16. Eradin
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ERADIN
My lungs burned from smoke coiling from the canyon. Soot coated the inside of my mouth, gritty between my teeth.
Four of us left. Just me, the blonde woman with tears streaming down her face, the gray-bearded man with his jaw set, and a red-haired man, blank with shock.
I turned to Lykor and checked his tack one more time. If I was doing this, I’d do it right.
A glance up showed the prince standing at the rail, his hands braced on the stone. I couldn’t read his expression, but the set of his shoulders felt too tight for what he must see as a day of spirited competition.
He’d told me the fire maze claimed more than the canyon.
A fact, he’d said. Not a warning.
I dragged my gaze away and walked around to Lykor’s head. Tiny trembles shook his frame. I ran my hand along his jaw as fear rolled through him. His burn scars stood out starkly in the light filtering down from above, white against his ash-gray scales.
“I know it hurts,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
His eye rolled toward me, exhausted, and I understood. He’d been somewhere like this before. The king had made him fly through something horrible until it broke him. And now I was going to do it again, and this time he might not survive.
“Get going,” a handler hissed under his breath.
I’d go when Lykor was ready. Rushing a traumatized dragon got people killed, and if the handler wanted me dead so badly, he could scorch me with magic himself.
I checked the girth strap one more time, taking longer than necessary just because I could.
The saddle leather creaked under me as I settled and stuffed my boots into the stirrups. Lykor shifted, testing my weight, and his breathing hitched.
I didn’t have a choice. Neither did he. I was a monster or a savior, depending on who survived this.
I loosened the reins and leaned forward. “Go.”
Lykor’s wings snapped out and beat fast, lurching us into the air. The entrance to the maze loomed, and the maw sucked us inside.
Stone walls rose around us, cutting off the sky. Narrow gaps appeared at intervals ahead, spaces we’d have to fly through to progress, some even at an angle. The runes carved into the walls throbbed with heat, a red glow seeping through cracks in the stone.
Lykor’s breath came in short bursts, and his wings beat unevenly.
We approached the first turn.
Flames erupted from ground-level runes ahead, shooting up to kiss the iron mesh above, not leaving enough space below them to fly.
Lykor reared in the air, his wings flaring, trying to get away. I flattened myself against his spine as he slammed into the mesh.
A zap rocketed through my body, discharged from the net.
Lykor groaned and dropped, his wings beating frantically to catch himself.
My hum rose from my lungs. From a place deep inside me that knew fear but still faced it.
The dragon’s ears jerked backward. His breathing didn’t steady, but it softened, trying to match my rhythm the way Mother’s patients used to while she treated their wounds.
He flew forward. Heat seared the air. My skin.
And the second turn was coming too fast.
I mistimed it. Flames erupted as we were passing through the gap, fire blasting from both sides.
Heat slammed into my left leg. My boot sole melted into my flesh, and I bit back a scream. The heat kept spreading, climbing up my calf, an alive thing that was going to consume me. My skin blistered under the leather, a burn that would scar deep.
Lykor shrieked but didn’t falter. His wings beat harder, pushing us through.
I pressed my palms against his neck. Heat woke in my hands, spreading up my arms in lines glowing faint red.
His breathing evened, and we kept going.
My left leg throbbed where the boot leather had melted. Each time I shifted my weight in the saddle, the fabric stuck and pulled.
The third turn rushed up to us, narrower than what we’d traveled through so far. We’d have to fly fast, and Lykor would have to turn halfway toward the ground to make it through.
Scorch marks and dark stains coated the wall on the right.
Flames shot out in pulses, a pattern I had to read while flying.
We flew toward where Marda had died.
Instead of pulling on the reins, I shifted my weight, leaning into the turn the way I’d seen riders do at the aerie. Trusting this dragon to follow my body instead of the harness digging into his jaw.
Lykor banked.
We cleared the gap.
And another turn. Another gap. They kept coming, and we kept making it through.
The final approach snapped open ahead of us, wider than the others. But the runes had been positioned differently here, lining both walls, staggered so flames would erupt from three sides at once.
As we flew closer, I counted the seconds between eruptions. Five where we could fly through. If the timing was right and Lykor’s wings held.
I cued him forward.
Flames burst from the walls and floor. I counted, trying to time this perfectly.
