“I don’t know about that.”
“Why not? Surely you haven’t split with Calassa?”
The tension ran out of him. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Nyri. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I just… I lost a boy today. Green fever.” He tapped the case she’d given him. “If I’d had this a day ago, he’d still be alive. But people down here can’t afford Jorasco goods. They can’t afford magic, and without it, it’s all too hard to work miracles.”
Thorn stepped forward and held out a hand. He ignored it and embraced her, holding her close for a moment. Then he took a step back and looked at her.
“So… something strange, you say?”
Thorn hesitated for a moment, trying to find the words. “Have you noticed anything unusual about yourself these last few months?”
“Certainly. My allergy to dustmoss has gotten worse. My memory’s not as sharp as it used to be. And I’m quick to lose my patience with evasive sisters. Do you have a point?”
“How well can you see in the dark?”
“My vision’s as good as it ever was, at least since the accident,” Nandon said. “Our mother’s blood still runs in my veins. Why? Is your eyesight failing you?”
“No, no. I’m not talking about seeing clearly in starlight, Nan. I mean full dark-reading a book in a closet at night.”
Nandon frowned. “Of course I can’t do that. Are you… are you saying that you can?”
Thorn nodded slowly. “Yes. And that’s just the beginning.”
Nandon looked away, the scowl back on his face. “I don’t know what this is about-” He fell silent as he looked back and saw what Thorn was doing. She had her hand in the oil lantern, holding her palm to the flame. There was no smell of burning flesh, no pain; the flame licked against her skin without touching it.
“That’s trivial defensive magic,” he said.
“Which I’m not using,” Thorn replied. “And I’ve faced far worse than a candle flame. I survived an Aundairian fireball. On my last mission, I fell into a river of lava below Sharn and walked away without a mark. I don’t know what’s going on, Nandon. I thought… I thought maybe you were going through the same thing.”
He pulled her hand from the lamp, studying the skin and sniffing it. Then he held out a finger and gingerly extended it toward the lantern flame. He pulled it swiftly away the moment it made contact. “It seems not. You’re serious about this, Nyri? You swear this isn’t some sort of prank?”
“On our father’s name, Nandon. I wouldn’t joke about this. I don’t know what to think. I thought I might be developing an aberrant dragonmark, but I’ve looked everywhere I could and found nothing. It’s… it’s frightening. I’d hoped that as a healer-and as my brother-you might be able to give me some answers.”
Nandon nodded gravely. “I need you to tell me everything. From the very first symptom.”
And so she did. She told him how her senses had grown so sharp that she could not only see in deepest darkness, but sense the presence of an invisible man from the sound of his feet and the shifting currents of air. She described the bursts of strength that had let her throw an ogre across a room, though she couldn’t maintain that power for more than a moment. She reiterated her seeming immunity to fire. Thorn revealed the troubling dreams of the woman in red and the silver tree with leaves of gold. After taking a deep breath, she quietly mentioned the deadly touch that came in her moments of deepest pain or fury, snuffing out the life of an opponent and using that power to heal herself. As she spoke, he examined her, testing her claims and searching for any signs of a dragonmark or other exterior trait that could explain her evolving powers. It didn’t take long for him to find the first anomaly: the crystal shards embedded in her neck and spine.
“Where did these come from?” he said.
“I can’t tell you everything,” Thorn said. “It was a mission-”
“And it’s more than my life is worth to know, hmm? Is it more than your life is worth? Because this is definitely unusual.”
“It’s just shrapnel. There was a magical weapon that was both empowered and protected by a swarm of dragonshards. It exploded when it was destroyed, and I was struck by a number of shards. They couldn’t remove those two.”
“And did they say why?” Nandon rubbed a salve across the stone in her neck, and a numbing sensation spread across Thorn’s skin. He put on a pair of spectacles with a strange assortment of lenses and began shifting between them.
“They said that the shards had bonded to the nerves, that they couldn’t be removed without causing considerable damage.”
“And so they have.” Nandon prodded at the top stone, but due to the numbing gel, she could barely feel the touch. “Do they cause you pain?”
“The top one, absolutely. It’s been getting better, but at times it’s agonizing. The lower one, no. Occasionally I feel chills but nothing more.”
He poked at the stones again. “And I just have to ask, as you’re a hero of Breland and queen of the shadows… I’ve heard you Lanterns are trained to evade divination magic, so you can conceal all your magical tricks and weapons. Are you using those techniques now?”
“No.”
He sighed. “I was afraid of that. I don’t know what this is about, Nyri, but I don’t like it. I’m not picking up any sort of magical resonance from these stones. But they are completely bonded to you. I can’t say for certain with the tools at my disposal, but I think they’ve actually fused to the bone itself. That shouldn’t be possible without powerful magic, and yet there’s no energy in the stones.”
“Which means what?”
“The first possibility is that this accident where you were injured involved a wave of transformative energy, and you’re still feeling the impact. Or it could be that the stones are themselves shielded-that there is magical energy within them, but that it’s shielded to evade detection. I just can’t imagine why someone would do that, if these were just random shards among thousands.” He sat down on the bed, tugging on a strand of hair. “But if there’s no power in the stones, there’s no explanation. Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
Thorn hesitated. “There is one other thing,” she said at last. “On my last mission, a man told me… I was a dragon.”
“A man told you this? Just idle conversation?”
“Well, he wasn’t exactly a man… more of an ancient demon of deception. So you see my problem.”
Nandon sighed. “You do lead an interesting life, Sister. I’ll grant you that.”
“Is it possible?”
Nandon looked at her. “Of course it’s not possible. You’re my sister. You nearly took my eye playing with sticks when we were children. Your mother was an elf, your father a man as normal as any other, and we were born at nearly the same moment. If you were a dragon, don’t you think you would have eaten Gali Das those days he used to beat us?”
“I wish I could have.”
Nandon frowned. “Still, it would explain the immunity to fire and even the sharp senses. Fundamental traits that persist even through a transmutation in form. In the tale of the Thirteen Thieves, the dragon can sense the boy even when he’s invisible, just as you describe. But it’s foolishness. How could you be a dragon? Where are your wings?”
“Well, the same mission where I discovered my keen senses, I thought that I became an actual dragon.”
Nandon stared at her. “And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning?”
“I was battling a demon, and in another plane of existence… reality was distorted. Honestly, I didn’t know what to believe. It’s never happened since then. I’ve tried to force a change and nothing happened.”
Nandon was on his feet, searching the shelves. “I don’t know, Nyri. I don’t know. What does your Citadel say? Surely they have better tools for a broad-spectrum mystical analysis than I do.”
“Nothing at all. But honestly… I don’t know who to trust anymore, Nan.”
“You’re the one who chose a life in the shadows,” he said.
“I know. And I still believe in what I do. But something is happening to me, and I don’t understand it.”
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Let little Nandon sort things out for once. Just let me draw a vial of your
