What sort of curse was it? How was she meant to know that? Curses were curses. You had to see them at work to have a chance at figuring out what they were, and the whole reason she was in this situation was she hadn’t given the bloody thing a chance to do that.

  “It was a crown. Wanted me to wear it, promised power, riches, all that—well, it didn’t say anything about riches. Just power and if I want to know more, pop it on my head.”

  “Materials?”

  “Huh?”

  “What was it made of.”

  “Stormsteel for the cursed bit,” she said. “With dragonbone underneath. Couldn’t see that until I smashed the steel off it, though, and the bone wasn’t cursed.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes narrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “What sort of dragon?”

  “The… sort that’s dead?”

  He made a frustrated sound. “I mean, a moonlight dragon, or—” He cut himself off. “You didn’t bring it with you.”

  Truth be told, she’d lost track of it after she shook the thing off her lightstick. But it hadn’t been a question.

  She answered anyway. “No.”

  He shook his head. “But the curse was in the steel, not the bone, you said. Tell me about that.”

  Runa shrugged with her good arm and kept not looking at her bad one. “What difference does it make what curse it was?”

  “Because it changes how I’ll approach getting the residual magic out of your body.”

  The sun had dropped as she and Errant made the slow and painful journey back up the side of the mountain. Corvin lit candles and fussed with a polished silver mirror, using it to catch and reflect the light more brightly on Runa’s arm. “At the moment, all I can be sure of is that what remains in your arm isn’t a curse.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He huffed. “Because you’re sitting here, not dangling behind your own arm as it’s pulled directly to the heart of the Cauldron.” He hesitated, and his eyes met hers again with the slow dread of someone who had a deep understanding of the idiots he shared the world with. “I know how strongly you wish to return to the Cauldron. Please—I mean this very sincerely—refrain from cursing yourself in order to be dragged into it.”

  “I—”

  He leaned forward. “Imagine running full tilt into a block of ice, over and over again, until you were part of that block of ice,” he said acerbically. “You’d be in the Cauldron, technically, but not in any state to find your friends.”

  “Not friends. Clients.”

  “Clients, then. Being in a state of fleshy paste would make it even more difficult for you to extract payment from them.” He turned and began sorting through jars.

  “It’s not about being paid—”

  “Hold this.” Corvin handed her one of the bottles while he unstoppered another one and measured out spoonfuls of glowing liquid into a small bowl.

  “It’s not about being paid,” Runa repeated, taking the bottle. It was heavier than it looked. “I signed a contract to get them in and out of the Cauldron safely. If I can’t do that, I don’t have any business working as a guide.”

  He kept his eyes on the potions. “Hmm.”

  “You get all sorts. Treasure-hunters, wizards, romantics who’ve spent their lives reading about the Cauldron but have no idea what they’ll be facing inside. None of them do, no matter what they’ve heard. Treasure-hunters are the worst.”

  “Oh, good, you’re going to keep telling me about it,” Corvin muttered. “Junilla said you were the quiet sort. I was looking forward to that.”

  Runa ignored him. The words itched under her skin, wanting to get out in a way they never had before. “They think because they’ve read about the Skeleton War and everything the lich lords did to the world, they know what to expect. Or that their experience digging into vaults and tombs outside the Cauldron is going to prepare them. They have no idea.”

  “Mm.”

  “The Cauldron is dangerous.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s… it’s wonderful.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it. Not like that, anyway.

  Corvin was watching her with one eyebrow carefully sardonic.

  She cleared her throat. “I mean—my clients are going to get themselves killed. That’s why I have to find them.”

  “We can’t go letting people get themselves killed in the one part of the world designed specifically for killing people. That would be terrible.”

  “Yeah, exactly.” She snorted. “What’re you making there, anyway?”

  “An ointment to draw out the magical energy.” He pulled another glass bottle from the cupboard and extracted a drop of something that glittered like stardust.

  “I thought you said this wasn’t a curse?”

  “It isn’t. Not anymore, or not yet, anyway. It’s undirected magical residue. It’ll dig into the nearest available source of magic, trying to make itself or an existing enchantment bigger.”

  “You’re saying I could have slept this off?”

  “You don’t strike me as having a particularly powerful magical core. So more likely, while you were sleeping, the residue would pull you apart, and then go lurching off to look for a bigger meal.” He tipped a handful of small black seeds or sand into his hand, and then stirred them into the bowl.

  Runa frowned. “That’s not how magic works.”

  “And you’d know a lot about it, would you?”

  “I’ve spent the better part of the last twenty years navigating curses in the Cauldron. I think I know how magic works.”

  “You may be familiar with how curses work.” Corvin looked at the contents of the bowl with a critical eye, then tidied away the bottles he’d drawn from. He still hadn’t used the bottle Runa was holding for him. It was still strangely heavy. Heavy… sideways.

  Huh.