He froze mid-flight, then shot toward the mesh. He slammed into it with his right side, his groan of pain echoing around us. Current zapped through me, making my hands go numb and my teeth snap together.
We dropped, and he tried to turn back toward the entrance.
Heat blasted across me as fire erupted on our right.
I couldn’t make him fly through the gap. His trauma was bigger than my voice, my hands, and my desperate need for both of us to survive.
The heat from the scale turned to agony. I gasped, my hand flying to my thigh. It burned through fabric and skin, searing into muscle. Into bone.
But the pain wasn’t mine. It was so much bigger than mine.
A presence slammed into my mind, something too vast for thoughts. Stone surrounded me, old stone that held cold and dark and safety. Hunger, days of it, gnawing at my bones. The ache of a wounded wing-membrane.
And underneath everything, a certainty that vibrated through my teeth:
Mine.
The word came with images of me kneeling in mud, my hands slick with dragon blood, crushing herbs. Me running through the forest while a bonewailer shrieked. Me standing in a stable yard while a bucket spilled water across stone.
Moments I’d lived, seen through eyes that weren’t my own.
A name rose through the heat, not spoken but branded.
Selira.
The wild dragon. The one I’d freed. The one who’d circled overhead and dropped this scale that was burning a hole through my leg.
Claiming me.
The presence pulled, a hook fused to my spine, demanding I come.
Now. Leave this stone tomb and rush to where she waited.
A barbed thing, the tug reeled me toward something I couldn’t see.
My hands remained on Lykor’s saddle horn, but part of me had been drawn through stone and distance to wherever the wild dragon waited.
Leave him. Come. Mine.
The command had weight behind it. Certainty. The way water knew which way to flow.
But Lykor’s terror was a scream in my heart, his body locked so tight I could feel his ribs straining. If I left, he’d die here. Alone.
I’d freed Selira from a trap. I wouldn’t abandon a different dragon to this one.
“I can’t,” I hissed through my teeth, speaking to a presence that had no ears, no body. “Not yet. I can’t.”
The presence retreated, leaving a hollow in my chest that ached worse than the burn on my foot.
Selira wasn’t angry I’d chosen Lykor. Selira was waiting. Giving me time to finish what I’d started with the broken dragon who’d never asked to be here.
Permission to come after.
This wasn’t a choice. It never had been. I’d been claimed whether I wanted it or not, whether it made sense or not, whether it was allowed or not.
Flames erupted ahead of us, and Lykor’s shriek echoed around me. He reeled up, his wings beating at a feverish pace, trying to escape certain death.
I had seconds to decide.
I couldn’t force him through this. Not when he’d already saved me once.
So I urged him down, and he landed on the sand, skidding sideways until his right side impacted with a boulder.
I slid off his spine, tumbling down to the ground. My boots hit sand that was already heating for the next eruption, and my decision was made.
We’d walk through together, or we’d burn.
Father would call this stupid. Silvie would call it a death wish. They’d both be right.
But watching Lykor’s body shake with pain, I couldn’t be the person who broke him further. Not even if it killed me.
A blaze radiated up through my boot soles, the runes getting ready to discharge beneath my feet.
The official’s voice boomed through the maze, amplified by magic. “Rider down.”
The crowd’s roar rushed through the stone channel, followed by calls for my death.
I ran to Lykor’s head and stroked his jaw, staring into his eyes.
“Stay with me,” I said. “Focus on me. Please.”
I gently tugged on his harness and urged him to follow.
His eyes rolled toward me. Exhausted. Full of panic.
I hummed my mother’s tune—my tune—my voice croaky with fear.
His breathing jerked, but he followed as I wove along the floor of the canyon, barely passing runes before they blasted flames into the air.
They pulsed on either side, heat building behind stone. I counted the seconds between eruptions, watching for the pattern.
Left wall: five seconds.
Right wall: eight.
Both walls: ten.
Except when it wasn’t. The pattern kept shifting, or I was miscounting.
I paused, urging Lykor to stop with me. And I waited, my breath as hot as flames, and my hair standing on end.
Sweat dripped into my eyes. The talon-blade at my hip heated until it burned through my pants. Every inhalation smelled of scorched flesh and the tang of old blood baked into stone.
The runes on either side of us brightened.
My grip tightened on Lykor’s harness.
