The flowers were frustrating little things. As Grandmother suggested, I tried feeding them some of my blood on the spot. The silly plants immediately perked up even further, their glow and power both steadying and brightening noticeably.

  It was proof enough that unlocking their potential had required four things, after all: flame, poison, and the blood of both fae and dragon.

  If I didn’t always carry potions and other healing items on hand, I would have been left dizzy by the time I managed to water each manchineel with my blood. Even with those supplements to sustain me, I still decided to postpone spreading the flowers out to the other two locations until another day. Instead, I collected a total of twenty flowers, an unthinkable number only a few days ago. Then I tried hard not to rush my draconic companions on our way back to my lab.

  We only spared a moment to tell Mother and Father (referring to them in such a way, even in the privacy of my own head, flustered me to an unreasonable extent) what we would be doing before we sequestered ourselves for the day. I thought I heard Amara say they would find their own work to do, and something about carving, but I was a tad distracted.

  Then, finally, came the tests.

  The initial few were an exercise in pure frustration. I said no when Alys ‘jokingly’ asked permission to eat one of the flowers, as her instincts were urging her to do. I first wanted to see what would happen if we ran one through the beetle’s flames.

  The flower burned. That’s what happened.

  It was the oddest thing. Instead of getting strengthened or purified, the flower came into contact with the flame’s power and just… imploded.

  No, that word implies a violent reaction. That wasn’t the case. The flower and the flames simply ran into each other and fizzled out, like they could not interact on a fundamental level.

  At first, I thought it might be the result of just putting the whole flower into the flames. So, I reduced one to a fine paste and tried again. When that didn’t work, I tried chopping one to bits.

  All I received for my troubles were three ruined flowers. That was when I threw my hands into the air and offered Grandmother a flower to eat.

  Alys pouted, but there was no way I was going to let my pregnant mate taste-test the dubious spirit-flower. I didn’t dare imagine what might happen if she ate one. My mind immediately slid into the dark recesses of fear, whispering ideas like ‘miscarriage’ and ‘death.’ I couldn’t let myself even consider such things. Not unless Alys suddenly came to crave being bundled away in Grandmother’s lair, guarded by a tangle of protective vines and a very clingy fae.

  Yet I had no fear whatsoever about Aesa. The Molten Expanse could handle anything the spirits might try.

  Sure enough, Grandmother was perfectly fine after consuming the flower. The flower’s effects on her, though, made me feel a bit more conflicted.

  For a moment, the dragoness was glowing. That wasn’t a euphemism or a metaphor. She lit up with a literal inner glow, one that started roughly around the area of her stomach and suffused her entire body. When that stopped, Grandmother was left standing there with a contemplative look on her face.

  Then she began making her observations.

  “I can feel my bloodline getting refined. It is somewhat like the flower’s passive effects, only several times more potent. I can tell this will last for a day, at most. But it is the equivalent of about a month of the flower’s passive effects, I’d say, if you were to keep one or two around at all times. This is quite impressive.”

  It was. We had discovered yet another invaluable aspect of the flowers’ miraculous effects. Had we discovered these plants ourselves in some hidden forest corner, instead of getting them as a gift from a nature spirit of unknown origins and intentions, I would have been overjoyed.

  Her report also meant that growing more of the flowers, as well as including them in my bloodline purification potion, was a must. A task which would have been much easier to accomplish if I could run the flowers through the beetle’s refinement process.

  It was while I was internally grumbling about this that a thought occurred to me. I latched onto it with all the unwise curiosity of a human alchemist.

  To test my idea, however, I would first need to test something else entirely.

  —

  My blood boiled. Heat raged through it, scouring every drop, excising weakness, forging strength, and kindling an inner power that I was barely aware had even existed before. The feeling was decidedly unsettling, even at a remove, and I was once more impressed by Grandmother’s abilities.

  She had kept her focus and mana in check throughout the entire process of refining her blood. Not once had she flinched or looked away. Yet I found myself sweating as I kept pouring more mana into the sample of my blood currently boiling in my beetle friend’s flames.

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  The blood was still mine. So was the mana. But the process they were undergoing made it wildly difficult to control the eddies of power swirling within the beaker, let alone use them to sense what was happening.

  It did not help that it felt like a part of me was burning. A numb, detached part I sensed only a vague echo of, but still enough to leave me shaken and perspiring. Grandmother probably had an advantage over me there, being a creature of flames, yet her focus and skill were still admirable.

  A groan escaped me as my concentration slipped, and I lost the impressions of what was happening to my blood. For a moment, I stood there panting, my hands gripping the edges of the table.

  “Hrm. Acceptable.”

  I felt a hand on my forehead, cool against my feverish skin. The next moment, the heat that had left me flushed and panting started to drain away. My sigh of relief was downright indulgent as I slumped a little further. My eyes, which I didn’t remember closing, fluttered open.

