53. Eradin
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
ERADIN
My hands were a problem. They’d gone still at my sides, the red lines fading to a dull simmer, and I couldn’t make myself move them.
My mother’s hands had looked like this after she’d healed something she couldn’t fix, her wrists raw, her palms empty, and her arms hanging like she’d given everything there was to give and only wished she could drag up more.
She used to press them flat against each other until the trembling stopped.
I pressed my palms together, but they kept trembling.
The fire Reece had lit had burned down to coals. Somewhere in the elite camp, a servant was banking a cookfire for the night, the sound of it carrying across the grass. They’d eaten. Drank. Relaxed while their dragons suffered.
“I’m going to fly without the saddle and breastplate in the next trial.” Fen’s voice came out flat. “I can’t do anything about the collar, but I won’t use anything else that restricts him.”
“That’s suicide,” Reece said. “You’ll fall. You’ll—”
“I’ll trust him.” Fen’s jaw locked. “The way I should’ve been trusting him all along.”
About time, Selira said, so dry I almost choked.
“This isn’t about trust, it’s about facing reality.” Reece’s voice pitched higher. “You need the saddle to stay on. Without it, you’re sitting on a creature that could dump you at any moment.”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Fen looked at Aristus. “He’s been carrying me for twenty-three years while I hurt him. He won’t drop me the moment I stop.”
“This is insane.” Reece looked at Lyndie, then at me. “Tell him to rethink this.”
“He’s right,” I said.
“Of course you’d say that.” His laugh came out strangled.
“You’ve been flying bareback since the start.
You don’t know what it’s like for the rest of us.
” He pressed a clenched fist against his chest. “The saddle is the only thing keeping me on. Without it, I’m going to fall.
” His throat worked. “I don’t have a bond with this dragon. He barely tolerates me on a good day.”
“That’s the collar talking,” Lyndie said. “Not him.”
“How do you know?” Reece’s hands were shaking. “How do any of you know that taking off the tack won’t get us killed faster?”
“We don’t,” Fen said. “But I know what keeping it on does. It kills them slowly. It makes them weak when they should be strong. The final trial has the highest death toll, and I want my dragon at full strength, not handicapped by equipment designed to break him.”
Reece’s throat worked. He looked at his dragon, and his face tightened. “If I fall, I’m dead.”
“You won’t,” I said.
“But if I do…”
“We’ll catch you.” Fen’s voice hardened. “That’s what friends do.”
Reece’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded. “Alright. Alright, I’ll try.”
“I’m in,” Lyndie said, but her hands were shaking too.
“Do you trust us?” I asked Reece.
“Yes.”
“Then trust your dragon too. He knows how to fly. The tack just makes you think you’re the one in control.”
Reece’s throat worked, but he nodded.
“I haven’t used anything with Selira,” I said. “That’s why she moves so well. She’s not compensating for runes forcing her fire into channels it shouldn’t go.”
“What else can she do that bonded dragons can’t?” Fen asked.
“I don’t know yet. We’re still figuring each other out.”
More. I felt it through our bond.
What does that mean? I asked in my mind.
She didn’t reply.
“Historically, only two or three riders survive past this point.” Fen’s gaze tracked across our small group. “One will be deemed worthy to approach the Oracle.”
So few riders left. Most of us would die tomorrow.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” I gestured for them to come closer, my voice dropping. “We’re not dying. Lyndie, you take Reece. I’ll take Fen. We pair off but stay close enough to help if someone goes down.”
“We could use communication signals,” Lyndie said, already calculating. “Hand signs for danger, retreat, rally. Simple enough to see across distance but not obvious to anyone watching.”
We settled on a fist for danger, a palm out for retreat, and a circling motion for regroup. Lyndie’s elite training showed in how efficiently she moved. Reece fumbled through them twice before they stuck. Fen’s hands moved easily, but he’d spent a lifetime learning to communicate without words.
Planning gave us something solid to hold onto, a way to pretend we had control when the next trial would do its best to kill us.
“Prince Fenian,” someone called out.
We all turned.
Lady Vella Severine stood at the boundary between our camp and theirs, a scroll in her hand. Her face held calculation and something that might’ve been pity if I thought she was capable of it.
Fen’s shoulders locked.
“Your mother sent a message to me, but she asked me to pass it on to you.” She held out the scroll, the royal seal visible even from where I stood.
“I’m not interested,” Fen said.
