The Witch Who Bled the DragonFire

I woke up from the same dream again. Fire. Everywhere. The trees were burning, the sky was red, and my mother was pulling me through the forest so hard her nails dug into my wrist. I could still feel that grip sometimes, even years later, as if my skin remembered what my mind wanted to forget. “Don’t let the dragon find you, El.” I could still hear her voice when I opened my eyes. It had been so clear in the dream that for a second, I expected to see her standing over me. “If it finds you, it will burn everything you love.” I sat there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. My hair was stuck to the side of my face, and my hands were cold against the stone floor. “Great,” I muttered. “Another wonderful morning.” I was sitting on the cold floor of my apothecary, wrapped in a wool shawl, staring at the rain beating against the little window. The glass rattled every time the wind hit the cottage, and the weak morning light made everything inside look grey. Outside, the Atlantic was angry. The wind was so loud it sounded like it wanted to tear the cottage off the cliff. I had lived with storms like this for years, but I still hated waking up to them. They made the cottage feel smaller, as if the whole world had disappeared and left me alone with the weather. I rubbed my face and got to my feet. My chest was hurting again. Not exactly pain. More like heat. I knew that feeling too well. I pulled my clothes aside and looked at the crescent-shaped mark over my heart. It was glowing faintly. “Not today,” I whispered. I stared at it for another second, hoping it would fade if I ignored it. That was how I dealt with most things I couldn’t explain. Unfortunately, the mark had never cared much about what I wanted. The mark had been there for as long as I could remember. So had the strange heat beneath it. Heartfire. That was what the Crown called it. An abomination. And if anyone in Portree discovered I carried it, I wouldn’t get a trial. I’d get a rope. That thought was enough to make me pull my clothes back into place. So I kept it hidden. I turned back to my workbench and picked up the pestle. The familiar weight of it in my hand helped. Herbs, bottles, measurements. Things I understood. Things I could control. The villagers needed their medicine. That was what mattered. I was grinding houndstongue into a paste when I heard something. A low vibration. I stopped. “What was that?” Nothing. I waited, listening carefully. Then it came again. A deep thump beneath my feet. My stomach tightened. I reached under the counter and grabbed my knife. It wasn’t much, but it was the closest thing I had to protection, and right then I wasn’t going to complain about it. “It’s the storm,” I told myself. I didn’t believe me. Then the heat in my chest suddenly exploded. I gasped. The pestle slipped from my hand and smashed against the floor. “No. No, no, no.” The herbs in front of me started moving. I stared. The dead leaves straightened. Green spread through the stems. Tiny silver flowers opened right in front of me. For a second, I couldn’t move. I had seen strange things before, but seeing dead herbs come alive on my workbench was still enough to make my mind go blank. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” My magic was waking up. I pressed both hands against my chest. “Stay down.” The heat fought me. “Please.” I wasn’t sure whether I was begging the magic or myself. Then, just as quickly as it had started, the storm stopped. Completely. The sudden silence made my ears ring. I looked toward the door. The silence was worse than the noise. Something had hit my door. I grabbed my knife. “Who is it?” No answer. I swallowed. “The apothecary is closed.” Still nothing. I took one step toward the door. “Leave before I—” I stopped. I didn’t have anything. No guard dog. No husband. No big scary weapon. Just a knife I mostly used to cut herbs and gut fish. “Before I do something unpleasant,” I finished weakly. Another thud came from outside. I stared at the door. “Wonderful.” I reached for the latch. The wood was hot. I immediately pulled my hand back. “What the—?” The moss around the doorway was blackening. Something was definitely outside. I tightened my grip on the knife and opened the door. A man fell across my threshold. I stared at him. He was huge. And covered in blood. “Oh my God.” I dropped beside him. “Can you hear me?” He didn’t answer. I touched his shoulder. I nearly screamed. He was burning hot. Not feverish. Not warm from the weather. Burning. “What’s wrong with you?” Then I saw the blood. It wasn’t red. It was black. And wherever it touched my wooden floor, the boards began to smoke. I scrambled backward. “What are you?” The man groaned. His eyes opened. Gold. Not brown. Not hazel. Gold. I stared at him, unable to look away. Then black scales began appearing along his neck. My mouth went dry. “No.” The word barely came out. He looked straight at me. His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. The moment he touched me, the mark over my heart exploded with light. I screamed. His golden eyes widened. “You,” he whispered. I stared at him. “What?” His grip tightened. “You.” And then my door slammed shut behind us. By itself. I looked at it. Then back at him. My hand was still trapped in his, and the heat from my chest hadn’t gone away. If anything, it felt stronger now. I didn’t know what was happening, and I hated that I couldn’t make sense of any of it. “Oh, this is bad.” Very bad. I wanted to pull my hand free, but for one strange second, I couldn’t. Not because he was stronger than me, though he probably was. It was the look in his eyes. He looked as confused as I felt, almost as if he had expected to find someone else behind that door. I glanced at the black blood on my floor, then at the scales on his neck. My thoughts were moving too fast, jumping from one impossible thing to another. Dragons were stories. Monsters from old warnings. Things people whispered about when they wanted children to behave. Yet this man was lying in my doorway. And I was standing there with my knife in one hand and a glowing mark over my heart, wondering how my ordinary morning had gone so wrong. I looked at the door again, hoping it would explain itself. It didn’t. The cottage was silent except for our breathing, and every small sound felt too loud. I tightened my fingers around the knife and wished, for once, that I had someone to call. Instead, I had a stranger, a knife, and absolutely no idea what came next