once he earns his title, but for now he remains susceptible to flattery.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hermann says after a very brief pause. “I don’t want to talk about dragonslaying. What’s happening with you? You’re early tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I did have news. Not quite the same as earning a knighthood.” It’s way better, actually, but he doesn’t want to step on Hermann’s toes. “I got accepted into the Academy.”
“Newt, that’s wonderful!” Even through their intermediaries, Hermann’s genuine happiness shines through. And he doesn’t even know the full story, that Newt just so happens to be the second-youngest ever to be allowed through the doors. It’s shocking enough that someone of his background was accepted, when he seemed destined for nothing greater than uncrossing hexes and healing sprained wrists in this backwater village for the rest of his life.
“It’s going to be a big change,” Newt says, absentmindedly stroking the hawk’s feathers with his fingertip. He hasn’t told anyone how scared he is of going to this place of mages and scholars, all grown adults already trained in the arts he’s picked up mostly by instinct. There will be more students at the Royal Academy than there are people in his village, and a whole city around it like nothing he’s ever seen. Newt has never been farther from home than the blackberry patch on the other side of the river. He can’t tell anyone his fears, but Hermann understands him. Hermann is the only one who does.
“You’ll be marvelous,” Hermann says. “The Academy only accepts the most exceptionally talented mages. It takes cleverness and innate power, you know. And now they’ll all see what I’ve been seeing in you all this time.”
Oh. Well. One nice thing about the sylphs is that they can’t convey a blushing face.
“Will we still talk when I’m there?” Newt asks.
“Of course. Assuming…” He hesitates, the hawk’s feathers rippling in and out of focus. “Well, they’ll keep you awfully busy, I’m sure.”
“Not too busy to talk to you! Besides, you’ll be busy, too. Maybe you won’t have time for me.”
The sylph trills, which Newt is pretty sure means Hermann has coughed or cleared his throat. It could be a laugh, maybe, but Hermann doesn’t seem like someone who ever does that kind of thing.
“You’ll be an Archmage by the time you’re thirty,” Hermann says. “What Archmage has time for anything but further study?”
“Says the future dragonslayer! You’ll be running all around the countryside, rescuing fair maidens!” And besides, Newt will be Archmage before he’s twenty, if he has anything to say about it. But of course, Hermann must be thinking he’s a grown man, not a fourteen-year-old accepted into the Academy absurdly early. For most people, mastering the art by thirty would be a reasonable goal.
“There won’t be any maidens,” Hermann says, and—
Oh, no. Is he flirting, indicating that he’d rather be saving grateful young men from deadly peril? An hour ago, Newt would have danced for joy, but now he knows better. He’s too young to hold onto his fantasies about Hermann of the Northern Reach, and Hermann is too old to be dreaming of him.
“Hermann, I—“
“I have to go!” The hawk vanishes in a puff of ethereal smoke, leaving the sylph’s true, nearly invisible form twisting around Newt’s finger. Hermann’s connection is severed.
He’s probably been called away to his “duties” again. Sir Karla is always intruding on his supposedly personal time like that. One of the drawbacks of squiring for your own older sister, Hermann once told him. She loves making him do things that are in no way his responsibility, just because she can.
Sisters, right? Siblings are the worse, as far as he knows.
And now he won’t be able to talk to Hermann again until his quest is done and he’s slain a dragon and earned his knighthood. By that time, Newt might already be off to school, and everything will be different for both of them.
Okay, then. Newt feels a lot better about the future after having talked to Hermann, even if only for a minute. So they’ll both move forward, so what? Someday, maybe they’ll meet in person, when Hermann is a knight and Newt is a wizard, and they’ll put their skills together as the greatest adventuring duo of all time. They could be heroes.
Stranger things have happened.
The days pass, and Newt packs up his few belongings and prepared for his journey to the Isle, where his future awaits. He says his goodbyes to his uncle, who has taught him all the hedge magic he knows, and to his father, who has fought so hard to give him a better life than he was born to. Only influence at court could have brought the Academy’s seekers all the way to this tiny village to test the skills of a peasant’s bastard son. And, Newt’s mother being who she is, she never would have leveraged her influence for his sake alone. That’s his father’s doing.
Maybe he’ll write to her from the Academy. But probably not. It might be fine for an official court bard to have a natural son tucked away somewhere, but probably not if she’s also the king’s mistress? He’s never had the chance to ask what the rules are there.
But what really matters is that his dad cared enough to push her, and now he gets to go.
