Page 113 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
I cast my mind outward and sensed the brilliant gleam of his awareness. I raced past Mary, through the hall, and out the front door.
Our firedrake was clumsy on his perch, wings tense and askew. He thrummed a whistling growl unlike any sound he had ever made.
I stopped in front of him, relieved to find him but disturbed by his behavior.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
His burnished claws made a grinding sound on the iron perch. His black eyes met mine, wary and rebellious.
I stepped closer. “This is not a time for contests. We must be allies.” Slowly, I reached out a finger and stroked his shoulder. The muscle under his bronze scales was vibrating. “What has she done to you?” I drew my finger up his neck, and he began to relax, curling around my touch. I ended with my fingertip under his narrow jaw and guided his gaze to mine.
Images filled my mind. Wickham and me behind window panes, the color of our warmth distorted by passage through glass. I saw anger in the set of myshoulders and felt it echo through the drake’s feelings, anger and protectiveness both.
Savage darkness grabbed like an armored fist, freezing and violent.
The scene vanished as the drake hissed.
“Hush,” I said. Whatever influence Lydia had exerted, our drake had not enjoyed it. My fear ratcheted down a notch.
Without thinking, I lifted him from his perch. That was a habit I formed with the Gardiners’ tykeworm. Tykes are famously tolerant of being held.
Our drake, however, had never been held. He scrambled in my grip, wings flapping for balance. I got a stinging smack on my nose. Then he settled, folding his wings, and I cradled him in my arms.
He was much heavier than a tyke, more like a solid child of eight or nine months. And much longer. His neck swanned upward. His chisel head tipped one way and another, peering at my face, then drifted around the side of my head, examining my ear.
My gaze landed on the sharp gouges his claws had cut in the iron perch.
I froze. Cautiously, I felt for his feet.
The dull outside curves of his claws pressed my forearm, harder than steel but no more dangerous than the back of a spoon. He had clenched his toes, folding the razor edges against his scaled body. I let out a relieved breath.
“Are we friends now?” I asked. His head craned farther, inspecting the back of my head. I tried to remember how the maid had done my hair this morning.
This was becoming a heavy armful of draca, so I shifted him into the crook of my arm. Something rough scraped my skin. I moved my hand away from his body to see.
A few loose, bronze scales sparkled in my palm. “What is this?” Our drake had never shed scales before. Had Lydia struck him?
Now that I looked, there were scales on the slate roof under his perch. And scattered on the ground around us. Some were pressed into old footsteps in the soil.
Whatever caused this, it had begun before Lydia came.
“Let me see you,” I said and lifted him to his perch. He grabbed on obediently.
There were tiny dull dots in his gleaming bronze where scales were lost. My gaze traveled downward.
A claw was missing from his left foot.
His right foot had the usual three in front, meshed with the long, wickedcurve of his rear claw. But on the left, the third toe ended with an unhealthy-looking pit where the claw had been.
Dread burst into my mind, worse because it was so unexpected. Our drake had been unchanged my entire life. Never ill. Never hurt. Was he sick? I had been feeding him myself, and he ate normally.
I crouched so our eyes were close and opened my mind, projecting concern and imagining his lost claw and scales.
An image formed. Sparkling, cool water.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked, not really believing it. There was a birdbath only a dozen yards away. He sometimes sipped there, often with sparrows or thrushes splashing beside him. Little birds were strangely unafraid of our drake.
Whatever the cause, this was serious. We needed him to be healthy. But why an image of water?
