7. Eradin
CHAPTER SEVEN
ERADIN
Apatrolman riding an elkbire burst from the woods, galloping down a narrow game trail. At least two times as tall as me, the creature had a dusky blue hide, six-point antlers that could rip through a belly with a jerk of its head, and fangs visible when it opened its mouth to taste the air.
It slowed, its head swaying one way. The other.
Would it pick up my scent?
The rider’s magically enhanced sword could sever a head with one swipe. Bells hung from his stirrup straps, a thin bright jingle meant to sound like safety but instead reminding you that you might one day be hunted.
The wind shifted, coming from behind me, and the elkbire’s nostrils flared. Its head swung toward my hiding spot.
I cowered, bile roaring up my throat.
“Caught something good, Kess?” the patrolman asked, tightening his grip on his sword.
The creature pawed the ground and snorted.
While the patrolman scanned the area, I counted to a hundred and didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Mud under my throat from the stream still held its rot-smell, and it was all I could do not to sneeze it away.
The wild dragon swooped overhead, its shadow slanting through the canopy, across the ground in front of the elkbire.
The rider looked up.
“Dragon,” he cried. “A wild one. Don’t see those often.” He yanked on the elkbire’s reins and kicked it into a run, blasting magic at the dragon who darted to the side and swooped toward the north.
The moment the patrol was out of view, I tightened my grip on my herb bag and scrambled to my feet.
I ran with branches whipping my face, my boots slipping, and my breath raw in the back of my throat.
I kept going until my legs threatened to give way and my heart was on fire.
I didn’t look back.
Sweaty, my leg muscles burning, and out of breath, I slid through the servants’ gate as the bell signaled the end of my break. One of the stable hands frowned at the mud on my tunic, but he looked away like he hadn’t seen a thing.
Overseer Nuant, standing near the gate, did not look away. His eyes tracked me across the yard before he turned and strode inside the aerie.
My belly dropped. That look meant he was keeping score.
At mid-afternoon, I took a short break from hauling a cart loaded with dragon shit and slipped around to the back of the aerie where staff sometimes gathered.
Three stable hands had claimed the crates near the water barrel.
The smell of leather oil mixed with dragon dung, familiar enough I barely noticed it anymore.
I collapsed onto an empty crate and flexed my hands. My fingers had gone stiff from gripping the cart handles.
Cree glanced up from where she sat whittling a scrap of wood. She grabbed the dipper from the water bucket and held it out to me.
I took it and drank, the water lukewarm but refreshing. “Thanks.”
“You look like you ran across the entire mountain range.”
“Just the interesting parts.”
Machas sat on the crate across from me, his weathered face tilted toward the sun. Two fingers on his left hand ended at the knuckle, an old injury he never talked about.
“The grain lords were talking about the Scorching,” he said. “They say the Oracle’s waking.”
“I heard commons could compete if we prove ourselves in the entrance trials,” I said.
Jessith grunted beside me. “You mean the widow maker.”
Machas met my eyes. “Commons who enter are given old dragons to ride, ones retired from service. They’re brittle-boned, half-blind, and traumatized. No good odds in that.”
“The commons trials are bad,” Jessith said. “Most don’t make it past the first, let alone the second test. And then, you’ve still got to survive the Scorching.”
“My father spoke of the Scorching once.” Machas’s voice dropped to a secretive hush. “Three applied. Two died in the entrance trials. Orla made it through and got into the race itself. She didn’t win, of course.”
Silence settled over the group.
“My father actually knew her,” he said. “Before Orla left, she told him, the wind doesn’t care if you’re scared.”
Jessith frowned. “What does that mean?”
Machas’s sigh rang out. “The mountain has no ears for a trembling heart, and the stone only knows the weight of your boots, not the panic in your soul.”
Cree’s knife stilled on the wood. “No one knows what happened to her. She made it through the first two parts of the race, then vanished. They said her dragon threw her. Or she fled.”
“They say a lot when they want you to stop asking,” Machas said. “There’s no fleeing once you’re inside. The magic won’t let you leave. It’s finish or die.”
