58. Eradin
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
ERADIN
The spell flung me away. I landed hard on my side and skidded across bone-strewn stone, shredding through what was left of the shield Fen and I had created. I came to rest against a pillar.
Above me, the runes flared, seeking…
Fuck, no.
I wrenched away and crawled back to Grimstone. Latching onto his collar again, I reached for my magic, determined to use myself as a conduit. Something deep inside me cracked. My magic flooded out in a wave so bright it turned the canyon brighter than daylight.
The collar dissolved. Metal turned to ash beneath my hands, the runes burning away, the whole thing disintegrating.
I slumped onto the ground, resting my face on one clear place of cold stone. Fading…
Grimstone surged upward and released a throaty song while Lyndie’s shrill laughter rang out until it faded to tears.
Selira’s panic slammed into me through our bond.
Use too much.
I couldn’t find my voice to reassure her. Couldn’t think to reassure her. My tongue wouldn’t work. My lungs had forgotten how to pull in air.
Mine, she keened, the word laced with dismay. Mine. Don’t leave. Stay.
“I’m here,” I tried to say, but the words came out garbled.
Not here. Feel fading.
I could feel it too, that terrible lightness that came from using more magic than a body could at one time. I was floating away from myself one bit at a time.
Fen’s arms wrapped around me and he sat, pulling me tight against his chest. “Stay with me, Feral. Please stay.”
“I…will.”
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I tucked them against his chest and savored the wonder of his heartbeat under my palms, steady where nothing inside me might ever be again.
Safe, Selira’s voice gentled, her relief flooding through our bond. Him keep you safe.
“Yes,” I said, pressing my face into Fen’s chest. “He does.”
I’d spent my whole life being the one who kept others safe. I hadn’t known I was waiting for someone to do it for me.
“You came for me,” I breathed against his chest.
“I’ll always come.” His arms tightened around me. “Always.”
“Your shoulder,” I said.
“Don’t care.”
“Fen—”
“I said I don’t care.” His voice rasped, scraped raw. He climbed to his feet, still holding me in his arms. “You jumped off your dragon for Aristus. You broke three collars. I’ll never let you fall.”
“I’m alright,” I whispered.
“You’re not.” His throat worked. “But you will be. I’ll make sure of it.”
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I let someone else help carry the weight.
The pack bond cried out with emotion I couldn’t process. Fen’s awe and terror tangled together. Reece’s stoic gratitude. And Lyndie’s tear-filled shock.
“I need to get to Selira.” The words came out weaker than I wanted. “I can walk.”
“I know you can.” His arms didn’t loosen. “Let me hold you anyway.”
I wanted to argue, to prove I didn’t need him even though we both knew I truly did.
“Just to my dragon,” I said.
“Just to your dragon.”
“I think I need to ride her to the top.”
He studied my face. “You’re sure?”
“I am.”
When he reached Selira, he gently lowered me to my feet beside her, his arm around my waist keeping me steady.
“I don’t know if I can hold on,” I said. But I had to. The certainty of that had sunk into my bones.
“I’ll help you.”
A strand of hair had fallen across my face and stuck to the sweat and grime. Fen tucked it behind my ear with a gentleness that brought tears to my eyes.
“There,” he said. “I need to see your face. Then I know you’re still here.”
I turned my cheek into his palm and kissed it before pulling away.
“Still here,” I said, doing my best to remain upright.
Fen pressed his forehead against mine, and his breath ghosted across my mouth.
This was staying when we could go. Choosing the harder thing because it mattered more.
“Don’t die,” he whispered.
“I won’t if you don’t.”
He cupped the back of my neck, his thumb stroking my nape, his touch so sweet it made my throat close tight.
“Promise me,” he said.
I did. I made a promise I had no way of keeping, and he promised me back.
We both pretended the promises would hold.
Climbing onto Selira’s back took three tries. I kept sliding back down, my ruined palms screaming when they scraped across her scales.
“Eradin,” Fen growled. He spanned my waist and boosted me up, his good arm supporting most of my weight. His wounded shoulder had to be hurting him, but he didn’t make a sound.
I landed between her back spikes in a graceless heap, slumping forward.
Selira’s head curved back, her snout nudging my foot. Won’t let you fall.
My fingers found her spike and gripped well enough to keep me from toppling off. “Take us up, love.”
Yes.
With her in the lead, the dragons scrambled upward, moving the way they were meant to.
Aristus’s wings beat with power that made the air crack, each stroke so strong I felt the wind shift from thirty feet away.
Reece’s dragon’s damaged wing hadn’t yet healed, but without the collar restricting his movement, he could compensate naturally, his gait smoothing into something that worked well on the slope.
Grimstone went faster than any dragon I’d seen, his body built for speed the collar had been smothering for years.
Four dragons. Four riders. Surging together.
We passed Blair’s and Cedric’s bodies, their dragons lying twisted and dead beside them.
Fen brought Aristus around and leaned above the bodies longer than grief explained. When he drew level with us again, his face had smoothed to the neutral man I’d first seen across a blood-strewn meadow.
“Blair’s palms are spell-scorched to the wrist,” he said. “That’s what casting past your limits does while these pillars are draining you. He was our sniper. The shots stopped when his heart did.”
Blair had thrown killing magic at a crown prince in front of witnesses, on grounds where every death was tallied. Men were only that unafraid when someone powerful promised them there wouldn’t be an after.
We continued moving.
Finally, we reached the canyon rim and crested it.
The world opened up in front of us, a plateau of crushed white stone that gleamed like bone dust because that’s what it was. Generations of bones had been ground so fine you couldn’t tell dragon from rider.
A pristine white building rose on the opposite side, a monument to something older than the fates. The structure blazed so bright it hurt to look at directly.
Beneath the light, the same hunger I’d sensed on the slope lurked, ancient and vast and so desperate it made my belly flip over.
This thing had been starving for centuries, and we’d fed dragons and riders straight into its mouth.
Bad place, Selira said, her unease bleeding into my bones. Should not be here.
“We had to come.”
Know. Still wrong. Her head swung toward the building that must house the Oracle, her pupils narrowing to slits. All teeth. No mercy.
“We’ll be careful.”
Careful means not walking into teeth.
Her wings spread wide.
Fen’s jaw locked. Lyndie paled. Reece stared at the building like a man who’d just realized the price of the wish he’d been chasing.
We’d survived the canyon.
Now we had to survive what waited for us ahead.
Movement to my left caught my eye, shadows that didn’t match those cast by the light.
My cry rang out.
The bolt hit Reece in the chest before my cry had finished.
He toppled off his dragon and hit the crushed bones with a sound I’d hear for the rest of my life.
The dragon screamed.
We all did.