“She’s your mother.”
“She’s the queen. There’s a difference.”
Vella’s mouth pressed flat. She glanced over her shoulder at the elite camp before stepping closer, her voice dropping, though not enough that I couldn’t hear.
“Something is coming. Not only the trial.” She paused, and for the first time since I’d known her, the calculation flickered into something that might be genuine concern.
“The other riders have been meeting. Late. When they think no one’s watching.
” Her fingers tightened on the scroll. “Watch your back tomorrow. All of you.”
“Why warn us?” Fen asked. “You’ve made your position clear.”
Her jaw set, and for a moment I thought she’d walk away without answering.
“You know what Alys wanted.” Her gaze flicked to me, then back to him.
“She’d have hated what you’ve become. Even more, she would’ve hated whatever the others are planning.
It isn’t racing.” She lifted her chin. “I intend to beat you, Fenian. In daylight, in front of everyone, the way it’s supposed to be done.
I can’t do that if someone opens your throat in the dark. ”
She set the scroll on the ground between them, though she didn’t let go of it immediately. Her fingers lingered on the royal seal. Then she straightened and walked back toward the elite camp.
I’d spent years learning to read the difference between someone pretending to be concerned and someone feeling it. Vella had spent as long learning to show what she wanted others to read.
I wasn’t sure what I’d just seen.
Fen stared at the scroll, his mouth twisted.
“Are you going to read it?” Reece asked.
“No.”
Fen turned his back on the message and walked over to Aristus, who dipped his head down and huffed softly across Fen’s front.
As evening fell, the others stayed away from us.
Only one rider broke the pattern.
Lord Cedric, the man who’d nodded at us days ago, approached slowly, coming in from the side, his gaze tracking over the quiet elite camp before settling on Fen.
“Your Highness.” He kept his voice low. “A word if you have time?”
Fen hesitated, but grunted.
They moved a short distance away, beneath some scruffy trees that partly blocked the view of the camp.
I couldn’t hear the words so I read how they held their bodies.
As he spoke, Cedric’s hands moved with care, and I suspected he wanted to appear calm, that he’d rehearsed this conversation before approaching Fen.
Fen’s spine went rigid after the first exchange.
Selira’s attention sharpened. The quiet one is afraid.
“Of what?” I whispered.
Of being right.
Cedric left as quickly as he’d come, skirting around the outer aspect of the camp before approaching from where the stream flowed closest.
Fen returned to us, grinding his teeth together.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He reminded me that no one talks about the people who win.” Fen’s throat worked.
“He said his grandfather competed fifty-four years ago and made it to the Oracle. He won.” Fen paused.
“But his grandfather disappeared. The family was told he’d accepted a position in the outer territories. They never heard from him again.”
“Was he truly suggesting they do something to the winners?” Lyndie asked.
Fen shrugged, wincing when he moved his shoulder. “His grandfather may not be the only one. Has anyone spoken of the person who won the last race twenty-three years ago? I asked my mother once, but she brushed me off. At the time, I thought she was too busy to speak of it, but now I wonder.”
I’d been assuming the race ended at the Oracle, that winning meant walking away with your wish and your life.
But if winners vanished…
My belly turned over. I’d chosen to keep racing toward something that might kill me even if I won.
Lyndie gaped between us. “Do you know how that sounds?”
I rubbed my face. “If they hold the race infrequently enough, and let us think that the winner took a new position or created a new life for themselves somewhere else, no one would question it.”
“Holding the race more often would create questions,” Reece said.
“Maybe the court doesn’t want one winner,” I said. “It wants one specific type of winner. The trials may not be testing us. They could be selecting for something specific.” I just didn’t know what yet.
“Why do something to the one who wins?” Reece asked.
I didn’t have an answer. But I didn’t trust the elite one bit.
The meadow changed as night fell. The temperature dropped fast, going from comfortable to biting in under an hour. I grabbed my spare tunic from my pack and pulled it on over the one I was wearing, but the cold leached through anyway.
Our four dragons were restless.
Selira paced, her head swinging toward the valley’s edge like she was following something I couldn’t see. Aristus mirrored her, his wings twitching. Even Reece’s and Lyndie’s dragons, dulled by years of collar damage, couldn’t stop moving.
The dragons could feel something we couldn’t.
“They sense whatever’s coming,” Reece said.
“What is it?” I pressed my palm to Selira’s neck. “What’s happening?”