As the time to leave approaches, Newt takes the opportunity to say goodbye to his friends. Not the villagers, of course; the children have never had time for him, and the adults are judgy as the outer hell. No, he has to say goodbye to his real friends, even though they’ll have no problem following him off to school if they really want to.
He walks down to the river, where all the elemental spirits can come to him. Undines won’t go far from the river unless he wheedles and begs, and the nymphs won’t go anywhere near the dead wood of his house. If he wants to talk to them, it’s better to meet them where they are.
He goes with a conjured flame cupped in his hands so his salamanders will have a place to rest. They twine in and out of the fire and between his fingers, braving the air to be close to him because they sense the coming change. The gnomes sing through the earth below him, and the sylphs dance above.
“I’m going away tomorrow,” he says in the elemental speech that they can all understand.
The nymphs rustle their leaves at him, distressed. Of all of them, they’re the ones least able to follow.
“Yeah, I know. But my uncle will still protect you, and I’m sure he’ll probably find another apprentice sooner or later.” Magic isn’t all that rare, although not many have as strong a gift as he does. Having the mind to grasp it and the will to wield it is much more unusual than the gift itself. So, yeah, there will be some other kid sleeping by his kitchen fire and mixing his herbs, and the village will have their apprentice witch.
The sylphs whistle at him, all of them, overlapping to the point that he can’t understand their words.
“Hey, calm down! You can come with,” he promises. It’s probably completely normal to have swarms of elementals hanging around a magic school, and his little friends should have no trouble integrating with the local population.
The normally placid river rushes and swirls, the water eddying around spots that have always been smooth as glass. The undines are almost matching the sylphs in their agitation.
“It’s on an island,” Newt reminds them. Plenty of room for water spirits.
The sylphs’ whistling has risen into something like a scream, all discordant like a symphony of untuned flutes. Even a human with no magical affinity at all would be able to hear their shrieking.
“Bowl,” the salamanders whisper, with the hiss of a guttering flame. “Now—danger—danger—bowl, now!”
“I’m not going to drop you,” Newt says, but the cloud of sylphs does have him worried. They shouldn’t be this worked up over his upcoming relocation. Sylphs are notoriously fickle. They can be intensely devoted to their chosen mages, but they come and go whenever they want, maybe disappearing for years at a time, trading places with clouds of their cousins as they float on the wind. It’s why pacts with air spirits are so unreliable, because you can never count on a preexisting relationship to ease your way. Even if you’ve spent years building them up, at the moment of casting, you might have no one but strangers to call on.
So what are they getting so worked up about?
Newt gets his scrying bowl from his belt pouch and transfers the salamanders’ flame to it just as the sylphs decide it’s time to divebomb his head. They aren’t biting yet, but their whistles have a note of desperation that he’s never heard from them before, and he wouldn’t be surprised to feel their sharp little teeth sinking into his flesh any second now.
“Hey, slow down! I can’t understand you,” Newt says, the same words people have been saying to him all his life, and just like him, the sylphs get louder but no more coherent.
Below his feet, the gnomes creak into silence. The leaves of the trees go still, then burst into a frenzy of rustling.
“Help! Help!” comes from the trees.
The fire hisses, “Danger!”
The river burbles, “Hurt, hurt, hurt!”
The sylphs swarm around him, their whistles overlapping, a frenzy of Newt! and help! and listen!
Newt!
Need help!
Help him!
He understands—he doesn’t want to, but he knows what’s happening—even before the wispy form of a hawk, with splintered armor and a broken wing, plummets from the sky to land in his open palm.
“Hermann?” Heart in his throat, Newt looks up at the sylphs around him. “Someone, go, quick!”
A dozen sylphs latch onto his outflung strand of power, take the form of wispy white newts, and vanish.
There’s a popping sound from the fire as some of the salamanders do the same, and a splash from the river.
“We also,” the rocks groan.
Newt thanks them. He only needs the sylphs to carry his voice, but the others will lend strength to the spell.
Then he cradles the hawk to his chest, as gently as he can even though Hermann can’t feel it and the sylph itself isn’t hurt. It’s only taking the form it found in Hermann’s mind.
“Hermann,” Newt whispers. “Talk to me, buddy. I’m right here, I’m listening, I just need you to talk.”
The hawk’s edges blur in and out of reality, shredding like clouds in a high wind, which is like some kind of nightmare. Hermann, who is so meticulous with his spellcasting, is barely holding this together.
“Come on,” Newt whispers. “Come on, come on, Hermann, talk to me.” There are a thousand miles between them, but a sylph can cover that distance in seconds. They should be there by now. Hermann should know he’s listening. Hermann should be talking to him! Telling him everything’s okay!
