45. Fen #2
“Three.”
She jumped.
Her foot caught in the stirrup, and she dangled, screaming.
I snapped my arm out and latched onto her arm, but as her dragon fell, it dragged her along with it. Gravity yanked her arm from my grip.
The two plunged down.
“Alys,” Vella’s scream tore through the distorted air.
When Alys and her dragon hit the void, they disappeared. Like the lake during the first challenge, the surface rippled and smoothed over.
I’d danced with Alys at the summer ball when I was seventeen. She’d stepped on my feet three times and laughed about it. Now she was gone, and retrieving her body was not an option.
“Fuck,” I growled. I whirled around, glaring at the others. “This didn’t have to happen. It fucking didn’t have to happen!”
“She fell. It was an accident.” But I can tell from his face that Blair wasn’t convinced.
“We need to trust our dragons.” I guided Aristus straight, through what appeared to be a stable area, but the place kept shifting. What looked clear quickly showed the faint shimmer I was learning to associate with dead areas.
My shoulder ached with every adjustment. Holding on one-handed through Aristus’s course corrections meant using my thighs and my core for everything.
My body was running out of reserves to draw on.
Aristus felt my weariness through the bond. His alarm spiked, his flight stuttering.
“Just get us through,” I said through gritted teeth.
“We’re going to die following someone who believes he can understand his dragon,” Blair muttered behind me.
“Then die,” I said, not looking back. “But do it honestly instead of pretending you know better than a creature who can sense magic you can’t even see.”
Whispers erupted behind me.
“Please, listen to me,” Vella said in what she must believe was a reasonable tone. “We cannot trust animals over our own judgment.”
“You cannot. I can.”
Lord Brimmore grunted. “Your Highness—”
“Stay with me. Stay with Aristus. Or fly wherever you please. If we remain together, you will follow me without question.”
I didn’t look back to see what they decided.
I was trusting Aristus.
He took us deeper, and they followed.
Aristus navigated the dead area by feel, pulling us through gaps I couldn’t see, choosing the ugly, awkward paths over the obvious beautiful ones every single time. Our bond stopped feeling like a line I was pulling on and started feeling like a conversation.
The mirrors stopped reflecting and started hunting, coiled around my ribs, dragging me toward glass that had gone liquid. On the surface to my left, my father’s corpse sat up on the pyre, his eyes tracking me, his mouth forming words I couldn’t hear but understood anyway.
You’re becoming your mother. Sacrificing everything for a crown that will eat you alive.
I jerked my gaze away.
On the right I saw Eradin, dead in the sand. Selira keening over her body. And me, standing off in the distance, doing nothing. Choosing my princely existence over everything else, like I’d been trained.
“Don’t look at them.” My voice came out hoarse. “They’re not real.”
But Lord Brimmore’s was staring at his reflection in a mirror below him, his face gray. In the image, his children stood behind him, small and crying. Asking why he’d left them.
“Brimmore,” Vella shouted. “Eyes forward!”
Too late.
His dragon shot down at his command, toward the reflection, drawn like iron to a lodestone. They hit the surface, and it rippled. Turning. Pulling. Dragon and rider were sucked into the glass, their shapes distorting, stretching.
They vanished, and the mirror smoothed over.
My stomach tried to empty itself. I swallowed it down, tasting bile.
Two teammates dead, and I was supposed to lead the rest of them through this?
“What the fuck was that?” Blair’s voice shook.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know and because my shoulder was on fire and I’d watched a man I’d trained with since childhood get swallowed by his own regrets.
Aristus banked hard, and I locked my jaw against the pull on my shoulder and followed.
An exit appeared ahead, a door of solid light that hurt to look at.
Between us and it, a field of mirrors waited, dozens of them, each one showing a different version of failure. Eradin dead. Aristus broken. My mother’s face, disappointed each and every time.
“We fly through,” I said. “Fast. Don’t look at anything.”
My vision kept whitening out, sound going distant before snapping back too loud. I was holding on by will alone, and my will was running out.
“Aristus.” My voice came out soft. “I need you to get us through. I’m not… I can’t…”
Understanding and determination flooded the bond.
I have always had you, came though as clear as spoken words.
I slumped forward, lying along his spikes, my forehead buried in his neck, my arms hanging useless at my sides. Blood soaked through my tunic, dripping onto his scales. Feeding the void around us.
Each breath drove a knife between my ribs.
Aristus wove through the mirrors, his body responding to threats only he could see, his wings catching currents that shouldn’t exist. His certainty came through our bond, and his strength poured into me when I had none of my own.
Trust.
Vella and Blair followed in a silence that screamed everything they weren’t saying.
The door of light grew closer. Fifty feet. Thirty. Twenty.
My vision blanked out completely.
Sound went distant, muffled.
I was underwater.
I couldn’t feel anything except Aristus’s heartbeat beneath me and the warm slide of blood down my side.
This was what dying felt like.