21. Eradin
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ERADIN
The blood wouldn’t wash off.
I stood in the bathing chamber down the hall from the ballroom, holding the talon-blade under cold water while red spiraled down the drain. The water eventually ran clear. My hands did not.
I locked my knees before they gave way, but the bathing chamber tilted anyway, the edges of my vision going soft and bright.
Stone bit into my palms where I gripped the counter, the red lines glowing faintly beneath my skin. The pain pulled me back into my body, sharp enough to keep me on my feet.
When I tried to swallow, my throat wouldn’t work right. I’d forgotten how bodies functioned, and mine had forgotten how to be one.
My hands locked onto the sink’s edge, but tremors crawled up my wrists anyway, working into my elbows, my shoulders. Vital parts of me had come loose and wouldn’t settle back.
Two men dead before I’d finished gasping.
I’d now seen the two things Fenian showed no one—what his hands did in the dark when he thought no one watched, and what they did when someone threatened me. I couldn’t decide which frightened me more. And I couldn’t decide if frightened was the right word at all.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.
I froze, my hand flying to the talon-blade’s hilt. The footsteps slowed outside the door. I held my breath while my heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to crack them.
The person continued down the hall.
I dragged in a breath that smelled of fear-sweat. My fingers wouldn’t release the blade’s hilt. When I finally pried them loose, red marks striped my palm where the curve had pressed in.
I turned my hands over. The red lines caught the light, but all I could see were the dark crescents under my nails where blood had worked in deep. The stain lived there now.
Fenian’s hands hadn’t trembled. Not when he’d opened a man’s throat with the ease of someone who’d done it before. Or when he’d incinerated another person with magic. Not even when he’d looked at me after, his gray eyes holding mine across blood-soaked grass.
Why had he been in the garden at all? He’d followed me like I mattered.
I didn’t.
The cut on my arm had stopped bleeding, but it burned where my sleeve rubbed against it. A shallow slice, barely worth calling a wound.
They’d tried to kill me, and I’d almost let them.
I washed and dried the blade, the black dragon-bone catching the light. Wicked and beautiful. A weapon I barely knew how to hold. I’d swung it in desperation and gotten lucky.
Next time, luck wouldn’t be enough.
I slid the blade back into its sheath and flexed my fingers until they steadied.
My reflection stared back at me from the mirror, a person with the same face. Except I’d crossed a line tonight I couldn’t uncross, and the taint under my nails proved it.
I turned and walked out into the corridor.
The prince stood in the shadows down the hall. He didn’t speak, just watched me pass with an expression I couldn’t read. I didn’t acknowledge him. Whatever debt I owed for him killing those men would have to wait until after I’d survived tomorrow.
If I survived tomorrow.
The ballroom swallowed me back in. Music and crystal and laughter too shrill. Every lord could be reaching for a weapon. Every lady could’ve paid for those men in the garden.
I made myself walk to the food tables and pick up a plate. Roasted fowl sat in its juices, and all I could hear was the wet sound Fenian’s blade had made punching through ribs.
I set the plate down.
The thin man appeared at my elbow. “You’re dismissed for the evening. Follow me.”
The others had already gathered near the servants’ entrance. Reece’s shoulders sagged with exhaustion. Kerrel stared at the floor. Lyndie leaned against the wall, rubbing her face.
We followed the man through corridors, up narrow stairs and down hallways until I lost track of which direction we’d come from.
The thin man stopped outside a door. “You two.” He pointed at Lyndie and me. “This one.”
He opened the door and gestured us inside the bedroom with the shared bathing chamber between.
Lyndie’s bright smile curved into something real. She gestured for me to enter ahead of her, and I did.
The room wasn’t much bigger than the open room at my cottage. Two beds sat against opposite walls with a washbasin between them. A single sat window above, high enough we’d need a chair to see out.
A canvas sack had been placed on each bed.
“Provisions for the Scorching,” the man said. His gaze slid to me and held for too long. “You’ll need to sign your papers first thing after breakfast. Don’t keep the clerk waiting.”
His tone made me stiffen my spine, though this didn’t feel like a threat. More like a reminder that I was being watched at all times—just like the others.
He left, closing the door behind him.
I tested the lock and deadbolt, grateful both worked. The prickling sensation on my skin finally eased.
I turned to find Lyndie already sitting on her bed, upending her sack.
Supplies tumbled across the blanket. She held each one up like a treasure. A bag of dried meat. Two small blocks of hard cheese. A water flask. Bandages. A tiny tin of salve. Extra clothing—leathers like real dragon riders wore.
“Look at this,” she said with a touch of awe. “They gave us everything.”
I went to my bed and opened my sack more slowly, finding the same supplies, though the water flask was larger. More bandages. The salve jar was the size of a child’s palm instead of my thumb.
I opened it and sniffed. Burn salve. The expensive kind that cost a week of wages.
The difference didn’t make sense. Why would they give me more?
