22. Eradin
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ERADIN
The darkness whispered of death. When it got to be too much for me, I slipped from the bed, dressed quickly in a tunic and pants, and after applying more salve to my foot, I gently tugged on the boots they’d provided.
They were, oddly enough, a perfect fit. I secured the talon-blade at my hip, and the scale went into my pocket where it settled warm against my thigh.
Lyndie stirred in her bed. “Is it time?”
“Soon.”
She sat up, shoving her long hair off her face. “We should go down to breakfast together. Solidarity and all that.”
“I’ll meet you there. I need to check something first.”
“Oh.” She blinked a few times and yawned. “I’ll see you later then.”
I left the room and strode through the halls. Servants moved through corridors and guards changed shifts. Nobles were likely still sleeping off the effects of their wine.
I didn’t have anything to check. I just wanted to be alone.
After pacing through the halls, getting lost at least three times, I found my way to the dining hall.
The clink of cutlery and the scent of food called.
Inside, I joined Reece, Kerrel, and Lyndie, already sitting at a table pushed against the wall.
Servants brought out big bowls of porridge and dried fruit.
Pots of tea. We served ourselves and ate quickly, not speaking about what might come next.
The thin man approached us as we were finishing.
“Get your paperwork completed first thing,” he said. “Then I suggest you spend the rest of the day continuing to connect with your dragons. Without them, you’re dead.”
With them, we’d be equally dead.
“Can we visit our families?” I asked, aching to see Tolross and Father one more time.
“Dragons,” he said. “Don’t wander too far from the fortress.”
He left.
When we’d finished, we found the same clerk sitting at a desk in his office, shuffling papers.
“One at a time,” he barked, sliding a form across the desk toward Reece, who’d taken the lead. “Fill this out.”
“I don’t…” Color rushed into Reece’s face as the rest of us backed out into the hall. “I can’t read.”
The clerk released a heavy sigh. “I’ll do it for all of you then. Can you at least sign your name?”
Reece’s spine stiffened. “I can do that.”
The clerk asked questions in a low voice, and Reece answered.
Kerrel went next, his hand shaking when he emerged from the room.
Lyndie approached the desk third, and the clerk barely glanced at her before filling out and stamping her form.
The clerk didn’t look up when I stood across from him. “Name.”
“I can read and write.”
His pen paused. “Congratulations. Name?”
“Eradin Carver.”
“Mount’s name.”
My throat closed.
Lykor had saved me by shielding my body with his when the flames came. His breathing had rattled in the sand after.
Flying him would finish breaking what the fire maze had started.
“Selira,” I said.
His pen stopped moving. “That’s not a registered mount.”
“It will be.”
“You can’t—” His eyes narrowed. “You must ride a registered dragon.”
I leaned forward, my palms flat on his desk, the trial mark blazing black between us. “Why?”
His frown deepened. “Err—”
“If the officials don’t like it, they can arrest me after I win.”
Silence dropped through the room.
“Your funeral.” He tapped his pen twice before he wrote it down. “Saddle specifications. Standard or custom?”
“Custom.”
I didn’t have a saddle at all. But I’d watched him stamp Lyndie’s form without question. This paperwork was theater.
“Dragon’s current holding location?”
“Eastern forest…aerie.”
His pen scratched across the parchment, and the twitch of his fingers said he knew I was lying. But he was writing it down anyway because the court wanted something on each line and they didn’t mind if commons failed spectacularly.
Fine. I’d give them a spectacle.
“If your dragon isn’t in the arena when the race starts, you forfeit. Automatic disqualification. One silver due. We’ll take it from your pocket or your flesh. Doesn’t matter to us.”
“Understood.”
The clerk finally looked up at me. I stared back.
He gestured to the line on the bottom. “Sign.”
The pen felt heavy, but the ink dried black and permanent. And when he stamped it with the seal, magic sank into the parchment until it glowed. A duplicate appeared beside the original. He slid it across the desk, and I stared down at it.
Mount: Selira
“It’s enchanted,” he said, probably assuming I was stunned by the duplication, not second-guessing my daring. “It can’t be altered, and it can’t be appealed. If you show up without this dragon, you’re done. As good as dead.”
“I already am.”
He blinked before leaning back in his chair. His smile showed all teeth. “Pray to the fates for luck. You’re going to need it. Make sure you follow the rules.”
“What rules?”
“The rules.”
“Let me see them.”
“I don’t have a copy for commons.”
“Why not? We’re competing.”