“But the prize.” Jessith stretched his legs out and flexed his ankles. “One wish, granted by the Oracle herself. Anything your heart desires.”
“My mum says it’s not that simple.” Cree kept shaving thin curls from the wood. “The wish has to be in harmony with the realm, whatever that means.”
My throat dried to brittle bone. “But if the wish is worthy, it’s granted?”
Cree met my eyes. “That’s what they say. But worthy of whom?”
Machas glanced around and leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“My father worked the stables during the last race. Said he’d never seen anything like King Jaris.
The man lit up the aerie just by walking through it.
The dragons knew it too. They went quiet when he passed, and wild ones circled overhead for three days before the race. Looking for him, my father said.”
He paused. “And then he died in the second trial. That’s what they said, anyway.”
Someone on my right cleared their throat.
We all jumped, Jessith falling off his crate, landing hard on the ground.
A senior groom stood at the end of the building, his arms folded across his chest, tapping the toe of his boot on the ground. “Break’s over. Back to work.”
The group scattered.
Back in the tack room, I worked on harnesses, progressing through a row that needed conditioning before the next exhibition.
Overseer Nuant shoved the door open hard enough it banged against the wall.
I kept my eyes on my task.
He stomped across the floor, stopping in front of where I sat.
“A noble complained about dust on a saddle,” he barked.
I said nothing. What could I say?
“Someone needs to bleed for it, and it won’t be me.” He leaned in and sniffed. “You’ve got wild stink on you. It makes the dragons nervous.”
Fear bolted down my spine. Could he smell the scale? I should’ve left it where it fell.
He had to be lying. The dragons settled faster under my hands than anyone else’s, and he knew it.
“Get to the training ring,” he said. “There’s dragon blood in the sand from this morning’s demonstrations. Scoop it up before the nobles see it. Use your hands if you have to.”
“There are shovels—”
“Are you talking back to me?”
I set the harness on the bench and stood, keeping my gaze on the floor. “No, Overseer.”
I eased around him and grabbed a bucket and wooden scoop from the supply room and hurried to the training ring. A motto had been carved above the entrance: WASTE IS THEFT. It faced Shaleside, not the castle. I tried not to think about what they counted as waste.
Spectators still lingered in the viewing boxes, nobles sipping wine and eating in the blissful shade. Talking in clusters of silk and sparkling jewels.
A dragon’s mouth had bled during a bonding exercise this morning, its tongue bitten when the rider jerked the reins. The blood had soaked into the sand in a dark patch near the center of the ring.
I knelt and started scooping.
The blood had saturated deep. The wooden scoop scraped against wet clumps as I lifted them into the bucket. My knees pressed into the damp sand, and cold seeped through my pants, making me shiver despite the heat.
Lords and ladies in the viewing boxes pointed and whispered. A few laughed, the sound carrying across the ring.
The scoop’s lip bit my palm. A grain worked under my nail and stayed. Fine. Let it live there.
A noblewoman laughed in the viewing box above me, the shrill sound grating across my skin.
I wanted to throw the scoop at her. Wanted to stand up and scream that they were the ones playing in filth, not me. Their pretty dragons were dying inside their own skins and nobody cared as long as they went down with shiny scales.
I lifted another clump of blood-soaked sand and dropped it into the bucket, reminding myself of who I was. Who I must be always be.
Small, useful, and invisible. The only way to survive.
Movement in my peripheral vision made me glance up.
Prince Fenian stood at the arena’s edge, half in shadow. Just standing there. Watching me. His face held the same expression it had after I’d sassed him about the water buckets.
My cheeks heated. I dragged my gaze back to my task.
A lord leading a dragon strolled past me, staring down his nose. Smirking. He came to a stop, the dragon halting beside him.
I kept scooping, my body aflame. When I reached forward to shovel up more bloody sand, the lord stepped toward me.
His boot dropped down on my hand.
I gasped and tried to tug my hand from beneath his boot while his snicker rang out, echoed by those in the stands who were savoring the latest “demonstration”.