  “Fine. I’ll bite. What’s the difference?”

  “Vellugar’s tidying-up spell targets curses.”

  Runa waited. “I know that. I mean what makes curses different to spells?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Curses are pulled into the Cauldron. Spells are not,” Corvin replied simply.

  “That’s—”

  Corvin bent over the potion he was working on, his voice becoming richer as he went on. “Curses are like any other spell. They are magic, constrained to a purpose, whether that purpose is to poison the ground or to give geese fangs and the ability to breathe fire.” He made an impatient noise. “And this is why nobody has succeeded in quelling the Cauldron, not that anyone seems to think of that as an option these days. Breaking any curse releases the magic within it, and you’ve seen what damage can result from that. Break a curse in the Cauldron, with so many other curses nearby, and who knows what all that magical residue would do?”

  Runa shrugged. “That’s why the wizards who purify Cauldron hauls charge so much. Everyone knows that.”

  He picked up a brush. “Hold your arm out.”

  The bottle in Runa’s hand almost felt like it was trying to tug itself back onto the shelf with the others. “What about this one? Aren’t you going to use it in the potion?”

  “That? It isn’t a tonic.”

  “What is it, then?”

  He held her gaze. “A curse.”

  “The hell?” She almost dropped it, but her fingers closed tight around the bottle’s neck at the last moment. “Why’d you give it to me to hold onto?”

  “Weren’t you listening? It’s an anchor, if the magic in your arm tore loose while I was working.” His eyes narrowed.

  As though on cue, the bottle pulled towards the shelf again.

  As an experiment, she balanced the bottle on her palm. Slowly, it began to rock back and forth. Always towards the shelf.

  Towards what was behind the shelf.

  She closed her hand again before it could roll off her palm and smash on the floor.

  “Why do you have bottled curses? Strange thing for a healer to keep on hand.”

  “I’m an apothecary, not a doctor. And some remedies require more than a handful of nymph-blossom and happy thoughts.”

  Runa considered the bottle. “It’s not pulling hard, though.”

  “Things don’t, this close to the Cauldron. The farther away a curse is when Vellugar’s spell catches hold of it, or the longer it resists, or any number of other variables I’m not interested in listing, the faster the spell reels it in.”

  “I know that. The crown almost took my arm off.”

  “It still might,” he said coolly. “Hold still.”

  He painted the ointment onto her crackling arm. Runa hissed in a breath as it stung and then… un-stung.

  “Feels weird,” she gritted out through her teeth.

  “Mmm.”

  “Is it meant to look like that?”

  The ointment was wriggling, like a blanket of worms covering her arm. Her muscles jumped beneath them.

  “Do you feel a burning sensation?” he asked mildly.

  “Uh, no?” But I don’t get burned, anyway, she added silently. Would that make a difference?

  “Hm.”

  “What do you mean, hm?”

  “I was right. You’re less troll than you appear.”

  Runa tensed. Corvin met her eyes, his own stillness a dangerous balance of run and attack.

  “You noticed?” she forced out. “Lots of people don’t.”

  “Many people do not notice that I am more than I appear, either.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re putting a bit of effort into appearing as something you’re not.”

  “And you aren’t?” He blinked, and peered closer, shadowy facets glinting behind his eyes again. “No. From the outside, you only take after your troll parent.”

  “My father.”

  Something that on anyone else might have been sympathy flashed in his eyes. “That must have made spending time with your mother’s side difficult.”

  Wrong way around. But she didn’t see any reason to pour out her life’s story to some asshole dragon. “What’s it to you?”

  “A great deal, if it means not accidentally melting your arm off. Nymph magic is contraindicated with some common potion ingredients.” He caught her flicker of surprise, and smirked coldly. “Don’t worry. Whatever reason you have for hiding your ancestry, I doubt anyone else here is going to look at you and think ah, part-nymph.”

  No. They weren’t. And that was the reason she hid it. Because he was right. Nobody looked up and further up at Runa and thought ah, she must have some tiny, delicate nymphish blood in her heritage. And when they did find out, Corvin’s sneering we’re-all-hiding-something-together smirk was the best she could hope for.

  Also, it was nobody’s business.

  “There. It’s working.” Corvin’s voice was warmer, but only because he sounded smug.

  And I’m meant to trust you on that? She answered her own question without bothering to ask it out loud. She’d come here, hadn’t she? Corvin knew she knew he was a dragon. If she was worried about him trying to take advantage of the situation to get rid of her, she should have stayed down in Dawdledale, stuck with Rovnen and his crew, and let her arm fall off, or whatever.

  The strange un-stinging feeling lessened. The bubbling, pilling surface of the ointment smeared over the magical injury was slowing down.

  Runa flexed her hand gingerly. Her fingers all moved fine. She made a fist, then stretched it out again. Grip strength seemed all right.

