9. Eradin
CHAPTER NINE
ERADIN
The heat hit before the sun cleared the ridge, mean and thick enough to chew. Iron grit hung in the air, grinding into my skin and clothes before I’d made it halfway up the path to the aerie.
One day left to enter the trial.
I still had the waiver tucked in my pocket, right next to the wild dragon’s scale, but I hadn’t decided what I’d do.
That was a lie. I knew the moment Tolross coughed pink into that cloth. I just hadn’t admitted it yet.
The servants’ hall smelled of old grease and sweaty bodies. Breakfast consisted of thin porridge and a single slice of bread per person, rationed out by a kitchen hand who watched us. They must believe we’d steal extra air.
Cree sat on the bench beside me, her face pinched. “Did you see the new posting?”
“Which one?” There were always new postings. Rules about noise after dark. Reminders that theft meant the cage. Announcements of hunts and ceremonies we’d work to prepare for but never attend.
“Feast Reallocation. Tomorrow.”
I’d seen the posting on my way through the square this morning. The language had been dressed in ceremony and shouted duty, but the message was plain: less food for us, more for them.
I wrapped the slice of bread in a piece of cloth and tucked it into my pocket. Tolross would eat it with his meal tonight.
The rage that lived in my chest stirred, stretching, waking up. This wasn’t just anger anymore, but purpose.
“Another notch,” I muttered and finished my meal fast.
I escaped after the first bell to check the herb verges along the old quarry road meandering down the backside of the mountain.
Wild graymallow sometimes grew there, tucked into crevices where the shale crumbled and water seeped through.
The road curved wide around the quarry’s edge, the drop steep enough you didn’t look down unless you wanted to find your belly in your throat.
I kept to the inside, scanning the rock face for graymallow, and because I was looking off the path, I nearly ran into a woman eight or so years older than me, coming up.
We smacked into each other, and she dropped the cinched tote she was carrying. It fell to the path with a heavy thud, and a few objects inside shifted. Books? I’d swear she carried books.
“Excuse me.” She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and stooped down to collect the bag, hugging it to her chest when she straightened.
Definitely books. I recognized the shape.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you,” I said.
“No problem.” She gave me a sweet smile before she continued up the path toward the fortress.
As she rounded the bend, a shadow crossed overhead.
The wild dragon circled, its stone-gray and purple scales catching the light. The pale stripe along its snout stood out like a scar.
It had found me. Or I’d found it. The distinction didn’t matter. Everything inside me answered its call, a pull deep in my spine.
The dragon banked, dropping lower, its wings spreading wide. It made a sound, low and rumbling, not quite a growl.
Hoofbeats rang out behind me, and I reeled back, impacting with the stone wall.
An elkbire patrol burst around the curve, the lead rider’s hand already raised. A flare-bolt launched from his palm, arcing toward the dragon.
The wild dragon veered hard, its wings snapping.
Something fell from its grasp, tumbling down.
A talon shard, black and curved, hit the road ahead of me and skittered sideways, falling into the ditch.
The vision slammed into me.
Stone hollow. High ceiling. Damp air tasting of minerals and rain. Hunger, yanking like a rope bound to my ribs.
Safe. Come. Waiting.
The image snapped shut, a closing fist. I gasped, my knees hitting gravel.
The patrol shouted. They rushed their elkbire past me, leaping off to the right, leaving the trail for the thick brush.
I dove for the talon shard and snatched it up. The length of my forearm, it was as warm as a coal ember and sharp enough at the tip to punch through leather. I shoved it under my shirt, folding it into the fabric. As I searched for graymallow, the curve bit into my side.
My teeth chattered together. The scale had been dangerous enough. But a talon shard the length of my forearm?
I was carrying evidence that would get me executed.
But I couldn’t leave it. The wild dragon had given it to me for a reason, and whatever that was, it felt more important than my fear. More important than being smart.
That didn’t make it any less stupid.
Boots scraped across stone on the path above me.
The talon went behind my back before I’d finished turning, my fingers closing around the flat of it. One careless grip and the edge would open my palm to the bone.
Prince Fenian came down the quarry road, wearing hunting leathers, a spear laid across his shoulder with runes spiraling around the haft. Alone. No guards. I couldn’t decide if that made this better or worse.
“If it isn’t the kingdom’s foremost authority on weapons,” he said.
I dipped into the best bow a woman could manage with both hands clasped behind her back, though I must look like I was smuggling a goose.
