pick it up.
It was an illustration from her storybook. The painted Aurora’s finger hovered over the spindle, but the spindle point and her fingertip were already specked with blood.
In fact, the whole painting was a lot redder than Aurora remembered. Red on the spinning wheel, red on the ground, red smeared on her dress.
Aurora yelped and dropped the page. Celestine had added the blood herself. Or the red paint. Aurora hoped it was red paint.
“Blood,” she said. “Look at this. She was obsessed with blood. Was that why she cursed me with the spindle? Did she want some of my blood?”
But why would Celestine want her blood? Why would she get it in such a roundabout way, with a curse, with magic? Why would Celestine hide in the ruins of Alysse’s house and scratch frantic words about burning and blood on the walls?
She must have had plans in Vanhelm. Plans that had gone wrong, plans that had driven her to this.
Aurora traced the words, only her, again and again. “Look at these books. She’s talking about me. She wanted to use me. Burn them all.”
“Burn who all?”
“I don’t know. Everybody.”
“But she cursed you,” Finnegan said. “If she wanted to use you, why would she make you sleep?”
“I don’t know,” she said again. Her thoughts were moving so fast that she felt dizzy. The only her was almost like a scream, words of desperation. “What if I am connected to the dragons waking up? What if that was Celestine?” She was talking faster now, driven on by the writing whirling around her. “What if she was involved in waking up the dragons? What if all she needed was my blood, the blood from the spindle? What if she used my blood to wake them?”
“Aurora.” Finnegan grabbed her arms, holding her steady. “You’re not making sense.”
“Look here,” she said, wrenching herself away and thrusting her hand at the wall. Fire, stone, bone, blood. “She needed blood for something. Her curse took my blood. What if that’s what she wanted it for? To wake the dragons, for some twisted part of her plan? What if that’s why I have a connection to them? And then something went wrong.” Only her. “What if she wanted to control them? But she can’t. Only I can control them.” She swayed, the force of her words hitting her. If she was right, Celestine had created her for destruction. That was why Celestine wanted her by her side.
She was meant to burn.
She stumbled back, and Finnegan caught her with a firm hand in the small of her back. “Rora,” he said softly. “You’re just guessing. You don’t know.”
“No,” she said. “No, I suppose I don’t.” But her blood seemed to burn inside her, telling her that she was right, she was right, this was what Celestine intended, this was why she’d cursed her, why she was watching her. She could hold all that fire in her hand and bend it to her will.
“Note down what she’s written here,” Aurora said eventually. “We need to leave before dark.”
Finnegan did not protest. They searched the rest of the room, and the rooms above, but they found nothing else of interest. No more hints of what Celestine might have planned.
They were about to step back onto the street when a shadow fell over them, heat filling the air. A dragon. The ground shook as it landed.
Aurora hurried to peer through the ruined window. The dragon was directly outside, so close that she could see nothing but the blue scales on its side, shimmering in the sunlight.
Finnegan grabbed her hand, tugging her down out of sight. The dragon shrieked. It beat its wings, crashing against the roof of the museum, and screamed again. The air hissed, and the dragon let out a stream of fire.
The words on the wall still raced through Aurora’s thoughts, burn them and only her, only her, a princess made by Celestine’s will, a princess with magic in her blood, with a connection to Vanhelm, to the dragons. Aurora could not hide from it. There was a dragon, here, outside, now. She had to see what it would do.
She wrenched her hand out of Finnegan’s grasp and darted out of the door before he could stop her. Flames danced across the roof of a building across the street, and the cobbles around the dragon were cracked and black.
The dragon whipped its head around to look at Aurora, and the world seemed to still. She stared straight into those