Silverblind (Ironskin) by Tina Connolly Read Free Book Online Page B

reason everyone was paying so darn well for wyvern eggs, beside their recently discovered value. Wyverns were cranky, skittish, and elusive. They were devoted parents and kept a sharp eye on their nests. Dorie really had no idea how anyone had managed to get any eggs at all—it was nearly impossible to get close to the wary animals unless you were fey.
    And Dorie was only half.
    After leaving Malcolm’s, she had hitched out as far as the major country road would take her. Then it was still a good trek up the side road that led into the forest that covered the base of Black Rock Mountain. Thankfully the higher she went, the cooler it became. The mountain was carpeted thickly in evergreens: tall fir and juniper and soft spruce. She had last been out here a year ago, tracking down some feywort for a sick friend in the history department. It was widely known as the best place to find wyverns—generally meaning, the place you most wanted to avoid during hatching season. The nesting wyverns could steam you with pinpoint accuracy—and would.
    She was still in guise as Dorian, as only practice would make that shape perfect. Better to slip up while alone in the wilderness, rather than in the city. She stepped as carefully through the forest as twenty-two years of woodscraft and being half-human could let her, moving from stick to stick with no more sound than a falling leaf. Removing her fey side seven years ago had left her suddenly dependent on ordinary human senses and skills, and, frustrated, she had sharpened those to bring them back as close as she could to half-fey.
    Now, with her fey side filling her bones, she felt bright as light, stunning, invincible. The pine smell filled her nostrils, and she could sense every robin, every sparrow, every tiny goldwing moth for several paces in every direction. It fizzled her head like wine. She had to remember how to let those senses fade out and focus on what was in front of her.
    There was a clear track that the others must have been using—well, perhaps not clear to ordinary eyes, but as clear as a paved highway to Dorie. A flash of silver wing up ahead—she was close. She crouched to wait, to watch. There was a clump of wild sorrel by her feet, and she absent-mindedly plucked a handful of the sour leaves. It was definitely time for second breakfast. She had found the wyvern, but she still needed to find his nest. Silently she moved closer still—
    —and the wyvern, alerted by who knows what, startled just enough to flit several trees farther on. It peered around, head cocked and angling with some sixth sense.
    Damn.
    Dorie sighed and rubbed her forehead. She still hadn’t decided if she could really go through with taking that odious man a live wyvern egg. A live wyvern egg whose contents just happened to be deadly to half of her family tree. But the amount he was paying for one single egg would exactly cover their month’s rent. And that would buy them a whole month, in which Jack might sell some paintings after her gallery opening tonight, or Dorie might find another job with her newfound boyness.
    So, first things first, she had decided. Better see if she could put her money where her mouth was and obtain an egg at all. Decide once the egg was in her grasp what she should do. Maybe there was a third option she hadn’t seen yet. Once she got the egg— if she got the egg.
    But she was pretty sure she could. Especially now that she had her fey talents back.
    Dorie’s half-human, half-fey heritage made for an interesting mix of abilities. It was hard for true fey to hold a human shape for more than a few minutes. That was why, during the Great War two decades ago, they had killed humans with fey-infused shrapnel—then slipped in to reanimate the dead bodies. Most people died from the poisoned shrapnel. The few that hadn’t—the ironskin—often wished they had. Later still the fey had figured out a way to purposefully attach part of themselves to living humans—and take