28. Eradin
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ERADIN
Selira descended into a world that had gone silent.
The wind changed, filled with the scent of cinnamon-stone and wild places, nothing like the grain-fed staleness of the dragons who’d already started panicking in their perfect formations.
Heartsbrim shrieked. Two others tried to bolt, their riders yanking on reins that bit into soft tissue, runes flaring to force compliance.
I didn’t need to look up to know she’d arrived. I could feel her through the bond, fierce, wild, mine.
But I looked anyway because I wanted to see their faces when they realized what I’d done.
She came down fast, her wings spread wide, her gray and purple scales catching sunlight and throwing it back in shades I didn’t have names for. The pale stripe along her snout stood out like a scar. Wild-born mark. Proof of what she was.
She landed with a heavy thud beside me, her talons spraying sand outward in a wave. Her leg was healing well, showing darker scales, slightly raised from where the trap had bitten deep.
Recognition flickered across a few elite faces. They’d hunted recently and knew someone had helped a wild dragon escape.
Aristus’s body locked, his eyes fixed on Selira.
The crowd erupted. Shock, horror, and fascination bled together until the noise became a physical thing pressing down on the arena. Officials scrambled for rulebooks. Handlers struggled with panicking dragons.
The noble section exploded with shouting.
“Illegal.”
“Wild dragon!”
“She brought a beast to a sacred trial.”
The queen rose in her viewing box, her face composed, but her eyes calculating the response faster than the betting boards.
Someone threw food from the stands.
Selira’s head snapped around, and her wings flared. Flame shot up from between her clenched jaws, and her growl vibrated through the ground beneath my feet. Her talons raked the sand, gouging lines.
Fury lanced through the bond, so hot I gasped. Not words but feeling.
How dare they? My human. My choice. Mineminemine.
Her talons gouged deeper into the sand. Her muscles bunched as she gathered herself to do something horrendous.
The other dragons flared their wings, and some tried to take flight to leave the arena. Handlers shouted and clung to reins, trying to subdue them. Riders backed away to avoid being trampled.
Reece looked concerned but gave me a nod.
Kerrel’s face had paled so much, I worried he was going to pass out.
Lyndie caught my eye. For once, the smile she gave me looked real. She touched two fingers to her heart, then extended them toward me.
My mother used to make that gesture to friends. I’m with you, it meant.
I didn’t know where Lyndie had learned it. But I touched my own heart and sent it her way.
Whatever secrets she carried, we were facing the same fire.
Betting slips flew through the crowd as the odds of me surviving the race, or the next few minutes, were recalculated.
Officials scribbled notes, documenting everything.
The head official stepped out into the arena and strode toward the center, carrying a scroll so old the edges had browned.
The crowd quieted, leaning forward.
He stopped ten feet in front of Selira, a bold move, in my opinion. He gaped up at her, his face going ruddy. “Eradin Carver. Is this your registered mount?”
“Yes.” I said it loud enough to carry.
“Name?”
“Selira, as written.”
“Do you have documentation that you’ll be riding this dragon in the Scorching?”
I pulled the folded form from my pocket, the one I’d signed yesterday. The clerk’s stamp still glowing faintly with magic.
I held it out for him and everyone else to see.
The official’s face went through a journey of confusion to horror to a shade of panic that meant he’d found a circle he couldn’t close. He backed away, and the other officials swarmed him like carrion birds.
Lady Severine’s voice cut through the noise before they could speak. “This is an abomination.”
I could see the moment Fenian made a choice, his gaze flicking to me before he tightened his shoulders, a man about to walk into battle. His mother’s eyes remained on him as he left Aristus and strode across the arena.
What was he doing? He couldn’t. He shouldn’t.
He needed to stop trying to save me.
Don’t, I thought. Don’t throw yourself in front of me again.
But he’d already done it, stopping near the officials. He didn’t clear his throat or ask for attention. He stood with them until they had no choice but to acknowledge him.
