Logan Bennett's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By evening Logan sat at her aunt's worktable, hands solid but shaking. Ronnie stirred a shallow pot and frowned into it. "This one steadies your smoke," she said. "Drink it, and you'll hold your shape long enough to learn. But it won't set. I'm missing the last thing it needs." Logan leaned closer. "What's missing?" "A scale from a young wyvern. Fresh-shed, not scraped off a corpse." Ronnie tapped the spoon on the pot's rim. "I don't keep those. Nobody does. They shed once, then guard the nest." She looked at Logan hard. "Until I have one, there are no lessons. You stay a leaking thing that falls through floors." So Logan climbed the cliffs alone at dawn. She found the nest tucked in a hollow between wind-scoured rocks. Tangled branches and dry grass wove a bowl the width of a cart. Scattered across the floor lay shed scales, dark as burnt wood. One caught the light near the edge. She crept forward. Her fingers closed on a scale the size of her palm. A hiss came from the rocks above. The charcoal wyvern dropped into the nest. Young, sleek, no bigger than a hound, but its claws raked the stone as it landed. Its orange eye fixed on the scale in her hand. It bared its teeth and lunged. Logan stumbled back. Her heel hit the nest's rim and she fell. Fear surged the way it always did, hot and fast. Her whole arm went cold and gray. The wyvern's jaws snapped shut where her wrist had been and passed through empty smoke. The creature shrieked, confused. It circled, snapping at air. Logan lay half-solid, the scale somehow still gripped in her smoke-fingers. For once the curse had saved her. She forced herself to breathe. Slow. She thought of her aunt's steady hands, of the pot waiting on the fire. The panic loosened. Her arm firmed back to skin and bone, the scale pressed against her palm. She rolled clear of the nest and ran. Ronnie took the scale without a word. She dropped it into the pot. The liquid hissed and turned silver. "There," she said. "It's set." She poured a cup and pushed it across the table. "Drink." Logan drank. The shaking in her hands stopped. She held her fingers up and willed them cold. They stayed solid. She willed harder. The gray crept in, then retreated when she let go. For the first time, the smoke answered her. Ronnie watched, arms folded. "Now you can begin. But Shallen sent word while you were gone." Her mouth pressed thin. "The potion steadies you. It doesn't teach you. And she says the veil won't wait for a slow student. Something's stirring near it. She wants you at the shop tomorrow, ready to work." Logan set down the empty cup. Her hands were her own again. Tomorrow the real lessons started, and the veil was closer than she wanted it to be.