Chapter 70: VHAROS’S SCAR

DIANA’S POV

Vharos’s downturn began with sleep.

Too much of it.

Master Clair noticed because Vharos normally woke before Healer Lou entered for the morning examination.

That day he did not.

Healer Lou checked his temperature, breathing, eyes, and pain response. Nothing suggested a sudden medical crisis, but the change in him remained.

Diana arrived after Master Clair requested another controlled observation session.

Raigoro was already there.

Vharos lay with his left wing folded tightly against his body.

Diana took her usual chair.

Master Clair looked at her.

"Baseline?"

She checked the board before answering.

Vharos’s breathing was slower than his recent average, his food intake was poor, and there had been no significant agitation. The dragonstone was mildly warm.

Diana wrote all of it.

Master Clair nodded.

"Good."

When Master Clair first began correcting her observations, that single word would have irritated her.

Now it felt suspiciously valuable.

Healer Lou approached Vharos’s left side.

"I need the wing extended."

At Master Clair’s signal, the keepers moved into position, but Vharos resisted the examination. He lifted his head and shifted one claw, and the keepers immediately stopped rather than force the wing open.

Healer Lou waited for him to settle. Diana watched the keepers do the same. The examination required the wing extended, but that did not mean they would drag it open to get what they needed.

Master Clair allowed Vharos to settle first.

Then the keeper nearest his shoulder touched the old handling mark along the scale line.

Vharos slowly extended the wing.

More than Diana had ever seen inside the cavern.

The black membrane opened across the stone.

Diana stopped writing.

Diana had only ever seen part of the scar before: a broken section near the upper wing, old enough to have healed long before she reached Blackharrow. It had been enough to connect Vharos to the dragon in her memory, but the rest of the injury had remained hidden beneath the folded wing.

Now the full line appeared.

It began near the upper ridge of the wing, cut diagonally through older scales, then divided where the damage crossed the supporting bone.

One section curved inward.

A second jagged line ran lower toward the membrane.

Diana’s breath stopped.

Stone fell.

One strike hit high. Another tore lower through the wing as the black shape folded over her.

Diana saw the memory and the present at the same time. The upper scar and lower break aligned with the exact angle where stone had torn through scale while Vharos covered the child beneath him.

It matched.

Diana stood.

Her board fell from her lap.

Master Clair turned.

"Your Grace?"

The dragonstone burned.

Diana barely felt it.

She walked one step forward.

Master Clair raised his hand.

"Hold."

She stopped.

Raigoro was watching her now, not Vharos.

Diana pointed toward the wing.

Her fingers shook.

Raigoro looked.

"The scar?"

She nodded hard.

Master Clair retrieved her slate from the floor and handed it back.

Diana wrote: I HAD NOT SEEN THE LOWER BREAK.

She drew the shape.

Two lines.

One upper impact.

One lower tear.

Then she wrote: THE STONE HIT TWICE.

Memory answered before she could doubt it.

One strike had made Vharos’s wing drop lower.

The second had torn through as Queen Elara reached for Diana.

Diana pressed one hand against her mouth, though no sound could come.

Raigoro stepped toward her.

Then stopped before crossing Master Clair’s line.

Good.

Diana needed the space.

Healer Lou had not stopped working.

Neither had the keepers.

Vharos still required examination.

That steadied her.

Healer Lou checked the wing joint.

Master Clair recorded Vharos’s behavior.

Diana forced herself to sit.

Her hands still shook.

She wrote the physical reaction down because that was part of the work now.

DRAGONSTONE HOT.

THROAT PRESSURE.

MEMORY RESPONSE AFTER FULL WING EXTENSION.

Then stopped.

She added: SCAR PATTERN MATCHES MEMORY.

Vharos opened one eye while Diana was still staring at the scar.

His head shifted a few inches toward her.

The movement would once have felt like confirmation.

Now Diana forced herself to leave it where it belonged.

VHAROS LOOKED TOWARD ME AFTER I STOOD.

She wrote the line beneath her physical response.

Nothing more.

Master Clair read it and moved on.

The scar did not need Vharos to explain it.

Diana had seen the full pattern with her own eyes.

When Healer Lou finished, Master Clair placed a clean sheet beside Diana’s board.

"Separate what you saw today from what you remembered."

Diana understood.

She wrote slowly.

TODAY:

FULL SCAR VISIBLE.

LOWER BREAK EXTENDS TOWARD MEMBRANE.

TWO DISTINCT OLD IMPACT LINES.

Then:

MEMORY:

SECOND STONE STRUCK LOWER.

WING DROPPED AFTER FIRST IMPACT.

Her chalk paused.

There were other pieces pressing behind those words.

Firelight.

Dust.

A dark shape above her.

Her mother’s sleeve reaching through smoke.

Diana did not put those fragments on the evidence sheet. They were not clear enough to place beside the scar as though the scar had proved all of them.

Master Clair looked at the page.

"What does the scar establish?"

Diana wrote: I REMEMBER SEEING THIS INJURY HAPPEN.

Master Clair left the sentence where she had written it.

"And what does it not establish?"

Diana looked toward Vharos.

WHY HE WAS THERE.

WHO HURT HIM.

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE OR AFTER.

Master Clair nodded.

The list of unknowns no longer felt like failure.

One part of the childhood memory finally had something outside Diana’s own mind to support it.

Master Clair read it when the session ended.

"How confident are you about the second impact?"

Diana understood the distinction. Whether Vharos was the dragon from the chamber was no longer the question.

She wrote: CERTAIN.

Then: THE LOWER BREAK MATCHES THE SECOND STRIKE.

The scar gave Diana one fact she could trust: she remembered seeing that injury happen. Everything around it remained unanswered, including why Vharos had been in Valence and what Odran had done.

One fact was still more than she had possessed yesterday.

The Dragon Healer finished wrapping a protective section around Vharos’s wing joint.

The old dragon lowered his head.

His breathing remained tired.

The lower break had supplied the part of the memory she had been missing: two separate stone impacts.

When the session ended, Raigoro walked with her toward the upper passage without asking a single question. By the first landing, Diana could no longer ignore it.

She stopped and took out her slate.

YOU HAVE QUESTIONS.

"Yes."

She waited.

"I assume you know that."

She did. WHY ARE YOU NOT ASKING?

Raigoro looked back toward the cavern.

"Because you just found the answer to one."

Diana held the slate.

He continued.

"You should be allowed to decide what you do with it before I begin asking for mine."

That was deeply inconvenient because now she had to decide.