Page 33 of Scaled Hearts

Kelly merely gives me a disapproving look, though I choose to ignore it while slipping on the merchant’s pants. If I’m to wear stifling human clothes, she’s going to need to put her human emotions aside for once.

She fixes my cloak after I clip it across my chest and pulls the hood up to cover my horns. I hold back a grunt, not wanting to waste any more time on arguing with her further on this subject.

Her hand finds mine to tug me along while we head up the docks and onto land.

It’s busy here, congested with crowds that I’m not used to seeing.

The population on my island is so sparse that running into someone I don’t know is almost unheard of – and it’s not from my lack of trying. Here, it feels like I’m being forced to walk through a bees nest with how much noise rattles inside of my head.

Thankfully, Kelly’s encampment isn’t that far from the water, and we make it there in an hour once I scoop her up and unleash just my wings – which do rip holes in the robe but oh well – to fly us inconspicuously. It’s much less loud there.

She leads me to a large hut that looks decrepit from the outside. Around the perimeter, strange plants bordered against the walls with large berry-looking fruit hanging off the branches. To the side of the hut was a drying rack that had a few different types of leathers hung over the dowels.

Kelly pushes the door open and ducks her head inside. I follow closely behind her and let the door slam shut behind us.

“Anyone here?” she calls.

“Is that you, Kelly?” came the voice of an old, weathered woman from deeper inside of the hut.

Kelly follows the sound of the woman, taking me around a short corner that leads into some kind of sitting area. To the left of that, the room opens up into a small kitchen. An old woman stands at the stove with a wooden spoon sunk into a large pot that steams.

“You’re back!” the old woman smiles.

She has a few light colored marks along her jawline that look suspiciously like healing bruises. I glance down at the woman’s arms where she’s pushed up her sleeves, discovering more bruising.

Strange.

“I am. How’s Kara?”

The woman’s face pinches at the mention of Kelly’s sibling. But before she can say anything about it, another voice calls from behind us.

“Kelly?”

She whips around, pushing past me to wrap her arms around a younger woman that stands just on the edge of the kitchen.

“Kara!”

I have to admit, they look eerily similar.

It’s strange seeing them both together like this. Siblings aren’t unheard of in dragon culture, but getting a female dragon to mate long enough for a couple to produce siblings was nearly impossible.

Though, I do recall very vaguely from my days as a dark elf that siblings existed there, too. But the memories are foggy and trying to remember faces or names is impossible.

Kelly pulls back hugging her sibling and pulls her over to the small two-person chair in the sitting room.

“Let me see your hand.”

As the younger woman sits with her on the cushions, the older one comes around me to follow them. “Her outbursts have been getting worse.”

“Outbursts?” Kelly looks back and forth between them. “What happened?”

Neither of the other two say anything for a long moment. It clicks with me instantly.

Ah, so that’s what the bruises are from.

I head over to where Kelly is and kneel in front of them both.

“Let me see the blight.”

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