The Fading Dream Read Free Page 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 sensationspread 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.” Hesat 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