Whatever was outside was red, with scales, but it was literally too big for Gray to confirm it was a dragon. He’d grown up hearing tales about sea monsters, kraken, and carnivorous whales, but he’d never really believed any of them. He didn’t think anything that big could actually exist. Now, he was getting a lesson.

  Kraken may or may not existed, but he could confirm there was at least one dragon in the world.

  He did see a dragon though—he saw Settie, in her true form, for the first time. She was ten feet long, black, and slender, with a long reptilian face. Her wings were like shadows on her back. She struck the monster, clawing through a part of the thing, and then breathing fire inside the wound.

  There was more scrambling, and Yellow was whining, barking, whimpering. The poor dog didn’t want Gray at the window. He wanted the human to be with him in the far corner, away from the battle outside.

  Gray, though, couldn’t get enough of watching Settie fly through the air, her long tail slashing like a shark aimed at prey.

  She slammed into the side of the house, breaking another window. “Precious Gray, I am need of some mana. I can take it, but it won’t be pleasant. I am asking for your permission.”

  “Take it!” There was no time to ask what that meant.

  “Come to me! Quickly!”

  Gray ran to her. Her black scaled hand, as big as his head, came through, grabbing his arm. Her eyes glowed red. “So much mana is in you. All that time and expense was well worth it.”

  He felt the pain in him, deep in his belly, and he wondered if she was going to rip him apart getting at his core. Yellow wisps of light left his stomach and were immediately sucked into the giant dragon.

  “Thank you.” Settie was gone in a flash.

  Gray was on the floor, feeling like he’d stabbed himself in the belly with a rusty dagger. At the same time, he felt drained, which didn’t feel fair. He’d only just started to feel strong again. He looked down and saw he’d cut his hand on some broken glass on the floor. Dammit.

  A gush of flames lit up the windows. Then, the roars grew weaker until there was the final death rattle of some giant beast breathing its last.

  Gray managed to get to his feet, finding a rag to bind his hand. Yet, the real issue was the pain and exhaustion. He wanted to sleep for a week now. Yet, he was no stranger to fatigue. He could fight through it.

  Outside, all he could see was fog…no, not fog, steam, rising up from the corpse, and the whole air filled with a terrible, terrible stench. Gray was already sweating, but now, it felt like he was back in Cradleport, on a humid summer day.

  Gray was forced to pinch his nostrils closed. That stink was worse than the Arena latrines after a bad batch of smack gravy and too much beer. Even when the thing was gone, turned to steam, the odor lingered.

  Gray went to the corner, picked up Yellow, and buried his nose into the dog’s fur. Smelling the puppy was better than smelling the corpse of that Pride Serpent.

  Settie finally returned with a tray of food, water, but no more of the ironbite. She was back to being human, which was somehow unsettling.

  She set the tray down. “You guessed correctly. We are on the wrong side of the wall. I can’t be seen, and I can’t have you be seen. Not yet. Soon, we’ll go to the market. Your reaction to the ironbite confirms you don’t have a gluttony resonance. I wonder, precious Gray, which instinct magic will fill your core.”

  Gray nodded. “I felt the ironbite. Are you sure it didn’t do anything?”

  “Precious little,” she confirmed. “Even without a gluttony resonance, it should’ve made your core more open to absorbing mana slowly, from the world around us.”

  He was too tired to ask any more questions.

  Then she saw his hand. “It is a quite the battle wound.” A smile pulled at her lips.

  “It might be fatal,” he agreed. “I’m more worried, however, about my core. Did you take too much? I feel so hollow.”

  Settie helped him to the bed. “I’ll bandage your hand for now. Tomorrow, I’ll heal you. Tonight, we’ll nurse your core. If only we knew which instinct magic you resonated with, then we could replenish you. I’m sorry, the Pride Serpent was unexpected. I’ve never seen a demon that big on the streets. Ever. I will have to refine the warding, but I promise to keep you safe.”

  “Why pick this side of the wall?” Gray asked. “Never mind. You told me. We can’t be seen. Because the kills squads would kill us. So we hide, we train, and there will be the Testing. I hope at some point, we’ll go to the marketplace, so you can buy me frycake. If there’s no frycake in the Belly of the World, I want to go home.”

  Settie didn’t say another word. She washed his hand, dried it, and then the strangest thing happened. She got onto the bed with him and pulled him close.

  He ended up rest his head on her chest, feeling her breath. He found himself matching her breath with his, and slowly, he started to feel better. Her smell had become so comfortable, so familiar. It promised magic and adventure.

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  He felt her breast under his chin. While she was slender, she was still a woman, with curves and softness.

  He was torn between feeling aroused and relaxed. More than that, their embrace was helping him fill his core.

  She felt it too. “Perhaps you have a lust resonance, Grayson Fade. Are you feeling…stiff?”

  He chuckled. “No. I’m more relaxed than anything, though you are beautiful, Settie. Or should I call you captain?”

  “Settie is fine. Your prophecy has come true. You told I would want you to call me Settie, and I do.” She sighed.

  Still matching her breath, he sighed with her. “You smell so good. Do all dragons smell as good?”

  “Not all,” she said softly. “And if only beauty mattered, my life would’ve been very different. I used it as a weapon, for a while. The world adores a beautiful woman like it loves a rich man. Sleep, precious Gray.”

  He felt himself getting a little stronger. The pain was gone, and he had a warm feeling in his belly. “Why is this filling my core?”

