50. Eradin
CHAPTER FIFTY
ERADIN
Iwas up before thought caught up, stumbling out of the tent in just the tunic. One shoulder had slipped down while I slept, exposing my skin to the pre-dawn cold. My bare legs hit frigid air.
Dragons shrieked, the sound drilling through my skull until my teeth ached with it. These weren’t rage-shrieks but terror, the kind that said predator in a language older than words.
The ground beneath my feet moved. The meadow rippled like skin twitching off a fly, and I understood with a sickening lurch that we weren’t standing on ground at all. We were standing on something alive. Something massive that had been sleeping and had just now woken up.
Fen was already on his feet, blades drawn, his hair wild from sleep. His eyes scanned for threats.
The ground rippled again, a long, slow wave that rolled from one end of the meadow to the other. Where it passed, the grass flattened, down from below, not above.
A dragon screamed and bolted, snapping its tether, its rider barely catching the saddle as it launched skyward. We had minutes. Maybe less.
No herald, door, or warning. The next trial had started.
Fen’s gaze hit me and stopped.
I watched him take in my exposed shoulder, the tunic that barely covered my thighs, and my bare legs. Heat flared in his eyes. Sharp. Hungry. He crushed it so fast I might’ve imagined it, and looked away, scanning for threats again. But his hands tightened around the hilts of his blades.
“Get dressed.” Lyndie’s voice cracked from inside the tent, making me jump. “Now!”
I dove back inside and fumbled with my leathers. Lyndie was yanking on her own gear, her face grim.
“They changed the rules,” I growled.
“Fucking elite.”
Yeah.
We hauled on pants, tunics, and boots. My fingers scrambled to secure the laces. Everything took twice as long as it should.
After stuffing our things into our packs, we rushed from the tent.
Reece and Fen were already with the dragons. Fen was saddling Aristus as best he could, his wounded shoulder making every movement a controlled wince. Reece was checking his dragon’s girth. Lyndie’s dragon stood ready, already tacked.
Selira waited for me, her gaze radiating tension.
I ran to help Fen, strapping on Aristus’s breastplate, then waited while he climbed.
His face paled as pain lanced through his shoulder.
Once he’d nodded, I scrambled up Selira’s side, hooking the strap of my pack over one of her spikes.
My thighs clamped on her sides, and my hands found her neck spike.
Lyndie and Reece mounted and latched onto their saddle horns. No reins, but they had barely used them since the lake. They peered around, trying to figure out where we were supposed to go next.
Fen lifted his chin once.
“Stay together,” he said softly.
“Yes.” I pressed my heels against Selira’s sides, urging her into flight.
The world morphed. Reality peeled away like muscle stripped from bone. The meadow dissolved. Sky and ground inverted, then scattered into fragments that made no sense.
Riders who hadn’t mounted yet were sucked into the void. Their screams cut off so fast it was worse than if they’d kept screaming.
Empty dragons flew past us, stirrups banging against sides, reins trailing.
I couldn’t tell up from down. Selira’s wings beat frantically beneath me, but we weren’t flying through air. We were swimming through something thicker, a place that tasted like old magic and even older hunger.
The four of us stayed together.
Lady Severine flew past us, clinging to Heartsbrim’s neck, stark fear on her face. Other dragons shot in every direction, some carrying riders who looked half-conscious. Some carrying no one at all.
The walls around us breathed. In and out. In-out. A taint coated my tongue, and I wanted to spit it out but couldn’t. This place felt alive in a way that made my flesh crawl. This wasn’t a trial space. We’d flown through a gaping mouth and were inside something’s belly.
Tolross appeared ahead of me, walking across nothing. No cough or rattle in his chest. Color filled his cheeks, not the fever-flush that meant his body was losing another battle. His smile reminded me of before he got sick, before every breath became something he had to fight for.
“Eradin.” He reached for me. “There you are. I knew you’d come.”
Grief hit me hard in the belly. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the certainty that he was real, that somehow the trial had given me what I’d come for and I could stop now. I could just stop.
Selira tensed beneath me. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But Tolross was right there. Whole. Well. Everything I’d entered this race to save.
Around me, other riders cried out.
“Father!” Fen’s voice sounded young and broken in a way that carved through my bones.
“Willa.” Reece sobbed. “Willa, wait!”
Riders peeled off, chasing their visions. Dragons fought them, pulling in different directions. I swore I heard bonds straining, ropes about to snap.
Some did give way, with the crack of breaking bones.
Selira lurched beneath me, a full-body shudder that nearly unseated me.