He gave me a slick grin and flapped his hand toward the door. “Go. Don’t pester me any longer.”
I wanted to press him for more but I also didn’t want to die, so I turned and left, grumbling under my breath.
Outside, I paused and folded the form, tucking it into my pocket beside the scale. The paper crinkled against dragon-bone, both of them warm with promises I didn’t know how to keep.
Lyndie stood a short distance away, gaping between me and where the clerk remained inside. “What just happened? He sounded upset.”
“Nothing.” I strode past her and kept walking until I reached a corridor junction where I could stop without blocking traffic. People moved around me, servants and officials and guards, all of them staring at the commons who shouldn’t exist.
I’d registered a dragon I didn’t have. Couldn’t have. A wild dragon who’d claimed me across distance and stone and every law that said it shouldn’t happen.
Selira was wild, illegal, and impossible.
And I’d just promised to ride her.
I ignored the stares and took the stairs to our room, stepping inside. My bag still sat on the floor beside my bed, where I’d left it.
I sat on the bed with it on my lap and tugged out the riding leathers, rising to hang them on a hook on the back of the door. Black, fitted, and reinforced at the knees and elbows.
I stripped off my cloth tunic and pants and pulled on the leathers. They settled against my skin like a caress. After strapping the talon-blade to my side, I caught my reflection in the mirror.
This was a woman who’d kept herself small, a stable hand who’d learned invisibility meant survival. But this woman could also be someone who fought. Who bled. Who registered an illegal dragon and dared the system to stop her.
My hand lifted toward the mirror. Would Mother have recognized me? Would she have been proud, or would she have seen what I was struggling to be and mourned what I might lose in the process?
The thought cracked my chest wide open.
I dropped my hand to my side and walked to the door before the crack could spread.
The fortress corridors felt narrower now. The walls were closing in or I’d expanded to fill more space.
I passed nobles in their finery. Servants carrying trays. Guards posted at intersections.
None tried to stop me.
After checking to make sure the hallway behind me was empty, I pushed through a rear fortress door, stepping out into morning air that smelled of warm grass and pine.
The scale in my pocket burned warmer.
I ducked and hurried through the gardens until I reached the path leading down the eastern side of the mountain.
After making sure I wasn’t followed, I entered the cool, damp forest where commons were forbidden, stepping on the path winding past the fortress’s eastern wall.
The sun had risen, but it never completely touched this part of the world.
Gray light filtered through the canopy, turning everything soft and uncertain.
Below the eastern switchback, the old quarry road curved away from the mountain toward the border passes and other kingdoms, the sea I’d only ever heard described.
A rustling ahead made me duck behind a tree, peering that way.
Two people walked with packs on their backs.
A silver braid. Sunlight flashing off his spectacles.
They’d taken Dorresk from his bed without letting him gather his things. Which meant Narlene had carried his spectacles out of the fortress herself, along with every other piece of their life she could strap to her back. It looked like they had good packs. New boots and cloaks.
Provisions someone had paid for.
The mine did not misplace men. Someone with a seal had signed to get Dorresk out, the same someone, I’d wager, whose aide had given Narlene a purse while the court watched dragons instead.
Protection always came with strings.
I was starting to wonder whether Prince Fenian’s ever did.
The warden counted heads at the mine shift bells, and today no one in the fortress would pay them much attention. Every eye would be pinned on tomorrow’s race. By the next bell, Narlene and Dorresk will be at least a valley away.
Narlene’s stride slowed, and she turned, her gaze pinning me where I huddled beside the tree.
Even at this distance, I could tell when she recognized me.
Panic crossed her face, and she grabbed Dorresk’s sleeve.
The last time we’d stood face to face, she’d caught me somewhere I had no right to be and kept it to herself.
Straightening, I stepped out onto the path.
I touched two fingers to my forehead. The miners’ sign, the one Jalak had given me the morning I walked to the commons’ trials.
Luck for the road.
Silence for silence.
Narlene pressed her palm flat to her heart. Then she turned, and they kept going, while I turned toward my own escape.
I walked until the forest surrounded me. Until only the wind through trees and my own breathing kept me company.
I had maybe six hours to find Selira. Or I’d show up at the start of the Scorching with nothing.
Tolross would die while nobles laughed at the woman who’d been stupid enough to think she mattered.
The scale flared hot against my thigh.
I broke into a run, following the scale’s pull toward dark places where feral things lived.
Toward the dragon who’d decided I was hers.