Why isn’t everything okay?
“Hermann, please!”
He never thought, even for a minute, that his friend could get hurt out there. No one fails their quests anymore. This isn’t the Dark Ages. And Hermann is a fully trained knight, or the next best thing to it. All he had to do was slay one little dragonling. Newt could do that. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could do it.
But now Hermann isn’t answering, and his sylphself is blurred and fading, with broken wings. And it can only, only mean that something has gone horribly, unimaginably wrong. But Newt doesn’t want to believe it.
“Hermann, answer me!” Newt yells, like his dynamics are even perceivable through the intermediary.
But maybe it does make a difference, because this time, the hawk answers.
“Newt?”
“Yeah, it’s me! I’m right here, buddy. I’m here.”
“Newt…sorry…” Hermann says. “I’m sorry—I wanted—to meet you—someday…”
“NO! Don’t you dare say that like it’s goodbye!” He has to help. Whatever’s happened, he’ll find some way to help. He’ll have the sylphs carry him to the Northern Reach, or he’ll open a portal like the ancients used to do, or—or something. He’ll do something, he has to do something.
The sylph trills softly, and then, between one breath and the next…it’s gone. The hawk vanishes, and only the spirit is left.
“Hermann, no! You can’t!” He can’t, he’s not allowed to go, not like this.
Necromancy is as much a lost art as gating through the nether, but in the moment, Newt is prepared to do what he must to keep his friend alive. Or—or to bring him back, if…If that’s what he needs to do.
It’s a stupid thing to think of, when no one in centuries has challenged death like in the legends. A smart person would say it can’t be done.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to try. The sylphs are still screaming at him, “Help! Newt help! Friend! Hurt!” If Hermann were—gone—they would know it. They wouldn’t be crying for help.
“I need to see!” He drops to the ground and pulls his scrying bowl into his lap. The salamanders writhe within the flame. Newt always scries better with water, but this will do. These little guys have listened in on so many of their late-night conversations, they’re already charged with concern for Hermann. They’ll bring Newt what he needs to see.
Newt stares into the fire. In seconds, the trance takes hold of him. His breathing evens out and his heart rate slows as his body locks itself into stillness. Images flicker in and out of the flame: a tree, a sword, a rearing horse. Then it all settles, coming as clear as if he were looking through a window.
In the mountains, there’s snow even in summer—that’s what Hermann says—but there’s no snow here. Only bare rock. And a body lying on the ground. A body in armor, a mix of chainmail and plate. The chest piece is dented inward, and his helmet has been knocked off. Blood runs over his face.
Newt’s heart lurches. This is Hermann? He’s so young. He can’t be any older than Newt, a half-grown boy who has no business riding out to slay a monster.
He doesn’t move. One arm stretches toward a sword lying just out of reach, but his hand doesn’t move to grasp it. His eyes are closed, dark eyelashes fanned out on a horribly pale face. One leg is twisted under him in a way Newt can barely stand to look at. His foot is caught in what must have been a stirrup. A horse…what’s left of a horse is lying nearby.
“Oh, Hermann.” This can’t be happening. This can’t be his friend, the brave young hero riding out to adventure, lying there so broken and alone.
But he’s not alone, of course. Not really.
Something else steps into Newt’s scrying window, something so large its shadow blots out the sun. A head dips down, a beautiful, scaly thing at the end of an elegantly curved neck, to tear at the horse’s belly with teeth longer than Newt’s leg.
If he weren’t so horrified, Newt could fall in love. This is no dragonling, but a True Dragon. Less than a dozen people in living memory have even seen one, and half of those didn’t survive to tell the tale. No single hero has ever defeated a True Dragon, no matter how skilled he might be.
Why would the Lord of the Northern Reach send a teenage squire after something a party of seasoned heroes would hesitate to face? It’s a suicide mission. He sent Hermann out to die.
The dragon turns her attention from the horse to the human lying at her feet, and Newt can’t help screaming, “NO!” The flame flickers and the scried image blurs, but solidifies before he can lose it entirely.
“No, no!” the sylphs echo, both here and on that mountaintop a thousand miles away. More cries ring out from the other spirits, some of them Hermann’s friends, all of them Newt’s, and every last tiny creature prepared to stand up to a dragon a thousand times more powerful than they could ever be.
Later, it will occur to him to wonder how he knows what the spirits on the mountain are screaming, when this magic carries only images without sound. But for now, his only thought is that he can’t sit by and watch this dragon eat his friend.
“Leave him alone!” Newt yells.
The dragon pauses, head cocked to one side like a curious dog. And then she looks—
Right.
