49. Eradin
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ERADIN
The fire burned low between us, turning Fen’s face into angles I wanted to trace with my fingers.
There was a quiet to him now that hadn’t been there a short time ago. Before, every movement felt controlled. He’d held himself rigid. Now he felt looser. He’d finally set something heavy down, and I sensed he wasn’t going to pick it back up again.
He hadn’t even tried to fix his hair I’d messed up. That kept catching my eye.
The elite camp had gone quiet. They’d given up on him returning. Or they were plotting.
I needed to climb inside my tent. Lyndie was probably waiting, and tomorrow would try to kill us in new and inventive ways. Sleep was practical. Smart. I was physically and mentally exhausted.
I got up. My feet were supposed to carry me to my tent. That was the plan. The safe choice. Instead, I walked around the fire.
The distance between his side and mine felt like crossing the boundary between elite and commons. Except this time I was choosing to cross it in front of anyone who might be watching from the elite camp.
Like him.
My knees wanted to buckle halfway there. I made them keep going.
I sat beside him on his bedroll.
The warmth from his body hit me first. Then his scent, leather and spice. My shoulder nudged his arm, and I didn’t pull away.
I felt more than heard the slight hitch in his breath that said he hadn’t expected this.
Our hands rested on the ground between us.
He’d stopped hiding. I was the one still learning how to be seen wanting something.
I shifted my pinky. Barely a movement; enough that it brushed his skin.
My finger curled, hooking around his. He curled his back, linking them together.
One finger. That was all. My pulse throbbed in my wrist. Heat climbed up my arm, settled in my chest, spreading lower. This felt more dangerous than kissing him had. More deliberate. There was no excuse this time. No magic forcing us together. No trial-induced madness.
Just choice.
Selira spoke through the bond, so faint it might’ve been my own imagination. Finally.
“We should sleep,” I whispered. “Tomorrow—”
“You’re right.”
But neither of us moved.
The fire snapped. Sparks spiraled up into the dark. His pinky stayed linked with mine, a single point of contact saying more than any words could.
“They told us the sky wasn’t ours,” I said softly. “But falling for you is more dangerous than flight.”
He was quiet long enough that I thought he wouldn’t answer.
“How long?” he asked.
I knew what he was asking. I stared into the flames before flicking my gaze his way. “Too long to pretend otherwise.”
“Good,” he said, so softly I almost missed it. “Me too. If you knew what it took to keep still right now, you’d stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re not afraid of what comes next.”
I turned my head fully to meet his eyes. “Maybe I’m not.”
His pinky tightened around mine.
“Your dragon is insufferable,” he said with a touch of humor in his voice. “I swear she’s watching us.”
“She is. As for being insufferable, she’s bonded to me. It’s a feature.”
“Dragons aren’t supposed to look smug.”
“In her mind, she’s been waiting for this for a long time.” I paused. “Don’t tell her I said that.”
His snort rang out. “Your secrets are always safe with me.”
I believed him. An elite, let alone the prince of the elites, and I believe him. The wonder of it coasted through me, warming me from the inside out.
He lifted our linked fingers and studied them. “Whatever tomorrow is, it doesn’t get this.”
“What is this?”
He lowered our hands back to the ground but didn’t let go. “I haven’t figured that out yet. But it’s mine.”
The words turned over in my chest. I let my head tip until it rested against his shoulder.
“Careful,” I said softly. “I’ve been known to keep things too.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” His thumb moved across my knuckles. A slow, deliberate gesture I felt all the way to my bones.
We stayed like that a moment, the fire dying between the words we weren’t saying.
“Tomorrow’s going to be brutal,” he said.
“It always is.”
“Then we should—”
“Yes.”
Finally, I forced myself to stand.
“Goodnight,” I said.
“Sleep well, Eradin.”
I crossed the space again, ducking into my tent before I could change my mind and sit back down.
Lyndie had pulled the blankets up over her head, and her chest rose and fell softly.
I stripped off my leathers in the dark, the laces fighting me. After tugging on one of Father’s old tunics, I lay down on my bedroll. I closed my eyes, shutting out the night and the world around me.
My body remembered things my brain couldn’t sort through yet. The desperate way he’d kissed me in his tent. How his hands had smoothed through my hair. The broken sound he’d made when I told him I wanted him.
How sad and alone he’d looked by the fire.
Outside, I heard him settle onto his bedroll. He released a quiet exhale that might’ve been from pain in his shoulder or just plain being tired.
I was hyperaware of every sound. The pops of the fire’s dying embers. Distant dragon breathing. Fen moving again, trying to find a position that didn’t make his wound ache.
He’d left everything. Walked across the boundary in front of the elite and spread his bedroll on the ground beside a commons fire like it was something he’d been building toward for weeks.
Maybe he had been.
Maybe I had been too, and I hadn’t let myself see it.
I’d spent a lifetime figuring out how the elite responded to things they didn’t like.
His mother wouldn’t let this go. Queen Valindra would hear about this before dawn, if she hadn’t heard already.
She’d calculate consequences and political damage.
She’d decide what needed to happen to a son who’d chosen someone over the crown.
My family might pay for it too. They’d become leverage the moment Fen sat beside my fire, tools to force me away from him or punish him for choosing me.
The thought sat in my belly like broken glass.
I’d ruined us both with one kiss. Except I couldn’t make myself regret it.
I wanted him. The admission scared me more than the race. Wanting him meant losing him, and I’d already lost too much.
Outside, Fen’s breathing evened into something that might’ve been sleep. I tried to match mine to his, but mine wouldn’t settle.
Selira’s awareness brushed across my mind. Here. Watching. Sleep.
But I lay there, listening to him breathe six feet away from me, and tried not to think about how his pinky had felt curled around mine.
How doomed we were.
Eventually, my eyelids grew heavy.
I drifted into a dream of…
Screaming reached down into the dream and yanked me back into consciousness.