“What is taking so long?” he asked in the lull that followed. “Some of us want to get on with it.”
Two officials fluttered their hands. One swayed like she was about to swoon. The head of the group glared, though for only a moment. He must’ve realized who he was scowling at, because he smoothed his face and hefted the scroll to cover it.
“What rule has been broken?” Fenian asked, squinting around. “Because if there isn’t one, we will proceed.”
“This is highly unusual, Sire,” an official sputtered.
“I don’t see the problem. The rider in question provided both a dragon and the dragon’s name.”
The queen frowned at her son.
Lady Severine hurried over to join him. “Your Highness, surely—”
“Unless the rules have changed?” He lifted one brow, his attention solely on the officials.
Whispers erupted from the crowd and more bets were called out.
The officials backed away and gathered together to study the scroll. Flipping pages. Conferring in harsh whispers.
The queen smiled, though it felt worse than if she’d raged.
She whispered to the robed man standing by her side. Whatever she said, his face paled.
The head official cleared his throat. “The rider’s registration is…” He paused, and his throat moved with his swallow. “Technically valid.”
“Finally,” Fenian drawled. He peered up at the sky. “The sun waits for no one.”
A feral sound ripped up my throat, a mix of relief and terror and something that tasted like triumph but burned like tears. I held it back, my hand finding Selira’s leg because if I didn’t hold onto something solid, I’d shake apart.
I’d done it. We’d done it.
A roar erupted from the crowd again.
The official raised his hand. “However, standard safety protocols—”
“Are recommendations, not requirements,” Fenian said sharply.
Silence dropped in the arena.
The official glanced toward the queen, and she gave a nod.
“Rider Eradin is cleared to compete,” the man said with a sigh.
Outrage rolled through the stands like thunder. Nobles stomped their feet and shook their fists in the air.
The commons section had remained silent through the debate. At the announcement, scattered applause broke out, quickly hushed by those smart enough to know celebrating would be remembered later.
Reece gave me a nod.
Lyndie’s mouth quivered as if she was holding back another smile, maybe a real one this time.
Kerrel’s face turned an even darker shade of green.
Selira breathed out a puff of cinnamon-scented smoke that coiled around me before drifting off into the sky.
I’d just broken one of the supports the elite had built their power on, and I’d done it using their own rules.
The official gestured. “Mount your dragons.”
None of the riders moved, though their eyes followed me. They expected Selira to eat me, and frankly, I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t decide she should. I bit down hard on my lower lip to hold myself together and turned toward her.
The crowd expected violence. Wild dragons decimated everything in their path. That’s what they’d been taught. What they believed in their souls. It was their justification for the hunts other than the slick glee they took from the sport.
Selira lowered herself to the sand, extending the wing on my side to make it easier for me to climb onto her back. A choice she was making, visible for everyone to see.
Satisfaction hummed through the bond. She was enjoying showing them what they’d convinced themselves couldn’t exist.
I placed my hand on her wing talon, and heat flooded through my palm, warm and welcome.
Mine. Ours. Let them watch.
No saddle or rune-marked reins. Just me and a wild dragon whose scales had never been polished for display.
I’d survived the first trials by being feral and lucky. I’d bonded with a wild dragon in a cave behind a waterfall. I’d broken their rules using paperwork. But now I had to fly in front of thousands, on a dragon I’d ridden exactly once, in private, where no one could see me fall.
The fear wasn’t that I’d die. The fear was that I’d fail—publicly, spectacularly—and prove them all right.
I touched the thumbnail-sized scale through my tunic. Still warm.
Selira’s certainty flooded back through our bond, a bone-deep knowledge that we’d chosen each other and that was enough.
My hands steadied.
I scrambled up her side. My boot slipped off her leg scales twice. Smooth, they offered almost nothing to grip. I had to hook my elbow over her wing joint, hanging ungracefully until I found footing.