  “What did you learn?” Grandmother asked from right beside me, her hand still on my forehead as she effortlessly broke the fever that had tried to grip me.

  “That I really, really dislike the idea of burning alive,” I admitted, making her serious expression crack into a mocking grin.

  “Then make sure not to annoy me. I hope you gleaned something more useful than that particular insight, however?”

  “Yes. The process is just like I imagined it, and not, all at the same time. It… confuses me in a way I don’t appreciate,” I groused, turning to glare at the blood sample that was still being refined.

  We had another few minutes to wait before it would be fully reduced to a single drop of blood. It wasn’t quite the same ratio I had used when producing a refined blood sample a single age category or level higher for both Alys and Aesa. I had started with a little more of my blood, just to be sure.

  Even so, I didn’t believe the change would be as significant as I’d observed when I ran their blood through the process. The power within my blood was condensing and improving in potency, yes, but there had yet to be even a hint of that same change in underlying quality.

  Then again, despite all the similarities between the growth of fae and dragons, the underlying principles of our existence were different. We both strengthened with age, true, and by feeding — dragons on mana-rich materials, fae on Names and Stories. Yet there was no such thing as ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ fae. The only divide was between Nobles and commoners, and that came down to the dilution of blood through the inclusion of mortal bloodlines.

  Which meant I didn’t have a higher level of existence to aspire to.

  Though, from a purely technical standpoint, I should have. Even the Seasons’ level was supposedly within reach of the most ambitious and powerful Courtiers. The four Seasons themselves had simply disproved this assumption time and again by viciously thwarting anyone who made an attempt to grasp at their power.

  But… what were the four Courts, if not Stories codified and burned into the very fabric of existence? And had not the Seasons bound the Name of each and every one of their followers to their own crowns, cutting apart the entire population of fae into four origins? It was an idle thought, but if I could somehow copy their actions, I could propel myself to something approaching their level, even at my age.

  Theoretically, of course. In actuality, such a thing was impossible.

  By contrast, even if someone paved the way and crowned Alys the Queen of All Dragons that very minute, she would not gain the fear and respect such standing would inspire in a fae. So, I had no reason to complain or feel bitter about the ‘shortcut’ available to dragons, and which I hoped to help Alys’ draconic family members exploit to the fullest.

  I had a shortcut of my own. I simply couldn’t make use of it.

  With an effort, I shook off these thoughts and refocused on the task at hand. The blood had finished reducing during my musings. I now knew exactly what it was like to run my blood through the beetle flame’s full purification process. For a moment, I even contemplated swallowing the drop of blood that was left behind.

  It was an interesting prospect, especially considering the blood’s appearance. It reminded me less of a drop of blood, and more of a precious gem that twinkled under the lights of my laboratory in red and purple hues. The shift happened in shades of black that unified both colors, where the dark red of blood transitioned into the dark purple of poison.

  And it was, undoubtedly, poison. I had been forced to run the air purification spell at full strength around the beaker when my blood started to get refined, and poisonous fumes of intensifying strength began wafting out of it. I was fairly sure they wouldn’t kill either of my draconic family members outright, but I didn’t want to risk it. I even handed out some antidotes, just in case.

  I pushed aside the impulse to drink the refined drop, strongly suspecting that it would only be useful in the sense of strengthening the poison imbued within my blood. Then I lifted my head and saw Alys.

  My eyes widened. As if sensing that, my dragoness jumped and looked at me, mild panic and shame raging over her expression.

  “Alys?”

  “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  She had been staring at the drop of my blood with the sort of ravenous hunger and desire she reserved for the choicest of meals, or a glass of torture juice after a long, tiring day of work.

  “I don’t mind,” I assured her. “We’ll talk about it later.” I decided to put away the drop of my refined blood for now, ignoring the curious look Grandmother had been shooting us all the while. “Now, I need to test an idea I had.”

  “The one that necessitated experimenting with your blood, and which you still refuse to share with us?” Grandmother asked drily.

  I shot her a grin. “Exactly.”

  She huffed, but let me work.

  Steeling myself, I cut my palm over a fresh beaker, paying no heed to the loud gulp that came from Alys’ direction. Once the beaker was full to my specifications, I took out another of the flowers, looked at it awkwardly, and then shrugged as I simply stuffed it into my blood.

  If one had no idea what one was doing, the good old human method of ‘try things until something works’ would have to do.

  Thankfully, the moment I placed the beaker within the beetle’s flames, I immediately sensed a difference.

  Unlike before, there was now a foreign element. An element that was latching onto the power in my blood, bonding with it to intensify its properties several times over. The beetle flame fed this reaction eagerly. I watched, curiosity and wonder battling with worry inside my chest as perspiration started to bead on my forehead once again.

  The fever building up inside my very blood was well worth it to witness the process of the flowers’ effect meeting the beetle’s flames. This time, instead of canceling each other out, they were… synergizing.

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