42. Fen
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
FEN
Eradin wanted me, and she knew I wanted her back.
The realization sank into my chest like a beast with teeth, tearing through every careful defense I’d spent a lifetime building.
My gaze dropped to her throat. Her pulse jumped there too fast for someone trying to appear calm.
She noticed me noticing, and her face tightened.
Our eyes met and held. My pulse kicked up, traitor that it was, and from the way her breath caught she’d felt it through whatever connection the magic had forged between us.
She dragged her gaze away and strode over to Selira, cupping the dragon’s face and murmuring something I was too far away to hear. She leaned forward and kissed the dragon’s snout, and Selira puffed out smoke in reply.
Through our bond, I felt Aristus’s muted wonder. He was watching Selira the way I was watching Eradin. Trying to understand how they moved together, how they communicated without force.
Want, he sent, so clear it pierced through our muted connection.
He wanted what they had.
So did I.
Selira flew with absolute trust in Eradin, the way Eradin flew with trust in her.
This, something said inside me. This is how bonds should always be.
Aristus longed for that kind of partnership. Years of forced compliance, and he’d finally seen what a real bond looked like.
But letting go of all I’d known meant admitting I’d been wrong about control and the bonds. About everything I’d based my identity on. It meant trusting someone other than myself, and I didn’t know how to do that.
If I fell, would anyone catch me?
My skin felt too aware and sweat slicked my palms. Each breath caught on a place in my chest that wouldn’t release.
It was time to stop fighting. One choice. That was all this was. One choice to stop and feel instead of force.
I walked over to Aristus and cupped his cheeks the way I’d seen Eradin hold Selira. When I scratched his jaw, he rumbled with pleasure.
I saw myself at twelve, forcing Aristus to fly through a thunderstorm because my mother had demanded I complete the training exercise. He’d been terrified, but I’d made him do it anyway.
I saw myself at sixteen, jerking the reins so hard the leather ripped at his scales. He’d bled. The harness had hidden most of his pain, but not all of it. I’d felt the echo of agony and told myself it was necessary, that this was how bonds worked.
I saw last month, when his wing had started trembling, and I’d convinced myself it was fine. That he just needed rest. Because acknowledging the problem meant admitting I’d broken him, and I couldn’t afford that weakness.
Shame burned through me hotter than any flame.
It was dragon-simple. Protect what matters.
I watched Eradin groom Selira. Her hands moved quickly across the dragon’s scales, checking for wounds while giving each section a fine polish.
When had anyone touched something of mine like that?
I was staring at her hands the way I’d stare at water in a desert, and she was going to notice if I didn’t—
She glanced up and caught me.
I didn’t look away fast enough, and her breath shuddered. She knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
Her braid had come half-undone, and drying strands fluttered across her face. Her jaw was set off-center, the way mine did when I was forcing myself not to show something.
“How are you?” I asked Aristus. “You saved us. I owe you everything for that.” I carefully stroked along the top of his head where he’d taken the brunt of the blows, not finding cuts, though it must hurt. “Thank you. We wouldn’t have made it through the trial without you.”
I scratched along his jaw hinge some more. I’d stay here all night, doing this, if it gave him joy.
Aristus’s breathing steadied, no longer catching. I could sense him through our bond again, clearer than before, and underneath his exhaustion I felt something new.
Hope. He thought I might actually mean it this time. That I might actually be someone he was…glad to bond with.
Selira’s rumble vibrated through the space between our dragons.
Good. Satisfaction rolled through the connection she and Aristus were building. Yours learns.
Around us, other riders either set up camp or walked to the river.
“How…” I swallowed hard before speaking again to Eradin. “How do I fix this?”
“Tell him what you should’ve said all these years.”
My throat tried to close.
He couldn’t hear my thoughts. We didn’t have that kind of bond. And he deserved to hear me say it.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out rough. “For hurting and using you. I spent years pretending you were a tool instead of—” My voice cracked.
I felt Aristus listening. Waiting.
The words kept coming even as my throat tried to close around them.
“You’re the only creature who’s been with me through everything and never asked for anything except that I stop hurting you.
I’m sorry it took me this long to see it.
I’m sorry I had to watch someone else treat their dragon with respect before I understood what I was doing wrong.