  The captain was quiet for a long time. When she did speak, she sounded so sad. “Because our souls are aligned, Greyson Fade. If I were a different person, I would welcome the bond. But I’m not. It is dangerous. We shall be together for a time, and then, we shall part, stronger, better, after I get what I want. What do you want, Gray?”

  He knew but couldn’t answer. He was already asleep.

  *

  Captain Settie did heal his hand, but that was the least of his worries. He woke up with a strong heart, but a weak core. She’d taken too much mana, and his core wasn’t replenishing as quickly as it should’ve been, even after their time on the bed together.

  Settie wanted him to rest, but Gray wasn’t going to let himself waste away in his room. He’d spent his life struggling with exhaustion because of his bad heart, so it was easy to push himself. Now that he had the opportunity to get strong, he wasn’t going to waste it by lying around in bed. He wanted to run, to build his muscles, to practice his forms, not with the stick, but with the short sword.

  He spent a week striving to improve himself, and when he wasn’t working his body, he worked at filling his drained core. That meant eating more and more of the ironbite. For those first couple of days, he could only eat one piece, about a quarter of the muffin. But then he tried two, one in the morning and one at night. The breakfast bite wasn’t so bad, but he felt it in his stomach the entire day. At night, the second bite felt like he as cramming cotton into his mouth. When he finally was able to swallow it, he had to lie down, focusing on his breath, and think only of Oma’s shack in the place of water and stars.

  At night, Settie would lie with him in bed, cradling him, as they both breathed. That was when his core absorbed the mana the fastest but it was still too slow. During those first few nights, he didn’t see the yellow light, passing between them. But soon, it was like both were glowing, brightening as they breathed on the bed, with the yellow dog sitting with him. It was as if the puppy enjoyed the closeness of their connection.

  Settie finally broke after a week of their routine. “I’m sorry, Gray. I was frightened. I took too much. If I damaged you, you won’t survive the Testing.”

  “And then all that time and expense will have been for nothing,” he murmured. He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t more worried. He felt so safe in her arms, so protected. He’d felt something similar with Old Agatha, when she’d hold him on days when he’d been too sick to get out of bed. This, though, with Settie was more adult, more intimate.

  “We have to fill your core,” she said finally. “Once we fill your core, I am confident that you will absorb mana at a more reasonable rate. Tomorrow, we’ll go into town. There are a few places we can go to see which kind of mana you resonate with.”

  “Can someone have more than one resonance?” he asked.

  “It is rare, but not unheard of. Most are happy to only have the one magic, and it is enough for them. There are some who have two or three, and they are blessed. But then, once in every generation, there is someone born who has access to all of the seven instincts. Such power is a blessing, certainly, but also a curse.”

  “Why a curse?” Gray murmured.

  “Because of pride,” she said simply. “Because when you are that powerful, and when part of your magic is fueled by pride, you can become blinded. You can lose your way, and then, terrible things can happen that you can try and laugh off, but no. The pain…the murder…the betrayal reveal the truth.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “That even with all the magic in the world, we’re still not gods. Our imperfections become tragedies.”

  Gray laughed, on the very edge of sleep. “You are eloquent, Captain Settie. Perhaps instead of living on the edge of hell and recruiting lost boys from faraway cities, you should write a book.”

  Settie laughed unexpectedly.

  Yellow barked happily, as if to echo her.

  “Why name your dog Yellow?” Gray asked.

  “It’s not my dog. He was just here, when I moved back here. His fur is yellow. It is not that difficult. I might be eloquent, but I’m not all that imaginative, so no book writing for me.”

  Gray wondered at what she said. She’d moved back to the wrong side of the wall? How old was she? And when was the wall created? There were so many questions and so much to learn.

  A trip to the marketplace would prove, no doubt, to be instructive. They wouldn’t be going until the evening, and so Gray woke up and went for a run.

  Settie and Yellow ran with him.

  Instead of doing his normal circuit around the block, he went straight, away from the wall, and deeper into the ruined city. Above it all was that massive tower, rising up above the wall in the distance. He thought there might be more than one tower but they were too far away to see.

  The dog didn’t follow, but stopped at the intersection, barking at him. It was clear that Yellow would not be following them but was still very worried.

  Settie charged ahead, grabbed Gray, and wheeled him around.

  “No,” she said simply.

  Gray winced at a stitch in his side. “I don’t understand your ‘no.’”

  She wiped sweat from her brow. “You want to see the Weeping Well. Perhaps I will show you, in time, but you are weak, and it is too far to run. Besides, your core is still damaged. Let’s fix that before we go searching for demons.” She paused. “And there is the Pride Serpent to consider. If we encountered another one, we’d both die. I can’t die yet. I have too much to do.”

  “Your secret plan must be very important,” Gray said.

  She nodded.

  He pointed. “Tell me about that tower.”

  Her eyes flashed red. Then they mellowed back to brown. “That is a question masked as a statement.”

  He shrugged but didn’t say a word.

  “Seven towers sealed the Weeping Well closed. That is the Lust Tower, the closest one to us in Lust City. On clear days, Gluttony Tower is also visible. The others are too far away.”

  “Why isn’t there a tower closer to us?” he asked.

  She waved a finger. “See? One question leads to a thousand. We’re running, not talking. Later tonight, I’ll show you what happened to the Wrath Tower in what is now called Pity City.”

  They turned and ran back. Yellow barked happily when they returned to their neighborhood.

  Gray didn’t like having to wait to see the Weeping Well. At least that evening, he’d get to see his first look at the civilized side of the wall, where it was safe.

  But a marketplace, in a big city, was not necessarily any safer than a demon invested ghost town caught between an impossible wall and the gateway to hell.