“Now,” I cried out, tugging him forward, running through a gap in the narrow walls.
Flames blasted behind us, heat blistering the air.
I kept humming as we approached another narrow channel.
Fragments lay in the sand, half-buried. A piece of saddle leather, melted into a shape that might’ve been functional once. Buckles fused to fabric fused to sand.
Dragon and rider, mixed together. Refuse left behind by the retrieval crews.
My stomach lurched, but I kept humming, kept moving. If I stopped, I’d see Mother in those melted fragments. Father. Tolross.
Myself.
Lykor’s breathing raged. His claws skittered, scraping stone as he tried to move without stepping on the remains.
This was where dragons like him ended.
“With me,” I said, and Lykor followed.
The final gap stretched ahead. Seventy feet of open tunnel, the longest run yet. Runes lined both sides, glowing brighter than the others. Heat built behind the walls, eager to blast through and burn.
I stopped in the gap between sets of runes and counted.
We’d have seven seconds to make the run. Not enough time to fly. Lykor’s wings were shaking, his muscles spent.
Walking, I could time my steps. Control something in this place designed to strip control away.
I watched one more cycle to be sure.
“Now!”
I ran, dragging Lykor along with me.
Heat blazed in my palms, the red lines glowing bright. I poured everything I had into Lykor through my touch, the same magic I’d given the wild dragon in the woods.
I’m here. You’re not alone. We’re going to make it.
Fire roared up ahead, a wall of it, churning from both sides, meeting all the way up to the mesh ceiling. No gap or space. Just endless fire.
We ran toward it.
Weapons don’t slosh, Sire.
I’d said that to a prince in the stable yard, trying not to shake while water pooled at his boots. He’d almost smiled.
Lykor’s wings snapped out, instinct overriding terror. He shielded me with his body, his scales glowing with heat.
The world went orange-white. A furnace slammed into me from every side, stealing the air from my lungs. I couldn’t tell if we were moving or burning in place.
Lykor’s scales scraped my cheek where I’d pressed my face to his neck. His heartbeat thundered under my ear, too fast, too hard.
Then cool air hit my face, and I gasped, dragging in a clean breath.
The flames died back, and we raced forward.
We stumbled into the far side of the arena, and once we were clear, my legs gave out. I dropped flat on the sand, my palms pressed against the cool ground, the red lines glowing so bright they hurt to look at.
Tolross’s poem crackled in my pocket. I’d made it, which meant my little brother still had a chance. I had to keep making it until there was nothing left to survive.
Lykor dropped beside me, his sides heaving, his wing spreading awkwardly where it had been burned.
I crawled over to him and slumped against his side, pressing my palms against the burned areas. Humming, I channeled my mother’s gift through me. Out of me. Into this horribly wounded dragon.
He turned his head, and his gaze met mine. Rheumy still, but I found wisdom there. Trust that had been beaten out of him years ago, flickering back to life for this moment.
I didn’t deserve it. I’d forced him into the maze and made him relive the type of trauma that had broken him in the first place.
My throat tightened. I pressed my forehead into his side and kept humming, pushing every scrap of warmth I had into his burned scales.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
But it was all I had to give.
We lay in the sand while the blonde woman flew through the course and even after she’d emerged and collapsed on the sand, crying harder than when she’d entered.
Four of us left.
The gray-bearded man stood beside his dragon, his hands shaking where he held the reins. His dragon’s right wing hung at an awkward angle, burned through at the joint. His eyes met mine across the sand, and he dipped his chin once.
Silence pressed down from the viewing stands. Every elite in the arena glared at me. A woman in a blue gown stood up, her face a twisted mask. A man beside her shouted something I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears.
A man in gold-trimmed robes pounded his fists in the air, his face purple. A woman beside him threw her wine, the goblet clattering on stone three boxes down. Someone else chanted, the words lost in the roar, but the rhythm was clear.
They weren’t just angry. They were offended.
They wanted me punished for making this ugly, for showing them what their entertainment cost.
Prince Fenian stood at the rail, his expression carved from stone.
The herald’s magically amplified voice cut through the uproar. “Protocol violation. Rider five dismounted. Awaiting adjudication.”
The stands erupted. “Kill her!”
I remained where I was, my palms pressed against Lykor’s burned scales.
They could adjudicate whatever the fuck they wanted.
I’d made it through.