Scarlett Meris's Arc

Chapter 1 of 15

Scarlett Meris heard the dragon fall before she saw it. She had spent three years hiding wounded dragons from the hunters who worked these hills, and she knew the sound of wings that had stopped fighting the air. She dropped her basket of red-petaled vines and ran through the ferns, her boots skidding on wet moss. The fae blood in her let her move faster than any human tracker. She needed to reach the dragon before they did. She found it in a shallow clearing. A silver pup, no bigger than a hound, with wings like frost on a window. Blood ran down its flank in a steady, wrong-colored stream — black at the edges, not red. Something small and metal was still lodged in the wound. Scarlett had never seen a weapon like it. It was barbed, thin as a needle, and it hummed against her fingertips when she touched the shaft. The pup whimpered. Its blue eyes rolled toward her, then closed. "No. No, stay with me." Scarlett dropped to her knees. She pressed her palm around the barb and felt it bite deeper as the pup breathed. Pulling it wrong would tear the artery. Leaving it would kill the pup within minutes. Her hands shook. She had pulled arrows before. She had stitched claw wounds and burns. She had never worked around a weapon that fought back. She grabbed the red-petaled vines from where she'd dropped them. The flowers grew only in these hills, and the fae elders had taught her their use — crushed petals slowed bleeding, and the vines held tighter than any bandage. She tore a handful of petals with her teeth and packed them against the wound. Then she gripped the barb with two fingers and twisted the way the humming told her to, not against it, but with it. The barb came free. Blood surged. Scarlett shoved the crushed petals into the hole and wound a vine around the pup's small ribs, pulling until the flow slowed to a trickle. The pup shuddered once and kept breathing. She sat back on her heels and stared at the barb in her palm. It was still humming. The metal was etched with a mark she didn't recognize — three lines crossed by a fourth. Not a hunter's brand. Not any smith's work she knew. Someone had built a weapon designed to find dragons and hold on until they bled out. The pup pressed its nose into her wrist. Alive. For now. Scarlett wrapped the pup in her cloak and stood. She could hear voices further down the slope — men, moving without hurry, following a trail they expected to end in a body. She slid the barb into her belt pouch. Whoever had made it would want it back. Whoever had made it would come looking for whatever had walked off with their kill. She turned uphill and ran.