51. Eradin #3
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re going to find out.”
Reece staggered over, wiping his eyes. “What’s happening?”
Fen explained, his voice a long rasp. Reece listened, and when Fen finished, Reece studied his own dragon, scarred, damaged, and discarded.
“They knew.” Reece’s voice shook with emotions darker than grief. “They knew what the collars did, and they used them anyway.”
Fen sighed. “Reece, I’m sorry.”
“No.” Reece’s eyes met Fen’s, and I saw the moment the older man decided something. “You’re not one of them anymore. Not after crossing that line. So you don’t need to apologize. But they do.” He gestured toward the elite camp. “Some of them would kill to keep this secret.”
Fen didn’t argue with Reece’s assessment. He’d stiffened, and that was its own kind of answer.
“We need to talk about what happens when we reach the Oracle,” I said.
The silence that followed became the loudest thing in the meadow.
“One of us wins,” Lyndie finally said. “The rest of us lose.”
I knew what I was about to say before I said it. I also knew what it would cost me. I kept picturing Tolross’s face in the trial, the color in his cheeks, and the lack of a rattle in his chest. It was all I could do to breathe.
But this was the only way.
“We need to figure out a way to share the wish,” I said.
Fen’s eyebrows lifted, but I could tell the idea held appeal.
Reece shook his head. “Wishes don’t work like that.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Eradin.” Lyndie’s voice came out careful. “You came here for your brother.”
“I know why I came.”
“Then you know what you’ll be giving up if it doesn’t work.”
“Yes.” I dragged in air, but it didn’t feel like enough.
“I know exactly what I’ll be giving up. But I’ve watched us keep each other alive when the elite built these trials to kill as many of us as possible.
I’m not going to spend the last part of this race treating you three as obstacles.
” I met their eyes, one at a time. “Maybe it can’t be split.
Maybe we try and it fails and one of us gets the wish and the others go home empty. But we try.”
No one said anything for a very long time.
“The system says a lot of things,” Lyndie said. She lifted her chin and her gaze locked on mine. “That doesn’t mean we have to listen. I say we try.”
Reece looked at his dragon. “Yes, we try.”
Fen nodded.
It wasn’t a solution, but it was a choice to keep trying to save each other even when we were supposed to be competing. To refuse the easy answer one more time.
Pack, Selira said. As if it were that simple. As if this had always been the answer.
Lyndie and Reece left to take care of their dragons.
“I should check your bandage,” I told Fen.
“It’s fine.”
“Fen.”
He sighed and sat on the ground so I could reach his shoulder. Kneeling beside him, I peeled back the edge of his tunic, my fingers gentle on the wet fabric.
“You’re bleeding again.”
“Yes.”
I worked quickly, checking the stitches I’d put in. They’d held but the wound wept fresh blood, bright red against his tanned skin.
“Hold still.”
My magic responded to my call, warmth flooding from my palms into his torn flesh. He relaxed under my touch, the pain easing as the blood stopped flowing and the skin puckered together.
I slumped back after I’d finished.
“You’re going to kill yourself taking care of me,” he said.
“I can’t do anything else. You know that.”
“You’re getting better at healing.” He stroked a few strands of hair behind my ear before his hand dropped to his thigh. “You’re getting stronger.”
He caught my wrist and his thumb brushed across the inside, over my pulse that was trying to beat its way through skin.
“When this is over and someone has won and we—” His voice cracked. “I need you to know that you weren’t just—”
I pressed my fingers to his lips before he could finish.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” I said. “I already know.”
The servants were getting closer, setting up the elite camp. Soon, we’d have to figure out where we belonged now that Fen had defected and I’d let him stay.
“We should…”
“Yes, we should.”
His hand stayed on my wrist and mine stayed on his chest, both of us stealing a few more seconds before the world crowded back in.
We were going to have to choose between those we loved. We both knew it. The wish-sharing proposal was hope, and hope was worth protecting, but underneath it the math hadn’t changed.
Tolross was still dying.
Aristus was still dying.
Our hands dropped away, and we stepped back.
The meadow stretched between us and the elite camp. Servants moved around tents with trays and the certainty that the world would sort itself out the way it always had.
Fen watched them for a moment.
Then he turned his back on them and continued to remove Aristus’s tack, his good hand going through the familiar motions with a steadiness his face didn’t match.
I watched him work, the scale warm at my throat, the poem folded carefully in my pocket with its small tear and its two words that still felt like the truest thing anyone had ever said to me.
Fight anyway.
I intended to.