His gaze traveled to my arms, the mud on my knees, then back to my face.
“You’re a long way from the aerie,” he said.
“Herbs, Sire. The moonvetch is sparse this year.”
“And you’re hiding something from your prince.”
“Not my prince.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “That’s treason, technically.”
“Add it to my account, Your Highness.”
“It’s becoming a long account,” he said mildly, watching the northern ridge instead of me.
The talon heated. If he knew anything, I’d already be in irons, and princes didn’t do their own arresting.
The patrol’s dust still hung over the road where they’d charged off after the wild dragon. I nudged my chin toward it, offering him a safer subject. “What are you hunting, Sire?”
“There are reports of a wild one in the area. It’s been seen twice near the fortress.” He shifted the spear. “The council wants it dealt with before the race.”
“And you?” The question burst out of me.
He studied my face longer than I liked. “I want to find it first.”
“To kill it?”
“I didn’t say that.” He frowned. “Have you ever seen one up close?”
I sucked in a breath. “Only from a distance.”
“They’re smaller than ours. Faster. No shine on them at all.” He rolled the spear haft slowly across his shoulder. “They look at you. Ours look through you. I’ve stopped asking myself why.”
My own thought. I’d returned to it since the clearing. The wild one’s gaze had pinned me in place while every aerie dragon I’d ever worked with stared through me.
They lay in their stalls between trainings, their heads on their forelegs, watching the bright opening of the valley for hours. No one asked what they were looking for.
If it was me, I’d be longing to be free—like the wild dragons.
“Maybe looking costs them too much, Sire,” I said.
“They breed ours for shine,” he said, the courtly tone back in his voice. “The wild ones waste all that effort on being alive.”
He turned toward the ridge. When he spoke again, it was to the mountain, not to me.
“We hunted one recently. That could be the one haunting the fortress. Someone sprang the trap before our party arrived. Whoever it was has no sense of self-preservation.”
I held very still, the talon’s edge pressing a thin line of heat across my fingers.
“Did you catch them?”
“No. The trail went cold west of the stream.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Careless of us.”
The first bell tolled from the fortress. Late meant questions. Questions meant Nuant.
“Sire.” I bobbed something that wanted to be a bow and eased past him on the path, close enough to smell warm leather, both hands still locked behind my back.
“Good luck with the moonvetch,” he said.
“And you with your hunt, Your Highness.”
I raced back to the aerie.
The sting didn’t hit me until I’d reached the servants’ gate. A red line ran across two of my fingers where I’d gripped the talon’s edge. I’d bled the whole climb without feeling it.
The prince had stood near enough to touch, watched me hide something behind my back, and never once asked what it was.
A man who didn’t ask questions was a new kind of dangerous.
I hid the talon shard in the supply room under a pile of rags where no one would find it.
I stood staring at the pile after, my heart pounding.
Nuant already suspected something, and now I’d hidden a piece of evidence in a room he could search at any moment.
I should throw it down the quarry drop. Bury it in the forest. Anything but keep it here.
But I couldn’t make my hands reach for it. The talon had shown me the dragon’s sanctuary. She was trusting me with pieces of herself, literally. I wouldn’t repay that by discarding what she’d given.
Even if it got me killed.
The second bell sounded, and I got back to work, hauling water to the wash stations. My shirt soaked through, and beads of sweat drizzled down my face, mixing with the coal dust in the air. It only left when the wind blew right and today, the wind was blowing wrong.
After finishing with the water, I headed back inside the aerie.
I found Euan in the tack room, the leftover scraps from his meal drying on his plate. He sat on a stool, mending a harness strap, his scarred lip twisting to one side when he glanced up.
“Eradin.”
“I need a trial waiver.” I said it plain. “I’ll likely die, but I’m doing it anyway.”
His hands stilled on the leather. He studied my face for a long moment, then set the harness aside. “Do you know what you’re asking?”
“I’m well aware.”
“Can’t talk you out of it?”
“No.”
He studied me long enough I wanted to fidget. “You know how many commons I’ve signed for?”
I waited.
“Four. Including my only son.” His fingers traced the edge of the strap. “Three couldn’t get on the dragon. Just stood there, frozen, until the handlers pulled them out.”
“I won’t freeze.”
“That’s what they said.” Euan rubbed his scarred lip with his thumb. “My son entered the race before the last one. That was thirty years ago. Made it to the Scorching. When he survived the first leg of the race, we thought he just might do it. The second trial ate him alive.”