33. Fen #2
The cavern’s black sand held heat differently than normal ground. Stones scattered across the shore radiated warmth absorbed during whatever passed for day in this place. The air wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t freezing either.
Servants strode through the elite camp, preparing for morning.
No one moved in Eradin’s camp. They lay on the ground, trying to rest before tomorrow tried to kill them.
I felt Aristus’s restlessness, his draw toward Selira with an intensity that matched my own fixation on Eradin. Dragons didn’t bond the way humans did. Their connections were territorial and based on strength. But Aristus’s attention on the other dragon felt like something new.
“Are you going to stand there all night or are you going to come closer?” Eradin asked, squinting my way.
My smile rose, and I walked toward her.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, watching me approach.
Selira lifted her head. Aristus made a low sound, and she returned it.
I stopped a few feet away. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You didn’t.” She pointed at the ground. “Sit. You’re making Selira nervous.”
“What about you? Am I making you nervous too?”
“Not yet.”
Her eyes held mine. She was choosing this. Inviting me into her space.
I sat, leaving a careful distance between us.
“You could sit closer,” she said. “Do you think I’ll bite?”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “Do you?”
“Sometimes.” Her lips curved. “But I’ll warn you first.”
I shifted near enough to feel the warmth radiating from Selira’s scales and to catch that scent of herbs and wild places that lived in Eradin’s hair.
She reached up and pulled at the tie, shaking her hair loose. The movement was practical, preparing to sleep, but my throat closed off watching it fall around her shoulders.
“You’re staring again,” she said, not looking at me.
“I am.”
“It’s rude.”
“I’m sure it is.”
She turned, meeting my eyes. “If you have something to say, say it. I’m too tired for games.”
The directness of her statement knocked something loose in my chest. Eradin wasn’t used to coy deflection. Just the truth, laid out between us like a challenge.
“I don’t know what to say.” The admission cost me, but it was honest. “Everything I was taught to say in moments like this feels wrong with you.”
“Moments like what?”
“When I’m sitting too close to someone I shouldn’t.”
The light in her eyes slipped away. “Because I’m commons.”
“It’s not that at all,” I hurried to say. “I mean when I’m sitting too close to someone I shouldn’t ache to touch.”
Her breath caught. “That…is a completely different meaning.” She studied the ground between us. “I’m sorry I took it the wrong way.”
“I know why you did. I’m wearing the crown of the enemy.”
“Not you,” she said softly. “Not anymore.” She pinched her eyes shut, then opened them. “You’re here. Sitting closer won’t do any harm.”
My heart surged up my throat. “You’d let me?”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth before returning to meet mine, and I was grateful to find that gleam back in her eyes. “I’m still deciding.”
“Let me know when you’ve made your decision.”
“I will.” Her head tilted. “What would you do if I said yes?”
The question hung between us.
“I’d—” When my voice came out rough, I cleared my throat. “I’d probably start by touching your hand.”
“My hand?” She arched one eyebrow. “That’s very restrained of you, Your Highness.”
“Fen, please.”
“Alright, Fen.”
“I’m trying to be appropriate.”
“Why start now?” But she held out her hand, palm up. An offering. A test.
I took it. Her palm was warm, the red lines barely visible in the dim light. I traced one with my thumb, following its path from her wrist toward her fingers.
She shivered.
“Cold?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t that.
“No.” Her fingers curled, catching mine. “What else would you do after touching my hand?”
“Are you trying to torture me?”
“Maybe.” She gave me such a wicked smile, but it faded too fast. “Or maybe I want to know if you’re brave enough to want something you’re not supposed to have.”
“I burned my mother’s letter tonight because of you.”
Her smile faded. “Fenian…”
“Fen. And I don’t regret it.” I turned her hand over, studying the calluses on her palm. Proof of every hard thing she’d done to survive. “I’d do it again. I’d burn a thousand letters if it meant sitting here with you.”
“That’s dangerous talk.”
“I’m tired of safe talk.”
She leaned in enough I could count the freckles scattered across her nose. “Then what do you really want to say?”
“That tomorrow could kill us both. That I might never get another chance to tell you that every time you look at me, I forget how to be the person I’m supposed to be.” I met her eyes. “That I want to…” Kiss her so badly my teeth ached with it.
“What?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
“Maybe not.” Her free hand came up, and her fingers hovered by my jaw. “Or maybe you should. But we’re in the middle of a death race. We could die tomorrow.”
“You’re right.”
“And you’re sitting here telling me you… Well you didn’t name it, now did you?”
“I did not.”
Her fingers made contact, tracing the line of my jaw, her touch feather-light. Devastating. “Maybe I have things I want to say to you too.”
My heart stopped. “Why don’t you?”
“I’m still deciding about that as well,” she said. But her thumb brushed the corner of my mouth. “Ask me again tomorrow. If we both survive.”
“That’s cruel.”
“That’s honest.” She dropped her hand to the ground, and the loss of contact felt like mourning. “Go back to your tent, Fenian. We both need sleep.”
“I don’t think I can sleep now.”
“Neither can I.” Her lips curled up. “But we should try anyway.”
“When you crossed the second lake, I saw your hands.” I’d been thinking about it since. “I’m not asking you to explain it, and I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Why not? It’s what the elite do.”
“You’re the only person who’s seen Aristus as more than a tool. And a kingdom that would execute you for having magic is the same one that put a collar on him and called it sacred.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’m tired of pretending it’s not all broken,” I said.
“You’re the crown prince. You can’t say something like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you benefit from it.” But her voice had lost its edge.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Her mouth twitched. “You’re supposed to be predictable. Nobles always are.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“I didn’t say I was disappointed.”
“Someone could see. Someone who’d report your abilities.”
Her hand lifted to the pendant hanging around her neck—a miniature scale the exact shade as Selira’s. “I’ll try to be more careful.”
“Alright.” I stood, brushed sand from my leathers and started to walk away.
“Fenian—Fen.”
I turned back.
She’d lain back down, Selira’s wing already settling over her. But her eyes stayed on mine. “In the second lake, I saw you choose Aristus over everything you were supposed to be.”
Her words settled in my chest.
“The others saw too.”
She was warning me. Protecting me, even now.
“I’m also tired of always doing the safe thing.”
“Sleep well, Fen.”
“You too.” I hesitated. “And Eradin? Tomorrow, when we both survive, ask me again what I want.”
“Maybe I will.”
I walked back to my tent with her small smile carving its way into my memory.
Back in my bed, I stared up at the tent fabric shifting in the wind.
I’d spent my life afraid of failing, my mother’s disappointment, and being anything other than what I’d been taught to be.
I was done with being afraid of the wrong things.