At.
Newt.
“Little one.” Her voice rumbles somewhere deeper than his bones.
Something takes hold of him, stronger than a scrying trance and out of his control. He’s trapped in the lake of this dragon’s eyes, miles from shore, and her will is dragging him down, and down, and down.
“Stop,” Newt gasps. “Let—go—“
“Ahhhh…And which is it, little witch? Let ‘him’ go, or let ‘me’ go? Who do you plead for, with all your power?”
“Him,” Newt says, because who cares about Newt when Hermann is about to get eaten? “Please, let him go, he doesn’t deserve this! He doesn’t deserve to die!”
“And I do?” There’s no malice in her question, only genuine curiosity. “The little warrior came for my life. Should I die so that he may live?”
“But he’s not a threat to you. Look at him,” Newt insists. “He can’t do anything. You already won.”
“And yet, he came to kill me.”
“Yeah,” says Newt. “But, but…” That is really hard to argue against, since she doesn’t seem to consider his failure a mitigating factor. “Seriously, look at him. He’s just a kid! He didn’t choose to come after you! He had to go where his king sent him!”
“Ahhhh.” She coils tight around the core of him, squeezing him into a smaller and smaller space as her presence fills every corner of his mind. “You say I should take the life of his king, then?”
“I mean, yeah—no.” As much as he would like her to get revenge against the man who sent Hermann out on an impossible quest, there are probably, like…innocent people who would get hurt if she attacked the castle? He doesn’t want anyone to die. Not Hermann, and not anyone else.
“If not the king and not the warrior, then what can you offer, little witch? I will have a life in trade, or I will have what rode so foolishly to meet me, but I will not end this day with coffers empty. The ledger must be balanced.” She sends him an image of a pile of gold with a Hermann-shaped hole in it. Like he’s stolen her treasure.
“Not—him!” The pressure she’s putting on him is—it’s so much, and he can’t fight her off.
“Not him,” she rumbles. “Not the little warrior. Then who will take his place, hm? Would you?”
“Yes!” Yes, to save Hermann, yes, he would.
The dragon’s regard flays him open, peeling back all his thoughts and the layers of his heart.
“Yes,” she rumbles, so deep inside him he can hardly tell the difference between her voice and his own. “You would.”
He would scream if he could get the air into his lungs. She’s crushing him. It may be only in his mind, but he can’t—it hurts, and he can’t—
“You will.” Her claws dig, somehow, deeper. “But the witch and the warrior are of an age. Are you not too young to die, little witch?”
“No!” No matter how young and scared and completely not ready he is, Newt is too stubborn to go back on his word. “This—this is—different. It’s my decision! He didn’t choose!”
He did. The thought comes from both of them at once. The little warrior, the—Hermann—could have taken a different path, but he chose to do what was laid out for him. He knew he was riding into danger, and he knew he would have to kill or be killed. He understood a knight’s role, and he chose to become one.
“To save people,” Newt protests. “To help, not hurt! Please, don’t hurt him, he’s good—he deserves to live—“
“And so he shall.” Abruptly, the pressure on Newt’s mind fades away. He can breathe. He can’t move, but he can breathe. “Prepare yourself, human. You are worthy, but you are young,” she whispers in his mind. “I will come for you when you are grown.”
“And Hermann will live?” Newt presses, in spite of his fear.
“I will deliver him to the humans’ hold. We have our bargain.” Her claws wrap, almost delicately, around the squire’s broken body, and the image of the mountaintop fades away.
Newt slumps to the ground, unconscious.
The next thing he knows, he’s cradled in his uncle’s arms, carried through the woods and back to the cottage. It’s dark. Newt is weeping, and he can’t say why.
His journey to school is delayed by what they call his “illness.” When he tries to correct them, his throat tightens, and his tongue lies heavy in his mouth. He can’t speak of dragons and bargains and faraway friends. But when he’s alone, he asks the spirits to scry for him.
The sylphs weave an image in the air, of a sickroom, a bed, a boy. Hermann lies in bed, so still he might be dead, eyes closed, face shadowed with bruises. The blanket tucked around him reveals a glimpse of bandages wrapped around his chest, but the true extent of his injuries remains hidden away.
There’s a girl with him, a grim-faced, armored girl not much older than he is, keeping watch by his bedside. She has his cheekbones and his wide, flat mouth; she must be Hermann’s sister. The one who was responsible for him, who should have protected him.
How dare she sit and watch over him now, when she’s the one who let this happen?