Her wings faltered, one powerful stroke cutting short, and we dropped before she caught herself.
The bond between us stretched thin, a rope pulled past its capacity.
I felt her on the other end of it, holding, but I also felt Tolross in front of me, and I couldn’t tell which direction was which.
Hold on, she said through the bond, but it came through distorted, like she was shouting from underwater. I dug my knees into her sides and grabbed the neck spike until my knuckles screamed.
Tolross walked ahead of me, sending a mischievous smile over his shoulder. He looked so good I couldn’t stand it. “Come on, sis. You can stop now. I’m healed. Come home.”
I tightened my hands on Selira’s neck spike. She peeled away from him, diving to our right.
Every instinct I had screamed I should force her to follow my brother. This was why I came here. This was everything.
Fen flew beside me, transfixed on a vision I couldn’t see. Aristus flew lower. Side to side. Fen didn’t seem to notice. He’d stopped seeing anything except whatever had appeared ahead of him.
“Dad?” The word came out lost. “Is that—”
Aristus pulled him to the left.
“Fen.” My voice cracked. “Fen, look at me.”
He didn’t respond. He strained toward whatever he was seeing, tears tracking down his face.
“Look at me.” My voice cracked on the words.
Nothing. He’d gone somewhere I couldn’t reach.
“Fen.” I drove Selira closer, close enough that her wing nearly clipped Aristus. “Fen, look at me. Not at him. At me.”
His head turned by degrees, like dragging something heavy. When his eyes finally found mine they were glassy, somewhere else, the careful control that usually lived there completely gone.
“He’s real,” Fen said. “Eradin, I can hear him.”
“So could I.” My voice dropped. “This…thing knew exactly what Tolross’s dimple looks like. It knew what I came here for.” I held his gaze. “But my brother didn’t reach back.”
A frown grew on Fen’s face.
“Trust Aristus,” I said. “Just that. Nothing else.”
“But he’s—” His voice broke. “My father’s alive. I can see him.”
“It can’t be real.” Though I wanted it to be true. So much. “Trust your dragon. Please.”
Tolross moved closer to me, near enough to catch the pulse in his throat and the exact shade of brown in his eyes that matched mine and my father’s.
“Please,” my little brother said. “I’m right here. Don’t you want to save me?”
Every fragment in my body screamed yes.
Tolross was everything. I’d risked death and worse to protect him.
But Selira was terrified of something beyond the vision, something buried in the center of this place that her wild-born senses could feel but couldn’t reach. It felt older than all the realms, and it was testing us.
“Come with me, sis.” Tolross smiled, and it was exactly right, down to the way his left dimple appeared first. “I’m healthy. Feeling fine. You can rest now.”
You can rest now.
I wanted to. Fates, I wanted it so badly my bones ached with it.
My hands stretched toward him before I’d decided to move them.
Selira made a broken half-sound again, and our bond thinned to paper.
Tolross watched my hands reach for him, and his smile didn’t change.
That was what stopped me. Real Tolross would’ve looked surprised.
He’d have said something silly and affectionate, a joke that landed badly. He’d have reached back.
This Tolross just waited.
I couldn’t drag in a breath past the thing lodged in my lungs, couldn’t think past the certainty that turning away meant I was abandoning my brother when he needed me most.
Except it couldn’t be him.
I closed my eyes, cutting myself off from his face, and urged Selira to take me away.
Brave, Selira said through our bond.
“Eradin.” Tolross’s voice followed me, rising in desperation. “Eradin, please. Don’t leave me!”
Each word was a knife between my ribs. I felt them sink in one after another until I was bleeding on the inside.
Warmth flooded my palms. The red lines blazed bright enough I saw them through my closed eyelids, my magic screaming toward the vision of him the way it always had toward broken things.
Tolross was not here.
I shoved the warmth back down until it burned in my chest instead of my hands, and I opened my eyes, staring at Selira’s scales and nothing else.
Beside me, Fen followed my lead.
Aristus lurched as Fen’s grip slipped, his wounded shoulder giving out. He caught himself. Barely.
His face had gone to pieces, his careful control stripped off completely. Tears wet his face. His mouth twisted with grief and fury.
I’d worn that face while standing in front of my mother’s shelf, staring at empty herb jars.
Aristus held steady beneath him, and Fen trusted the dragon with everything inside him. His wounded arm had dropped to his side and hung there.
The other dragons flew erratically, their movements jerking and uncoordinated as their riders yanked them toward visions. The wet snapping sound came faster now.