Page 19

When Silas accepted the job at Emberwind Academy, he had known he was signing up for extraordinary sights. He had known his classroom would be full of bangs and spells gone wrong, had expected that the unusual would become his usual. And already in his few months of teaching, he had seen so much: students levitating other students, textbooks turned into frogs and back again, his desk turned to a violent shade of purple by a charm gone sideways.

But never, not during a single lesson, had he had a pint-size dragon fly at his face.

It was the beating wings he was unprepared for; he’d known dragons had teeth and talons, but it was the wings that surprised him as the dragon landed on his chest, hissing and growling as it snapped its jaw toward Silas’s chin. He stumbled backward, holding up his arms, doing his best to fend off the creature, while all around him, chaos erupted.

People were sprinting for the door, and with the pub so packed, this meant quite a lot of bumping into one another and general disorder as everyone hurried to get out of the dragon’s path. And at first, Silas didn’t understand. Sure, the dragon was currently trying to attack his face, but its attention was solely on him.

It wasn’t until Silas saw the flare of an ember at the back of the dragon’s throat that he realized the real reason everyone was vacating the pub.

“Get down!” Margaret was shouting, grabbing at the air near Silas, clearly trying to snatch the dragon midflight. But the dragon was too fast, and it was only by a miracle that Silas was able to drop down and get out of the crosshairs of the dragon’s first fireball. It streaked past his face, slammed into the wood beams behind Silas just as the majority of the crowd made it out of the pub. The dragon, undeterred by its miss, refocused on Silas, heating another fireball that it promptly blew in his direction.

Again, he ducked, and the fire hit the window now, sending glass flying. Silas expected to feel the shards fly into him, but Liza was there with her wand, immobilizing the bits of window while Margaret continued her mad dash after the dragon—who was, once again, hot on Silas’s tail.

“What should I do?” Silas called to Margaret, weaving around the chairs in the room while the dragon flew doggedly after him. “Why’s it so upset? Actually no, let’s stay focused on the first question—what should I do?”

Margaret’s head whipped from side to side as she seemed to take in the potential destruction that the dragon could wreak in her pub. Liza was still dealing with the glass, and Silas thought of what Mr. Weatherby had said about repairs being tricky. She couldn’t hope to repair the glass in this madness, so instead, she was just trying to collect it into a bucket she must’ve summoned out of the closet, and she was guiding each shard into it while Margaret and Silas dealt with the dragon—the dragon that, apparently, was hell-bent on roasting Silas and was named, of all things, Bernie.

“She doesn’t mean it!” Margaret said, panting as she made another grab for Bernie’s middle. “She’s normally very tame.”

Silas wondered if this was a matter of magical opinion. Were all dragons this easily aggravated? And what, exactly, had he done to piss her off in the first place?

“Mags!” Liza called. “Get her outside or she’ll destroy the place. Hurry!”

“Shit,” Margaret cursed, but Silas took that as an agreement with Liza’s plan and bolted for the door.

The crowd had mostly fled by the time Silas hurtled his way through the door and out of the Toasty Owl; there were only a handful of onlookers to watch the dragon flash out into the night. He’d thought that, maybe, getting away from the pub would calm her down, but instead, she attempted to pelt him with even more fireballs—one of which landed on the sign that bore the name The Toasty Owl, setting it ablaze.

Liza was there in a flash, dousing it with water from her wand, but Silas felt his heart twist when he saw Margaret’s face at the sight of the burning sign. The look of horror there froze him in place, and he was standing still when Bernie chose that moment to dive down toward him, fangs bared and fire ready in her cheeks.

“Bernie, no!”

The dragon came to an abrupt stop right in front of Silas’s face, so close that he saw her tiny, glittering eyes fixed on him. There was fury there, but it was yanked to a halt by Margaret’s voice. The tone had changed from just before, and the creature knew it, too. Something about the intensity had stopped the attack . . . or maybe there was magic at work here that Silas didn’t comprehend.

“Back inside, Bernie,” Margaret said, quietly now, but with the same force and power as before. The dragon’s wings beat for a moment as it hovered in front of him, and then it gave a huff before turning and flying back into the pub through the open space where the window had been. Silas watched the creature go, then let his eyes sweep over the front of the pub. The sign was charred beyond recognition, swinging mournfully on hinges that creaked as the wind swept it forward and backward.

And then he saw her.

She was looking up at the sign as if her heart had snapped in two. There was a shine to her eyes that told Silas that she was either already crying or about to start. He started toward her, but Liza was there first with her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“We’ll get it back to the way it was,” she said. “I can look for the spell tomorrow in my books. Something to restore the wood. I just—”

Margaret shook her head, cutting Liza off. She looked at her friend, and then her eyes found Silas. The sadness there—sadness he had caused—threatened to undo him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “She really isn’t normally like this.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” Silas said, moving toward her. “I don’t know what I did—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Margaret said, her voice shaking slightly. As if even she didn’t believe that.

“I can help,” Silas said quickly. “I can fix this.”

But she shook her head. “Please, don’t. I appreciate it, but . . .”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but Silas could fill in the blanks. He had done enough.

“Mags,” Liza said from behind them, wincing at the crashes now echoing from inside. “Bernie’s—”

“I know,” Margaret said, walking back toward the door before looking over her shoulder. She looked as though she wanted to say something else, but she must’ve decided better. She simply shook her head one last time before turning away and heading into the pub after Liza.