For whatever reason, Aster was turning into metal. Nothing I’d ever learned in Shade’s classes had taught me what to do if my fire magic turned someone into metal. It didn’t make sense that I could’ve done this, but who else could’ve done it? Chief Garoth maybe could’ve done it with his staff, but even if he was lying about being out of magic, he didn’t have any reason to tick me off by messing with my friends. I must’ve done it somehow. Or maybe the chief’s magic had interacted with mine in some unexpected way. Whatever the case, I had to fix this before it was too late to reverse.

I knelt by Aster’s mattress and cupped my hands around his face. His skin was like a non-newtonian fluid, hard at first but more fluid with a softer touch. I could feel magic buzzing around beneath his skin, but it was alien to me. It didn’t respond to my commands. If I couldn’t make it move, how was I supposed to get it out? I had to be doing something wrong. Setting my jaw in an attempt to look confident, I pressed my ear to Aster’s chest. The magic was even stronger there, practically roaring along with the beating of his twin hearts. 

Twin hearts. Aster had two hearts. He’d had two hearts since before he’d even met me. It was one of the first weird things that I’d found out we had in common. It also might’ve been the explanation I was looking for. 

“Ast, I don’t think my magic is doing this. I mean, it might’ve started this, but you- at least, I think you’re a dragon. Not a fire dragon, either. Maybe stone? Or I guess you could be void. There’s one weird void dragon that’s got metal for skin, so that would make sense. I know you’re not adopted, but you don’t remember your bio dad. What if he was- I mean, it’s possible, right?” Part of me wished it was possible, so I wouldn’t be alone. But the other part of me wished I was wrong, so he wouldn’t have to be stuck as a freak like this forever. 

His eyes widened, and he almost seemed to be holding his breath as he stared at me. I couldn’t read his expression, but I could only imagine the horror going through his mind. Before, simply avoiding me could’ve made my magic leave his system eventually. Now, there wasn’t a thing me or him or anyone else could do about it. 

He set his hands on my shoulders and took a shuddering breath. “I- No,” he shouted, shoving me back with superhuman force. 

My shoulder hit the wall with a crack that echoed in my ears. The borins were screaming and running around. I wanted to do the same, but echoes of Aster’s words were the loudest things in my mind. For a split second, I’d thought we might be okay. Even if he hated being like me, I’d thought he wouldn’t have to hate me. But it seemed that was a vain hope. 

“Aster, I’m sorry.” I wanted to say more, but he jumped out of bed, shedding the furs around his waist to reveal pants pulled down in the back to accommodate for a stubby tail that only reached down to his knees. 

Shock froze me in place as he sprinted away down the healing house. I was half convinced I would never see him again, but then he was on the floor wrestling with one of the other patients—the greenish girl. Having dealt with draconic instincts in my dreams most of my life, I knew how to manage them. He obviously didn’t, and he was taking his anger with me out on a poor patient.

I leapt to my feet, mildly surprised that my shoulder didn’t hurt that bad. Shoving the thought away for another time, I ran and grabbed Aster from behind. It took all my strength to pull him off—and that was with the guy patient helping me. I shoved Aster away from the other patients and got between them. 

“Look, I’m sure you’re angry, but you’ve got to calm down before you hurt someone.” I reached out to touch his arm. “Let’s go outside and-”

He body slammed me to the floor with another deafeningly loud crack. The breath wooshed from my lungs. Gasping for air, I struggled to sit up as he vaulted over me and jumped on the girl again. What was wrong with him? Even as a kid, I hadn’t been this violent. Then again, Izzy might’ve said differently if you’d asked her. 

I fought to get to my hands and knees. Gritting my teeth against the stitch in my side, I grabbed Aster’s tail in both hands and pulled as hard as I could. There was another crack, he yelped, and for a moment, I worried I was about to pull the whole thing off. 

The guy patient dived at Aster, crashing into his side and rolling him off the girl. Finally catching my breath, I crawled to the girl to check out if she was okay. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

Rubbing the red hand-marks on her neck, she scoffed. She looked around like she’d dropped something. 

“Do you need help finding-”

Before I could finish, she grabbed something from the thick floor furs and whipped it up at me. It was a distinctly Earth handgun, with a revolving barrel and a weathered wooden handle like those ones you saw in old cowboy movies. Aster’s erratic behavior suddenly made a lot more sense. 

“Move, and I shoot you right through the eye.” She spat blood on the carpet. “Probably won’t kill you, but it’ll sure hurt like hell.” She glanced at the guy patient, who was crouched over a still Aster, dark blood dripping from his mandibles. “Good job.”

Nothing about this was good, and they were about to find out exactly how I felt about how not-good this was. I growled, but before I could say anything, the girl cut me off. 

“Don’t worry, lizard. He’s just paralyzed. He’ll be fine in an hour. As for you…” She lowered the gun a smidge and cocked it. 

“Wait,” the guy said. “There’s no way we can keep her egg warm all the way back home. Egg’s no use dead dead. I’ll tie her up.” As he stood, the girl scoffed. 

“With what flameproof rope?”

Tutting, he crossed to his mattress and dug through a bag at its side. “At least one of us came prepared.” 

I glanced around for something I could use as a weapon. With the girl’s gun leveled at me—and her obvious lack of qualms about using it—I wouldn’t be able to move far enough to get her in the face with a bit of flame before she fired. Whatever magic Aster had lent me when we bonded had gone straight to healing my legs; I didn’t have enough to hit her from even a few feet away. 

The two healer borins who hadn’t fled from the building were cowering behind a tower of baskets in the back, so they wouldn’t be much help. 

Like the girl had said, a bullet from a handgun probably wouldn’t kill me. After all, I had thick skin and a layer of feathers in my halfway form. But I certainly wasn’t bulletproof anywhere except my mouth and claws, which didn’t help me much here. If she hit me in an artery, I was likely to bleed out and end up defenseless in my egg. Assuming, of course, that I had enough energy stored to revive me at all. This soon after reviving, I was unlikely to make it through another revival intact. 

The guy patient moved behind me and dragged my wrists together. Maybe I should risk getting shot. I could survive long enough to take them down. Then again, I could die. Or I could survive to take them down and then die, leaving my egg with a paralyzed Aster and a couple of borins who would probably be too frightened to touch my egg, much less incubate it properly. I could easily freeze to death before anyone thought to put me in a fire. 

The guy tied my wrists tight together with a thin rope that felt like the twine used around hay bales. Despite its thinness, it was pretty strong under normal circumstances and no doubt enchanted now to keep me from using magic to escape. He pulled me to my feet. It was a little comical, since he was half a foot shorter and significantly thinner than me, but I wasn’t about to underestimate those mandibles. 

“You know you’ll never get out of the village with me like this. Someone will stop you.” At least, I hoped they would. It was entirely possible everyone would assume this was an ‘affair between gods’ and be too afraid to intervene. 

“Of course, of course. I almost forgot.” He pulled a whistle from the neck of his shirt and blew. It was a high-pitched whine of a whistle that made my skin crawl. “That should do it.”