And I’m sorry that sorry isn’t enough, but it’s all I have. ”
Aristus nudged my chest with his snout.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” I said, unable to stop now that I’d started. “I don’t know how to undo twenty-three years of harm. But I see what I did. And I’m going to spend however long we have left trying to be better. I’ll be what I should’ve been from the start.”
Aristus’s pain started to fade.
More elite riders arrived in the meadow. They dismounted on shaking legs, their faces gray with exhaustion. A few collapsed. Others stood in tight clusters, checking each other for injuries.
There were fewer of us than this morning. Always fewer.
Hearing movement, I turned, finding Eradin standing behind me, tears sparkling in her eyes.
This woman didn’t just see the crown prince or the role I’d played all my life. She saw the exhaustion I carried, the cracks in my control, and the parts of me I’d been hiding for so long I’d convinced myself they didn’t exist.
And she wasn’t looking away.
“Show me your hands,” I said.
She held them out between us. The red lines glowed faintly even now, serpentine patterns that crawled up past her wrists. In the dim light they looked like veins of fire under her skin.
“How long have you had magic?” I asked.
“Since I was a child. My mother had it too. She taught me to hide it. Said the elite would take me if they knew. Use me or kill me, depending on what fit their mood.”
“She wasn’t wrong. The council would want to study you. Determine where the magic came from. Whether there are others.”
“There aren’t. There’s just me now. She’s dead.”
“I saw in your mind. I’m sorry.”
“Ah, yes. We both saw. Don’t be sorry. You didn’t kill her.” She met my eyes. “Poverty did, the kind the court creates and calls natural.”
The old me would defend the system, explain how it worked and why it was necessary. Told her it had brought stability for generations.
I couldn’t make myself do it.
“You’re right,” I said. “About the court and me. I’ve been complicit.”
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she said.
“Me either.”
Servants started setting up camps to my right, while Boren erected something for the commons. Yet I couldn’t look away from Eradin. The exhaustion in her eyes matched my own.
“When the next trial starts tomorrow, stay near me,” I said.
“Our dragons want to be together, and if the magic connects us again, we’ll handle it together.
I know it’s not smart. I know it’s complicated, but if our magic can do what it did today, and if the trials test bonds the way this one did, we stand a better chance of getting through it with each other. ”
She stared at me.
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” I said. “I’m asking you to let me protect you.”
Her throat worked. “That’s not how this works. We’re competing for the same prize.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should,” she said quietly.
“Probably. But I don’t.”
More survivors arrived, spit out by the trial.
Lyndie and Reece talked near the stream meandering along the side of the meadow. They’d survived. Three commons were still alive, plus however many elite riders had made it through.
My mother would call this a severe lapse in judgment on my part. Vella would call it contamination. The council would call it a security risk that needed to be eliminated.
For the first time in my life, I had no urge to perform for an audience that would never be satisfied.
I was just…here. Standing in grass that smelled like spring, watching a woman who’d seen the worst parts of me and chosen to save the best part anyway.
Like when she’d first passed me the pearl, it felt like finally being able to breathe.
Eradin tucked her hands into her pockets.
A strand of hair fell across her cheek. I brushed it behind her ear. She went absolutely still. My hand lingered, my thumb resting on her cheek.
“We need to rest,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be worse.”
She turned and walked toward Lyndie and Reece, leaving me with my entire worldview cracking open.
I felt Aristus’s satisfaction. His approval of Eradin and his contentment at being near Selira.
Our dragons had chosen each other and I stood, watching Eradin walk away.
Boren approached with servants in tow, ready to set up my tent. I should go with them. I needed to eat, rest, and prepare for tomorrow, which would probably kill us all.
Instead I stood in the grass and watched Eradin help her friends. Exhausted but still moving. Still capable. Still—
Beautiful.
“I’m in so much trouble,” I whispered to Aristus.
His rumble sounded like amusement. He butted his head against my shoulder, pushing me gently toward the elite camp.
I made myself turn and walk in that direction, but I looked back.
Eradin stood with Lyndie and Reece, but her head had turned toward me. The fatigue on her face shifted into something I couldn’t identify but felt in my chest. Then Lyndie said something that made Eradin’s attention snap away. Her mask slid back into place.
But before she fully turned, her fingers touched her throat where the dragon scale rested. A reminder of her bond with Selira.
She’d chosen something impossible and survived.
And I was going to do the same thing.