  “And that’s sucked all the magic out?” she asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s stopped tingling, though, so…”

  “That’s because the ointment has been neutralized.” He sighed and began to scrape it off Runa’s arm. “But there wasn’t enough power in it to deal with your entire injury. You’ll require further applications.”

  “How many?”

  He thinned his lips.

  “You can give me a supply of the stuff to take away and look after it myself, though, right?” It’s a month’s journey to Sollus Gate if I have to walk it, she screamed internally. I can’t waste any more time here!

  “That would be inadvisable.” He looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon. “The ointment would only try to drag itself back here, anyway.”

  “There’s a curse in there?!”

  “Of course there is. How do you expect to extract magic from a person’s flesh without a curse? Even magic that’s trying its best to pull you into your component pieces.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I estimate a week at least of daily applications until your injury is healed.”

  “A week.” It came out as a snarl.

  Corvin went strangely still.

  Fuck, Runa thought.

  “I understand you are in a hurry to leave,” he said calmly.

  “And you don’t want me around either, I’ll bet,” she retorted. Hellblinker’s shiny buttons. “Is this going to be a problem for you? Me sticking around while I heal up?”

  “Why would it be?”

  You know why, asshole. “Well, if you can’t think of a reason, I’m sure there’s no problem.”

  He hesitated, and she took pity on him.

  Everyone knew nymphs were dainty and petite, and everyone knew trolls liked nothing more than to sit under the stars, reciting poetry and waiting for a dragon to fly past so they could trap them in a cave.

  Like many things that everyone knew, the truth was more complicated.

  Volcano nymphs like Runa’s mother were short, sure, but dainty was a word for creatures who didn’t wade through molten rock on the regular. And the whole thing with trolls imprisoning dragons beneath their mountains… was complicated. Something she’d discovered approximately half a second before she decided to jump on the nearest curseland heading out of the mountains.

  She cleared her throat. “If I wanted to lure dragons underground, I would have stayed up north.”

  Even though his pissed-off expression didn’t change, something eased behind his eyes. “Many people would call this the north.”

  “This far south? You don’t even have auroras down here.”

  “Only when the Cauldron draws one over itself.” He gave a thin smile. “We’re done here for today, then.”

  She gestured at her arm. “What am I meant to do about this?”

  “Nothing. The magic is integrated into your flesh now, and won’t affect anything else you come into contact with.”

  She stared at it. Her arm still looked like someone had chopped bits of the night sky into it. It hurt… less. “Don’t give me the good news all at once.”

  He dropped the scraped-off, curdled ointment from her arm into a bucket beneath the bench. “It means there’s no need to bandage the injury, unless the sight of it distresses you too much. I’ll prepare more ointment for you. Come back tomorrow.”

  “All right.” She stood to leave. “Uh.”

  “Hm?” He didn’t look up.

  “You could fly me into the Cauldron.”

  He still didn’t look up. “No.”

  “Not in front of everyone. I get you want to keep what you are a secret. But there’s three people in the Cauldron I need to get out—”

  “Are they dying?” he asked, still de-cluttering his workbench.

  Runa clutched her medallion, where the client charms still hung, shining buttercup-yellow. “No, but—”

  “Do you want them to?” He looked up, his dark eyes piercing.

  Runa folded her arms. Two could play the scary looks game. “I told you, I’m not going to imprison you underground. I’m not into that sort of thing.”

  “That isn’t what concerns me. Trust me. You don’t want to see me flying for any reason.”

  Her throat went dry. She could think of a boatload of reasons why that might be. None of them were good.

  Dragons were rarer than nymphs, in this part of the world. Though at least nymphs were of the world. The most common dragons were moonlight dragons, who famously lived on the moon, and who that complicated recipe in the bread book were named after.

  She’d seen moonlight dragons flying. It was beautiful.

  But there were other dragons too. Ones nobody had seen flying since the lich lords all killed each other for good.

  “Right,” she said, and was impressed at her voice for not being even slightly unsteady. Fine. Good. He wasn’t worried about her knowing he was a dragon, because any troll who tried to sing someone like him down from the heavens was in for several worlds of trouble.

  “One other thing. About what you said earlier.” The light caught his eye strangely. “About the Cauldron being so wonderful. You should remember, nobody likes the Cauldron.”

  “I never said I—”

  “For good reason. The same reason I don’t fly.” His mouth twisted, as though he was forcing himself to speak the words—or stopping himself from saying something else. “Be careful.”

  Like she needed him to tell her that. “Sure.”

  ***

  So.

  Here she was.

  Back in Pothollow.

  Back in the bakery.

  In worse shape than when she’d arrived.

  And yet…

  Runa rolled up her sleeves. If she was going to stay here until her arm was better—and if the magic in her arm wasn’t at risk of being transferred to anything else, like Corvin said…

  Then she might as well get to work.

  isn't having as the one experiencing them. Don't worry, Runa - better days (and better bakes) are coming. Eventually.