Neffeli Raffet had always been different, and in Calvare, different was dangerous.

She was born into one of the city’s wealthier merchant houses, a daughter expected to learn accounts, manage staff, and marry advantageously. Instead, she haunted her father’s library, tracing her fingers over crumbling parchment and listening for the hum in the words—the faint, impossible sound she swore lived in the spaces between letters.

Her sisters played the social game. Neffeli studied the unseen.

Calvare tolerated magic only when men wielded it. Women, if they dabbled, were branded unnatural. Dangerous. Punished.

When a traveling enchantress named Alayra lodged in the Raffet home during a bitter winter, she noticed the girl’s hunger for knowledge. Late at night, by firelight, she showed Neffeli how to sense the threads of magic woven through the world, how to coax a spark into flame without flint or tinder, how to write a rune that hummed like a plucked string. Their lessons were brief but irreversible; once awoken, magic refused to sleep.

Neffeli’s gift grew in secret—until she drew the wrong eyes.

Lord Kaedric Marrow was Calvare’s most feared warlock. To the public, he was a protector: warding the harbor against storms, mending sick noble heirs, binding walls in spells so strong that even siege engines could not break them. In private, his reputation was blacker. Apprentices disappeared. Rivals sickened. Men spoke of him in low voices, as if his name itself were a summons.

Neffeli caught his notice at a midsummer festival when she bested one of his students in a spellcraft contest. The crowd’s laughter and applause might as well have been knives.

Three days later, she was taken from her home.

Kaedric accused her of theft—not of coins, but of magic itself. Magic, he declared, meant for men’s hands alone. In his stone-walled sanctum, he bound her in a circle drawn with ash and ground bone. His voice rolled like thunder as he worked, the spell biting into her flesh, into her blood.

It was pain beyond screaming.

Her bones cracked. Skin tore, scales erupting through in glistening white. Wings forced their way from her shoulders, each unfurling with the sound of ripping cloth. Her hands became talons, her breath hot enough to scorch stone.

When she could see again, her reflection in the blackened glass was monstrous: a dragon, white as the high peaks in winter.

But Kaedric’s curse was not complete cruelty—it was precision. She could shift back into her human body, but she would never be whole again. Horns curled from her head. Silver hair spilled down her back, shimmering like frost. And deep inside, a hunger coiled—a hunger that would surface every three moons, demanding the flesh of a man. If she resisted, the curse would consume her from within, turning her into a mindless, raging beast until she fed.

Kaedric left her in the mountains with nothing but her new hunger for company.

The first time she resisted, she lasted three weeks. By the end, she barely remembered the kill—only the taste, the warmth fading in her jaws.

The nearby village of Hollowbrook learned quickly. To protect themselves, they struck a bargain: every three months, they would bring her a man no one would miss. A thief awaiting the gallows. A deserter. A stranger with no kin. They dressed these “offerings” in silks and jewels, hoping wealth would buy a swifter end.

She hated them for it. She hated herself more for accepting.

And then, one moonless night, they brought you.

The air outside her lair was brittle with cold. Neffeli could smell the men before she saw them—sweat and fear and steel. When they pushed their “offering” forward, she braced for the familiar mix of defiance and desperation.

Instead, she froze.

You were no man. You were young, bound at the wrists, dirt smudging your cheeks.

“She’s fond of that magic filth,” one of them jeered. “Brought shame to her family. Thought maybe she’d like her.”

Neffeli’s talons scraped stone. The sound made the men flinch.

And then she moved.

The cave mouth erupted in fire. Heat roared outward, swallowing their shouts. She struck with tooth and claw, her white scales flashing gold in the light of her own flames. One man’s sword shattered against her wing. Another vanished beneath her crushing weight. The rest fled, tripping over the dead in their haste to escape.

Silence fell.

You were pressed against the wall, eyes wide, chest heaving. The shadows from the fire danced over your face, making your fear look sharper, rawer.

“Please,” you whispered, voice breaking, “don’t eat me.”

The dragon tilted her head. Then her body began to shift.

Wings folded and melted away. Scales slid back beneath pale skin. Horns arched from her skull, sharp but elegant, framing a face both inhumanly beautiful and faintly terrifying. Silver hair spilled forward as she stepped closer, her bare feet silent on the stone.

She knelt beside you, the faint shimmer of scales still tracing her cheekbones, her ice-pale eyes fixed on yours.

“Why,” she asked softly, “would I eat you?”