A growl shot across the arena.
The lord’s head jerked up, and he peered around, as puzzled as me.
Wind burst across the arena, hitting the man, sending him flying.
I was probably the only one who saw the flick of Prince Fenian’s fingers—blue-tinged with magic.
The lord landed hard in the sand, a bellow shooting up his throat. He sprang to his feet, his face the color of chalk, and called to his dragon. The beast lumbered over to him and with a glare sent my way, the lord led the beast from the arena.
Prince Fenian had…
No, I must be mistaken.
I made myself get back to work, scooping bloody sand, on display in a chastised, silent arena.
When I looked up again, Prince Fenian was gone.
The scale in my pocket had been burning against my thigh since I’d placed it there.
Not hot enough to hurt. Just alive in a way a shed scale shouldn’t be. Every time I bent to lift a harness or haul a water bucket, heat throbbed against my leg.
What if the magic radiating from it could be sensed by the elite, the way Aristus had scented the wild dragon on me before? I should’ve buried it in the forest or left it where it fell. But the thought of discarding it made my chest ache, so I kept it, stupid and dangerous as that was.
I hung another harness on a peg for the late afternoon demonstration and continued working, making sure all the tack had been cleaned before the afternoon demonstrations.
The Bond of Trust began once the elites had finished their lunch. Lady riders paraded their dragons in a circle, each one performing choreographed postures and poses.
The crowd applauded.
Lady Severine swept past with Heartsbrim, the ruby dragon’s scales winking in the light.
She kissed the dragon’s muzzle for the nobles, cooing about loyalty and trust. Heartsbrim’s eyes had dulled to brittle slate, so unlike the wild dragon’s sharp, intelligent gaze.
This was the difference between a creature that had choice and one that had forgotten it could question anything.
A dragon moaned, and a handler twisted a harness tight enough to pinch the scales. The creature’s throat worked, and its tail twitched.
I glared but turned away before anyone could see how much I hated watching things like this happen.
Prince Fenian stood apart from the other riders, his arms linked across his chest, watching everything.
Aristus lay on the sand not far behind him, unharnessed.
Fenian’s spine tightened, and he strode over to speak in a low tone to the handler, who flushed and loosened his hold on the harness.
The prince strode back to stand beside Aristus, who lowered his head for jaw rubs.
Aristus scented the air and turned his head toward where I stood among the other servants. His nostrils flared. His pupils widened.
My heart lurched. The scale. He could smell it or sense it—whatever dragons did when they detected wild magic. I pressed my hand against my pocket, trying to smother the warmth bleeding through the fabric.
This was what I’d been afraid of. If Aristus could sense it, so could others.
Fenian’s gaze followed his dragon’s and reached me, holding too long. His lips thinned. But he looked away, his face settling back into bored neutrality.
When the demonstration ended, nobles began filing toward the lushest part of the fortress. They’d bathe, rest, then dress for the upcoming dinner and ball.
I helped clean up and was finally dismissed for the day. I hurried away from the fortress, taking the path with the others toward Shaleside.
A bonewailer’s keen echoed from another ridge, and I paused, everyone else shuffling past me.
The priestesses said the wail kept wildness at bay. I’d learned it kept people home, their heads down, and their curtains closed after dark.
My jaw clicked shut. Another hunt?
I slid my hand into my pocket and brushed my fingers across the wild dragon’s scale.
Hunger spiked through my mind, and I sensed the dragon hadn’t eaten properly since being injured. The hunger was followed by a need to be somewhere safe, a place surrounded by stone and water.
Turning away from the path, though the others were gone, I pulled the scale from my pocket. In the dying light, it gleamed the color of storm clouds. Of the wild dragon’s hide.
The pull was stronger now. Not a whisper anymore. A shout.
Come. Now.
My fingers closed around it.
Fourteen days until the herbs ran out. Then I’d be back in the forest, stealing what I couldn’t afford, risking a noose for a handful of leaves.
Or I could go where the stone held its breath and discover what it wanted me to see.