10. Eradin
CHAPTER TEN
ERADIN
Three days. That was how long I had to convince a broken dragon not to kill me.
He lay coiled in the right corner, his nondescript black scales faded to gray and mottled with age.
As I crept closer, I hummed the tune I could make perfect even in my sleep, extending my hand as if I thought I’d leave the stall with it still attached.
His breathing evened out, smoke-sweet-ashy, with only a subtle hitch on the exhale.
A handler opened the gate and stepped inside, leaning against the wall. “Don’t waste your time. You’ve met him. Now leave. They never settle for commons.”
I ignored him.
Lykor’s head lifted, and his gaze stayed on me.
The stable hand tossed a bundle onto the ground. “Your tack. Familiarize yourself with it tonight. We’ll deliver it with him to the trial, but you’ll need to saddle him yourself.”
I picked the bag up and loosened the top, peering inside, taking in the worn leather, the reins frayed at the ends. Fine runes threaded through the straps, the same patterns I’d seen on the other equipment.
I ran my thumb over them and a jolt of electricity shot up my arm.
Lykor’s low growl rang out. A huff and orange sparks shot from his mouth, extinguishing when they hit the sandy floor.
He could still shoot fire. Got it.
Our eyes met, his pupils wider than they’d been a moment ago.
We’d both felt the same thing. Did he know I understood?
Did Aristus feel this same jolt every time his harness settled? Prince Fenian came across to me as a man who paid attention to his dragon and to nothing else honest in his life.
The thought had no business being that specific.
I turned to the handler. “How many commons has he thrown?”
The young man’s smirk faltered. “What?”
“You said they never settle for commons. So how many has Lykor killed?”
He shifted his weight. “I’m not required to—”
“None.” I looked back at the dragon. “I bet he’s never been assigned to a commons trial before. You’re lying.”
The handler scratched the back of his neck. “You won’t last anyway.” He left fast, his boots scuffing stone, the gate banging shut behind him.
I set the bundle down and took a step closer to the dragon. His nostrils flared as he scented me. No smoke or flame, just tasting what I was made of.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said quietly. “If that helps.”
He blinked.
Another step. His tail twitched but didn’t lash. I kept my hands visible, the same way I had with the wild dragon, and hummed the tune my mother had taught me.
Lykor’s breathing evened again.
I walked around him, never getting too close.
Letting him familiarize himself with how I moved.
Stopping by his head, I let him sniff my hand, him chuffing softly, thankfully withholding his fire.
I stroked his neck and the hinge of his jaw.
He rumbled in his throat before turning his head away and dropping it to the sand. His eyes closed, shutting me out.
“Had enough, huh?” I whispered.
He didn’t even crack an eyelid my way.
I picked up the bundle and left.
After dropping my tack with the rest, I left, my limbs quaking as I made my way up the path, passing the fortress, and winding down to Shaleside. I kept my spine straight until I’d cleared the upper gate and met up with a guard on the trail who kept going, not looking my way.
Continuing through the market square, I passed a woman haggling over vegetables. Down three streets, the lanes narrowed and the laundry lines blocked the moon.
Alone for one moment, I collapsed. My back hit a wall, and I slid down until I sat in the blackened dust, my knees pulled up to my chest, the token’s edges cutting into my palm.
What had I done?
My hands were shaking. No, my whole body was shaking, a tremor that started in my spine and radiated out until my teeth chattered.
In a few short days, I’d ride a dragon that probably hated every human who’d ever touched it.
My odds of living long enough to race in the Scorching were pretty much nil.
But Tolross would die without the wish.
I lowered my forehead to my knees and made myself breathe.
A child ran past. His mother called after him, laughing.
Finally, I stood up. My legs still trembled, but they held.
The decision had been made. All that was left was seeing it through.
I pulled the dragon scale from my pocket and held it up to the fading light. Still warm. Still impossible.
The wild dragon had chosen me for a reason I couldn’t define. Lykor had let me touch him without taking my hand off at the wrist.
Maybe all this meant something.
Or it meant nothing.
I tucked the scale away and started walking.
Silvie’s dye stall sat in the same spot as always, the vats steaming despite the late hour. She looked up when I approached, her arms stained purple-black to the elbows.
“I entered the trial,” I said.
“I guessed you would.”
“Would you look after Father and Tolross while I’m gone?”
Her hands stilled in the purple-black water. “Sit.”
I didn’t move. “I can’t stay long.”
“Sit.”
