Free Silverblind (Ironskin) by Tina Connolly

afford to pay. But how could she make those with control over the eggs see that? She cupped the precious egg in her shirt, keeping it warm. “Do you know—is any other part of the wyvern poisonous to fey? The outside of the egg?”
    Tam shook his head. “We sacrificed some eggs to studies. The anti-fey substance in the white and yolk increases in concentration right up to the moment of the wyvern’s hatching. So you don’t get any benefits by disturbing its birth. What’s left inside the eggshell as the wyvern steps out of it is the purest stuff there is. And yes, the only anti-fey substance appears to be the leftover albumen.”
    “What do you do with the wyverns afterward?” Dorie said.
    “Sell them,” Tam said, and his face darkened with conflict again. “They’ve never known anything but captivity, you know. If we can keep them alive past the first few days—which doesn’t always happen; they’re so stubborn and wary—then they go to zoos, mostly.”
    “And then no more eggs,” said Dorie.
    “They’ve never been bred in captivity, no,” agreed Tam. “Look, I promise you it’ll get a fair shake, though. More chance than if you sell it to some rich so-and-so who just wants to say he’s got one and doesn’t even know what to do when it hatches.”
    As usual, the inequity of everything stopped her words, dammed up her thoughts. She came up against the stupidity of the world and it was like someone had bashed her head into a wall. How could you think what to do in response to everything being unfair? Where did you start?
    And why did it have to be Tam here, now, when she was failing to make things right in the world, as she had always told him so proudly she would do? She was out of things to say, which left her with wanting to shake his shoulders and say who she really was, and ask him if he still hated her. He couldn’t, could he? Oh, but the time in the forest had changed him. His wild eyes, his wary expression. The damage had been started by the fey who impersonated his father, and continued by the cousin who sold him off because she thought it was the only way to fully learn about her fey side. Well, she’d learned all right. Betrayal on betrayal.
    “Tam,” she started, and then she heard how soft and beseeching and stupidly girly that sounded, and she quickly stood, arranging herself in the most manly way she could think of. “I’ll think about your offer,” she said gruffly. She eased the egg back into her belly as if tucking it back into that hidden pouch.
    Tam jumped to his feet, too. “Let me give you my card,” he said. “I know I have one somewhere.” He patted his pockets. “Oh bother, is there a place I can ring you?”
    Reluctantly she gave him her landlady’s number and told him to leave the message in care of Jack. At the sight of the two of them standing, the wyvern grew suspicious again. Although Tam started his whistle, the wyvern tilted its head upward, opened its throat to let out the strange ululating cry that would call back its mate.
    “You’d better go,” said Dorie. “One will nest and the other fight. You won’t like that.”
    “You’re right,” Tam agreed ruefully. “Can we offer you a lift back to the city?”
    “We?” said Dorie, dusting off and looking back at the nest. She was watching the wyvern—graceful, proud, silver—and then the next moment she wasn’t. It was falling to the ground, a dart protruding from its scaled chest.
    A woman about their age strode into the clearing. She was tall and broad-shouldered, scrubbed and fresh-faced, and was dressed in a trim jacket and slacks that appeared both expensive and tailor-made for clambering around the forest. A whiff of clean soap came drifting into the forest behind her.
    “What was that?” Dorie spluttered.
    “Tranquilizer dart. It was going to attack you,” the woman said calmly. Her voice was crisp and educated, no nonsense. She reminded Dorie of the girls in the sporty clique in