27. Eradin
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ERADIN
Dawn broke cold and gray over the fortress on the day I’d die.
Before leaving our room this morning, I’d gone through my pack one more time.
I’d touched the tin of salve, the one Fenian had given me. Not the first tin, but the second one. He’d been carrying it around the fortress. Waiting to give it to me.
My chest locked, my ribs refusing to expand.
He’d packed supplies for me like keeping me alive was something that required planning and thought and a second tin of expensive salve he’d carried around just in case.
Accepting help from him was dangerous, but I’d kept it.
Which meant I was keeping whatever this was between us, even if I didn’t have a name for it yet.
Now I stood in the courtyard with the other commons survivors, my overloaded pack strapped to my back.
My leather tunic I’d worn yesterday felt damp in places, clinging to my ribs where I’d laced it tight.
The spare sat folded in my pack. I’d need it later, assuming there was a later.
At least the boots were new, courtesy of a prince—or not.
A servant had delivered them as I was waking, new, perfectly fitting and dry.
My foot felt so much better, I wanted to weep.
A priestess waited by the eastern gate, her silver robes catching the weak light. Just the four of us. No elite riders. No officials other than her.
Lyndie bounced on her toes, her smile beaming too brightly for someone who might soon meet her own death. “Where are the others? Shouldn’t we all leave together?”
The priestess’s expression didn’t change. “Only the commons require transportation to the arena.”
The elite didn’t need magical transport like livestock. They’d arrive on their own terms, in their own time, and with servants and ceremony.
We were the ones who needed handling.
The priestess raised her hands and chanted. The ground beneath my feet hummed, the vibration climbing up through my bones.
Then the world tore apart.
Weightlessness slammed into me. My stomach tried to climb out through my throat while my body was yanked in six directions at once. Colors bled together, stone and sky and something darker underneath that tasted like old blood.
The ground jolted back under my boots.
I staggered. Reece dropped to one knee. Lyndie staggered, and I caught her with a hand on her shoulder. She straightened, her face green.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I thought I was going to—” She swallowed hard. Stiffening her spine, she snapped the bright smile back into place. “That was unpleasant.”
I knew what it cost to hold yourself together when everything inside you was falling apart.
Nausea shot through me in waves. I ground my teeth together, trying to remember how mouths functioned, how bodies were supposed to fit.
The teleportation clung to my bones, a taint I couldn’t shake.
This was how the elite moved through the world, tearing reality apart because they could afford the magic to put it back together.
We’d landed in an arena with high stone walls, one side lined with viewing stands already filling with people, and sand underfoot.
A magical screen shimmered above the center of the stands, its back to us. Two doors had been mounted in the walls. One normal-sized for officials. Another massive, wooden, arched, and firmly closed.
I couldn’t see over the walls to know what waited beyond.
Riders milled near the far side, dressed in gilded leathers, their packs three times the size of ours. They stayed separate from us, a clear line drawn in the sand.
Reece pulled a strip of fabric from his pocket, faded blue and fraying on the edges. He tied it around his wrist, his weathered hands shaking as he knotted it.
“My wife has its match,” he said.
“That’s sweet,” Lyndie said. “I wish I’d thought to bring something of my mom’s.”
I spotted Reece’s wife in the stands, sitting in the lower section, dabbing her eyes with a matching blue scarf.
Emotion swelled in my throat.
Tolross didn’t have a scarf. He had a poem in my pocket and a father who’d watch the empty doorway waiting for a daughter who might not return. The parallel hit hard, both of us racing to buy time for people we loved, knowing neither of us stood much chance of winning the wish.
I turned away before the burning in my eyes became something the crowd would see.
Kerrel hadn’t moved since we’d landed. His eyes held that vacant look that said his body was here but the rest of him had already left.
“Kerrel,” I hissed, then a touch louder. “Kerrel.”
“What?” he growled, not glancing my way.
“Stiffen your resolve.” If he didn’t, he wouldn’t make it through the first test.
“Take care of yourself, if you please.” He sent me a tortured look. “I’m doing the best I can.”
He eased around to Reece’s other side.
The stands continued to fill. Boxes had been built into the upper tiers, lined with silk cushions and shaded with bright canopies. Servants strode among the crowd with trays of drinks and food.
Children in the elite section waved small glowing orbs mounted on sticks. A vendor near the boxes sold them, his voice carrying across the arena. “Get your commemorative light! Remember this historic day!”
The commons section sat exposed to the sun. Stone benches, no food for sale, and no amenities. People had packed in tight, children asking questions their parents shushed. Betting odds updated on magical boards throughout both sections, numbers shifting as coins changed hands.
I found Reece’s wife again. She’d stopped dabbing her eyes and held the fabric to her chest, watching her husband.
Father would be in the mines by now, gray dust coating his lungs, his cough getting worse with every shift. He’d know that I’d made it to the arena. But he might not know I was dead until they asked for the fee to deliver my body.
Silvie would sit with Tolross, both of them listening for footsteps that might never come.
A horn blasted, and the dragon parade began. Collared dragons were brought out first.
“Shadowmere, bonded to Lord Callix of House Thrain,” the announcer broadcast across the arena. “Winner of the Northern Circuit, descendant of Nightwing, bearer of the Crown’s Flame.”
The crowd cheered. Children waved their light-sticks.
More followed, each pedigree more impressive, and each dragon more polished than anything I’d ever ride. My burned foot throbbed in rhythm with the announcements. The scale at my throat pulsed warm, a secret heartbeat against my skin.
Heartsbrim came next, brought over to stand beside Lady Severine.
Where was Selira? The bond hummed quiet, distant. Not gone, just waiting.