Without thinking, Newt calls on a sylph to take his form and go and give her a piece of his mind. She won’t be able to hear him, of course. Unless she has the affinity, the sylph’s voice will be nothing more than the whistling of the wind. But he needs to know—
After all this, he needs to know that Hermann is safe. That whoever is responsible for sending him on a quest he never could have completed isn’t going to hurt him again.
Because someone is behind this. Someone wanted Hermann to fail.
The wispy river newt appears curled under Hermann’s chin. He doesn’t react, not so much as a flicker of an eyelid. But the sister is on her feet in an instant.
“No!” Her voice echoes in all the places that the dragon’s touched, and the shock, the pain of it makes Newt want to scream.
He shouldn’t be able to hear this. There’s something—something more than human in his head. But it doesn’t matter. If he has something in him no human has ever had, fine. He’ll use it. It’s just another tool.
“Back off, Karla,” Newt snaps.
“Frozen hell!” With a look of shock, the knight draws her sword. But she must know, of course, that tempered steel can’t harm a sylph. If she tries to attack the spirit, she’ll only hit Hermann.
“Put that down!” Newt orders.
“Leave him alone!”
“NO!” After all this, he won’t abandon his best friend. He has to make sure Hermann is all right.
“You keep away from my brother!” She brandishes her sword at his sylphself. “You brought this on him, whoever you are, and you’ll bring him worse if my father sees you hanging about!”
“You’re blaming me? You’ve never even met me!”
“It’s your influence that’s contaminated him!”
“The fuck are you talking about, contaminated?”
“It’s because of you that Father sent him out!”
Newt is so taken aback he can’t even speak. Because, first of all, what did he do? Nothing, that’s what! All he did was connect with a stranger, co-create a few spells the likes of which the world has never seen, and make a friend in a distant land. They didn’t do anything wrong. All they ever did was talk.
And what is this about their father? Lord Whoever of Whatever Castle has no authority to send a knight out on a quest. Only—
Only…
Only the king can do that.
And Hermann…He only said he was the son of a noble. He never said how high.
“I have questions,” says Newt.
“You don’t get to ask questions, creature!” She pokes her sword at the sylph.
“You know that’s not really me, right?” Newt says.
“Get away from my brother!”
“Stop waving your sword at him!”
Sir Karla bares her teeth at the sylph, then frowns less severely at Hermann’s unconscious form. Reluctantly, she lowers her weapon. Which is good, because Newt can’t make the spirit move, and it’s curled around Hermann’s throat in an effort to protect him.
“Let him go,” Karla says through gritted teeth.
“I’m not going to hurt him. I just want to be sure he’s safe,” Newt insists.
“He’s not safe! Of course he’s not safe! He’s ælf-touched, and worse, now! There’s dragons, True Dragons, threatening to raze the castle if he doesn’t survive, and the king didn’t trust him already—how much worse do you think it is now? And I don’t know if he will live—and if he lives, he might never wake up—and if he wakes, he might never walk again—” She looks heartbroken, not the grim knight watching over her squire, but just a girl mourning her brother. “His life is over, because of you. Can’t you let that be enough? Can’t you leave him alone?”
Without a word, Newt cuts the connection.
He falls back into the straw of his mattress, exhausted and worn too thin. He’s scraped raw inside, every channel, every empty space, burned out by the dragon’s touch.
He bargained with her for Hermann’s life. Not for his safety or a full recovery, and sure as the coldest hells not for him to continue as a knight. He shouldn’t have assumed that his friend would come through unscathed, when he saw how badly he was hurt, there on that mountain.
But there’s nothing more Newt can do. The King of the Northern Reach has a dragon’s warning, and he’ll heed it if he knows what’s good for him. His people won’t call him to account for what he’s done, even if they could prove it. A dangerous quest is the traditional way for a king to be rid of an unwanted younger son, and there is no law against it. But dragons don’t answer to man’s law. And if her threat is not enough to keep Hermann safe, there’s always Karla.
He tries again, days later, to have another look. Just to scry, not to speak, not to make his presence known. Just to see.
He finds the sickroom warded against him. Against all prying eyes, and Newt in particular. The spellwork is meticulous. He could break it, but he can’t bring himself to try when he finds Hermann’s own signatures in some of the wards.
It’s not a surprise, he tells himself as he cries into his pillow. If Karla is right, if he’s putting Hermann in danger, if he’s contaminated by Newt’s strangeness in the eyes of the Northern court, then it’s better if they don’t speak again.
This will be the last time he reaches out. He’ll go off to school, and he’ll try to forget. Hermann will live, and Newt will do great things in the time he has, and—
It’s better this way. Because even now, what would a prince want with the likes of him?