I sat on the crate beside the vat. Hos jumped onto my lap, purring and kneading my thighs.
Silvie slowly pulled her hands from the water and dried them on her apron, the purple stains staying. “You’re asking me to watch them grieve you.”
I could not suck in a breath.
“That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it?” she said, sharper, louder. “You want me to cook meals and do laundry and sit with Tolross while he watches the door for a sister who won’t come back.”
“I might come back.”
“You might.” She stared at me with pale blue eyes that had seen too much. “But you’re asking me to be there if you don’t. To be the one who tells your brother his sister died for him. To watch your father stop talking altogether.”
“I have to do this. There’s no other way.”
“You’re right about that.” Her shoulders dropped. “Which is why I’ll do this for you. I’ll do it because I love you like you’re mine.” She reached for my marked hand. “But don’t pretend this is a small thing you’re asking.”
I pulled the coins from my pocket and held them out. “For food. For—”
“No.” She pushed my hand back. “If I take them, that means I think you won’t be back.”
A hard knot formed low in my throat.
“I’ll bring an evening meal with enough for the next day’s lunch,” she said. “A roll for breakfast. Laundry on rest days. I’ll sit with Tolross when I’m not at the market.” She paused. “He’ll complain, but he’ll like the company.”
“He will.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a braided cord made from various strands of red thread. Her own dyes. “For luck.”
I held out the arm with the mark, and she knotted it around my wrist. “Thank you.”
She tugged me up from the crate and pulled me into her arms. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had held me like this. Not Father, who’d lost too much already. Not Tolross, who was too fragile to squeeze back. No one since my dead mother.
Silvie smelled like dye and woodsmoke. Her arms were thin but steady.
“Come back, little bird,” she whispered into my hair.
I didn’t cry. But I held her for longer than most people would.
My feet moved much slower as I took the final steps home and stepped inside.
Father sat at the table, sharpening his knife on a whetstone in a steady rhythm. Tolross lay on his pallet, his journal open, a stub of charcoal in his hand.
The coal bin held four pieces. Father had bought some the day before. I’d bought candles, and they shivered in the air, the light almost looking festive.
I set the token on the table beside where my father worked. “I entered the trial.”
Father’s hands stopped. The knife hovered above the stone until he carefully placed it on the table and picked up the token.
He set it back down. Lifted it again. Set it down.
“The man across town,” he said. “The one I couldn’t stop. I told him his daughter needed him alive. That courage and stupidity looked the same from a distance but only one of them came home.” He traced the edge of the token. “He said the same thing you’re about to say.”
I waited.
“That it wasn’t courage or stupidity. It was the only choice that mattered. I watched them carry what was left of him back in a cart. His daughter was five.”
My stomach turned over.
“I can’t stop you either.” He nudged the token away, his movement controlled. “But I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life. Whether you come back or not.”
The hurt bit deep. He breathed like he stood in the castle cold again.
Tolross looked up from his journal. “At least you’ll get to fly before you die.” The joke faltered halfway through, his voice cracking. He set his charcoal down.
“I think I could win,” I said softly.
“I think you’ll try.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” He met my eyes. “It’s not.”
Father’s blade scraped once more across the whetstone, the sound too loud in the stillness.
“Your mother would’ve done the same thing,” he said.
I hadn’t expected that. Pressure built behind my eyes. I refused to let out.
“She’d have saddled the dragon herself if it meant saving any of us,” Father said, still not glancing at me. “She would’ve told the first trial to get out of her way. The second one too.” The blade scraped again. “She was stubborn like that.”
Like me, he meant.
“Silvie will bring meals,” I said. “She’ll check on Tolross and help with the laundry.”
Tolross opened his mouth, probably to say he didn’t need anyone checking on him, but he closed it again.
Father nodded. “All right.”
Nothing else. Just those two words. I stood beside the table, the weight of them compressing my lungs.
“I’ll try to come back,” I said.
Father didn’t look up at me. “I know.”
We sat in silence together, not even speaking as we ate the meal I prepared.
Finally, the darkness gobbled up the moon.
I went to my room and lay on my bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling.
The talon shard rested under my mattress. I’d speak to the smithy tomorrow about turning it into a weapon. I suspected I’d need one.
There was no going back now.
I hummed my mother’s tune, quiet enough I barely made a sound. The wild dragon’s scale heated against my hip, a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
Three days until the trial.
Then I’d find out if trust and desperation were enough to keep a dragon from throwing me from his back.