I set the jar aside and examined the rest. Food enough for three days if I stretched it. Water for two. And two sets of riding leathers that actually looked like they’d fit.
“This is wonderful.” Lyndie turned the tin of salve in the light. “They’re taking care of us. Making sure we have everything we need to compete.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s…kind of them.” Kindness never came without an ulterior motive, and I’d bet anything our wonderful supplies were just enough to show they made the effort, but nowhere near what the elite riders would carry.
She set the tin down and started tucking her supplies back into the bag.
“Did you enjoy the ball?” she asked, not looking up.
“No.”
“I thought it was beautiful.” She paused, her fingers stilling on a leather tunic. “I haven’t—” Her swallow took too long to go down, and she finished it off with a bright smile. “Did you see Fenian? He looked handsome in his formal wear.”
The casual way she said his name made my spine stiffen.
“He was watching you,” she said, still organizing supplies. “I noticed him following you when you left.” Her eyes flicked up. “Did something happen?”
“No.”
“That’s good.” Her smile never wavered. “It wouldn’t do to get involved with the elite. Not when we have a race to survive.”
I pulled the scale from my pocket and turned it over in my hands. The heat from it had settled to a steady pulse.
“What’s that?” She slid off her bed and took a step closer.
I snapped my hand closed around it. “Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I’m going to get ready for bed.”
I slid it back into my pocket and went to the washbasin, keeping my back to her. When I glanced in the small mirror above the basin, I found her still watching me.
“Your foot,” she said. “The left one. That’s the one that was injured in the fire maze, right?”
I froze, my fingers beneath the water. “How did you know which foot?”
“You were limping.”
I shut off the water, dried my hands, and turned to face her. “You’re right. I was.”
She held up her tin of salve. “Let me help with that foot. I’m good with burns.”
“I can manage.”
“But you don’t have to.” Her gaze narrowed on my supplies still lying on my bed. “They gave you a good supply. More than what I got, but they must’ve seen you limping too. You should use it.”
“I’ll take care of it later.”
She sucked in a breath, and her shoulders fell.
“No problem.” She returned to sit on her bed and started unlacing her boots. “The race starts at dawn. We need to rest.”
She settled into her blankets. Within minutes, her breathing evened out.
Tomorrow we’d be flying through trials designed to kill us, and she was sleeping like a child without nightmares.
Or like someone who’d learned to steal rest whenever they could, the way I had when Mother was dying and every moment mattered.
The way anyone did when they’d survived something that should’ve killed them.
After coating my burn with salve and wrapping it in a scrap of clean fabric, I lay down on my bed, the talon-blade still strapped to my hip.
I closed my eyes.
Bodies filled my vision. The first man’s throat opening. The second turning to ash. The wet sounds. The smell of charred flesh.
I pressed the scale against my leg until heat burned sharp enough to drag me back.
Gray eyes. The line of Fenian’s throat when he’d swallowed, standing over a body he’d killed for me.
He’d moved before I’d finished understanding I needed his help.
My chest ached with something I didn’t have a name for. Gratitude felt too small. Debt felt too transactional.
He was elite. The crown prince. I was commons, a problem he kept solving when he should just let me die.
The gap between us was too wide. It always would be.
But in the garden, when he’d stepped between me and the killers, the gap had felt like something I could’ve reached across if I’d been brave enough to try.
I shoved the thought down and focused on the scale’s heat.
Finally, I sat up, moving slowly so the bed wouldn’t creak. Lyndie’s breathing stayed even.
Since the window was too high to reach, I grabbed the chair from beside the washbasin and positioned it as quietly as I could.
The chair legs scraped stone.
I froze.
Lyndie stirred but didn’t wake.
I climbed up and pushed the window open. Cold air rushed in, tasting of stone and distance and something wilder underneath.
The scale burned hot enough I gasped.
The pull yanked hard, and I was suddenly somewhere else.
Stone surrounding me. A cavern, ancient and huge. Water rushing nearby, echoing off surfaces I couldn’t see. Cold spray hit my face. Deep. Hidden. Safe.
Mine.
The word carved itself into my bones.
Soon.
Then the vision snapped shut, and I was back in the room, gripping the window frame hard enough the wood bit into my palms.
I knew where she was now. East of here. Deep enough the sun couldn’t reach. Where water carved through stone and made places the elite didn’t know existed.
She was waiting.
I climbed down and dragged the chair back to its place. My hands shook, but I wasn’t afraid. No, I felt something very close to hope.
I lay back down on the bed again.
A wild dragon had chosen me.
The elite had their Unity Bands and sacred bonds and centuries of control.
I had a dragon who’d given me pieces of herself and asked nothing in return except that I come.
The math hadn’t changed. Win or Tolross died. But for the first time since I’d signed the waiver, I had something the elite didn’t.
A reason to survive that had nothing to do with duty or desperation.
I closed my eyes and counted heartbeats while moonlight seeped through the window.