I pressed my face against scales that smelled like mountain air.
Let them watch a commons who didn’t know what she was doing claim a wild dragon anyway.
Selira’s amusement rippled through the bond. She could’ve made this easier by shifting her weight or lowering her shoulder more, but she understood that I was showing them we chose this, mess and all.
When I finally settled on her spine, I risked a glance across the arena.
Fenian’s hands had gone white on his reins. He stared at me with a mix of horror and fascination.
I wasn’t sure if he was worried I’d fall or worried I wouldn’t.
The other riders mounted with stirrups and grace and years of practice while I’d fought my way onto Selira’s back.
Silence pressed down, everyone holding their breath, waiting for her to throw me. Burn me. Then ravage through those sitting on the lowest benches.
They wouldn’t like that I was proving them wrong and making them watch.
An official stepped forward with another scroll. “Team assignments.”
Nine elite teams were called, each announcement punctuated with horns, house banners unfurling, and cheers from their sections.
I’d heard many of the names whispered in the aerie stables, those from bloodlines that went back centuries.
Riders who’d been flying almost from the moment they could walk.
I stopped listening after the third team. The pattern was clear. Five members each, their gear worth more than my home.
The loudest cheers came for Fenian’s team. Lady Severine smiled demurely and shot a glance his way through her lashes. The other team members congratulated each other.
Fenian’s expression didn’t change. He sat on Aristus, his hands steady on reins he held too carefully.
Lady Severine said something from beside him that made him nod. Playing the gracious teammate while her dragon still had its hackles raised from Selira’s arrival.
He didn’t look at her when he answered. His gaze cut to me instead, quick enough I almost missed it. Checking. Making sure I was still upright. Still breathing.
Still here.
The attention made my stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
After all the elite teams had been announced, the official turned to us.
“Commons team: Eradin, Lyndie, Reece, and Kerrel.” Said without horns or applause.
The four of us had been thrown together as an afterthought, mounted on mismatched dragons that had been broken by the system with mismatched riders the system wanted gone.
The math was simple. We were expendable.
Someone in the upper section shouted, “At least the wild dragon will make it interesting when it kills her.”
Laughter rippled through the stands.
They’d dismissed us already.
Selira huffed. Burn all?
“No,” I whispered. “We can’t.”
She grumbled.
Reece sat on his scarred dragon with his wife’s scarf still wound around his wrist. A bright smile filled Lyndie’s face. Kerrel appeared halfway toward a corpse.
Dragons lined up, handlers making final adjustments to tack gleaming with rune-work and expense.
Our commons dragons shuffled into something resembling a line.
Kerrel’s hands shook so badly a handler had to physically restrain his dragon to keep it from bolting.
The massive wooden door waited ahead, wide enough three dragons could fly through side by side.
A voice boomed across the arena. “The first trial begins at the sound of the horn. There are no rules. Those who complete the trial continue. Rewards will be given for the top three finishers of the first leg of the race.” He paused, and his voice roughened.
“Ride hard. The Scorching rewards the swift as much as the worthy. The Oracle waits at the end for those who survive to reach her.”
My gaze found Fenian across the arena and got stuck there.
He looked carved from ice, but his chest rose and fell.
His throat moved when he swallowed, that vulnerable strip of skin I’d found myself watching in the ballroom and the kitchen when I should’ve been paying attention to anything else.
My skin prickled.
His mother’s gaze shot from her son to me and back again.
Stone-dust coated my tongue. The weight of thousands of eyes pressed down on us. Selira’s heartbeat thrummed through my thighs, and the bond hummed between us.
A horn blast shattered the air, and the massive door groaned open.
Darkness yawned beyond.
Tolross’s face flashed through my mind, pale against his pillow. Every wingbeat I survived was another step closer to a wish that could save his life.
Yes, I thought.
Yes.
Selira’s muscles coiled beneath me, her talons raking sand.