The dragons kept coming until forty-four of them had lined up in formation. Black and ruby, gleaming with dubious health and magic.
A lull descended and conversation stilled.
The herald’s voice boomed across the arena, amplified by magic until it rattled my teeth.
“Aristus, bonded to Prince Fenian Balmaris Lancifer, Crown Prince and sole heir to the kingdom. Champion of the realm.”
The crowd roared.
Aristus flew into the arena, midnight black, his silver undertones catching the sun, sleek and powerful in a way that made the other dragons look like rough drafts. He landed beside Fenian, who wore leathers dyed as dark as his ink-black hair.
Aristus’s wings trembled as he tucked them against his sides, a tiny hitch in the perfection that no one seemed to notice except me.
And Fenian. His jaw tightened enough, the muscle jumped.
Our eyes met and the air burst from my lungs. Last night in the kitchen, he’d stood close enough I could feel his heartbeat under my palm. He’d told me I mattered to him, and he’d packed supplies for me with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
He was just as aware of me as I was of him. The knowledge made heat crawl up my spine.
I dragged my gaze away before someone noticed.
A woman in the elite section leaned toward her companion, her voice carrying across the sand. “The prince looks amazing, doesn’t he?”
He did. That was the problem. All that controlled power and competence. He looked like something carved from ice and fury.
The gap between the two versions of him made my skin prickle.
Except he stood apart from the others, his hand on Aristus’s neck. He looked alone in a way that made me want to take his hand and squeeze it.
I could walk over there. Ask if he was alright. But that would mean admitting that I cared that no one stood near him. That I’d noticed the tight set of his shoulders.
Selira’s curiosity hummed through the bond. Want him?
“No,” I whispered.
The dragon’s amusement rippled back. Liar.
An aide with a careful face stood two paces behind the prince. Everyone in the arena watched the dragons. He watched the prince.
And me.
The gate opened again, and our dragons were brought out. No ceremony or announcements for us.
Lyndie’s assigned mount from the earlier trials shuffled forward, an older black dragon, dull-eyed and broken like the rest until it reached her, when its nostrils flared. It lifted its head and its eyes gleamed before resignation settled back into place.
Lyndie’s hand found the dragon’s jaw, and she scratched, finding the exact spot behind the jaw hinge where tension gathered, working in small circles the way I’d learned by caring for dragons from the time I was small.
The dragon’s breathing steadied. His head lowered into her touch.
“You’re good with them,” I said.
She glanced my way, and for a heartbeat her mask slipped. Something I’d swear was grief flickered in her eyes.
“My mother wasn’t just a seamstress. She worked with animals,” she said. “Before.”
The way Lyndie said before reminded me of how I’d learned to say, the herbs grew wild there, instead of, I stole them. We were both carrying something we couldn’t name out loud.
The dragon rumbled under her hands, and Lyndie’s expression softened in a way that looked achingly real. “My mother always said you could tell which dragons had been loved. It shows in how they stand.”
That wasn’t marketplace wisdom, nowhere near what a seamstress’s daughter should know.
Unless her mother hadn’t been a seamstress at all.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she said.
“He is.”
She blinked, and her bright smile snapped back into place. I’d seen servants transform fear into usefulness before a lord or lady could notice. Her smile must be for the nobles watching, something she hid behind like I made myself small.
Reece’s dragon was brought out next, scarred across its left flank, one wing hanging crooked. It still moved and functioned, but every step must hurt.
Kerrel’s dragon came last. Skittish, it kept jerking at every loud sound. Its eyes rolled white as it was half-dragged over to Kerrel.
Every dragon told a story about what the court had done to them. This was what happened when you were useful until you broke, then discarded into pens and forgotten.
The handlers finished their checks and stepped back. Silence dropped over the arena.
An official stepped forward, lifting a magical scroll. He called names, matching commons riders to dragons.
After Kerrel’s, he looked up, his heavy gaze landing on me. “Eradin Carver.”
I stepped forward, my boots sinking into the sand.
The official checked his paperwork again, his brows drawing together.
“Mount: Selira.” He scanned the dragons lined up across the arena before scowling at me. “Where’s your dragon?”
My throat went tight. “She’s coming.”
Our bond was new, wild, and untested. What if she’d changed her mind? Coming here, surrounded by the stink of captive dragons and elite magic, might have reminded her why wild things remained hidden.
This bond could be one-sided, a delusion I’d built from desperation and a dragon’s curiosity.
I might’ve gambled everything on a creature who owed me nothing.
The officials kept whispering. The crowd’s laughter built. I flexed my hands at my sides, my fingernails biting into my palms where the red lines lived.
Come. Please.
Silence echoed across the arena. Even those betting stilled, perhaps unsure how to wager coins on a rider without a dragon.
More officials joined the first, hissing together. One pulled out a separate scroll. Checking regulations?
Time stretched.
The crowd’s snickers grew.
They pointed, their laughter carrying across the big, open space.
“She forgot to bring her dragon,” someone called out.
More laughter.
“We need to determine if—”
The shadow came first. Small, then growing big enough to blot out the sun until the arena went dark as twilight. Someone in the stands screamed. Others tipped their heads back, tracking something overhead.
A man in one of the upper rows ducked, his arms flailing. “Wild dragon attack!”
Prince Fenian met my gaze, and his grin rose.
A grin, teeth and all.
My careful count of almost-smiles died right there, ruined by a man who saved the real thing for wild dragons and terrible ideas.
The scale at my throat warmed, then scalded against my skin.
Through the bond, I felt her amusement. And underneath it, hunger. She’d smelled the aerie dragons. The captive ones.
She was coming because I’d called. But she was coming angry.
Mine, she growled.
“Right on time,” I whispered.
Selira dove.