43. Eradin
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
ERADIN
Three commons still breathing through the second trial had to be a record.
I dropped my pack near the tent Reece was assembling, another gift from the prince I still didn’t know what to do with, and watched an imp deliver a scroll to Lady Severine across the meadow.
Only after the imp had flown away did the lady unroll it.
She turned away, facing the outer wall of the cavern.
Then one of the queen’s councilors transported into the cavern to speak with her.
Lord Andra.
Why was he here and why was he speaking with Lady Severine and not Fen, who was the crown prince?
They both turned, their gazes falling on me.
Cold traced down my spine. The queen’s people were here, and they weren’t only watching the crown prince.
They were watching me.
I kept my face blank. Looking scared would only confirm whatever suspicions they had.
Someone had sent men to kill me at the ball.
I ran it backward the way my mother had taught me to read a wound. Not from the surface but from the origin.
Two professionals. They hadn’t been opportunists or men who’d lost money on a bet or made a reckless decision. They’d known I’d left the ball and that I was alone. That kind of information came from inside the fortress, from someone with access to the inside.
I didn’t know what to do with these details, but I would figure it out. I just needed to think about it long enough.
Lyndie, Reece, and I finished setting up camp, a tent for him and one I’d share with Lyndie beside it.
We tucked our bedding inside, and Reece started a fire while Lyndie and I collected wood.
When we’d finished, I grabbed spare clothes from my pack and found a cluster of bushes far enough from camp to change in private.
The clean leather settled against my skin like a small mercy, though it couldn’t wash away what the trial had shown me.
At the stream, I scrubbed bloodstains from my soiled clothes until my knuckles were raw, trying to wash out thoughts that wouldn’t leave.
The elite weren’t supposed to do things like send supplies or admit the system was broken.
Fen didn’t fit what I’d assumed about him, and I didn’t know what to do with that either.
I dunked the clothes under the water. Spray hit my face, cold enough to sting.
I wrung them out and draped them over my arm. They’d dry by morning if I hung them near enough to a fire.
Walking back toward camp, I caught movement near the elite tents.
Three riders stood in a tight cluster, Lady Severine at the center, her posture rigid.
Two others flanked her, a man with gray at his temples and a woman whose face I couldn’t make out from this distance.
Vella’s hand sliced through the air. The others nodded, but I couldn’t hear anything they said.
By the time I returned to our section, Reece’s tent was dark. He’d collapsed inside, and was probably asleep before his head hit the bedroll.
Selira lifted her head when I approached, her awareness sharpening through our bond.
Danger?
“I don’t know yet,” I said, running my hand along her leg. “Maybe.”
Watch. Protect ours.
“He’s not ours.”
Her rumble called me a liar.
I hung my clothes on a makeshift line someone had strung between two posts and found food sitting in a cloth-wrapped bundle near my pack. Bread that wasn’t stale. Roasted meat that didn’t taste or look like boot leather. Cheese without mold along the edges.
Fen had sent this.
My throat threatened to close around the first bite.
I ate, my back to the elite camp. But I could feel his presence the way you felt sunlight on your skin even with your eyes closed.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Fen stood thirty feet away, slightly to the left. When he shifted his weight, I felt it. When his shoulders dropped, I wanted to carry some of the weight for him. The connection threaded through my spine, pulled tight, making my skin too aware.
His expression remained blank, that careful prince mask I knew too well, but I’d seen what was underneath. I knew what he was hiding.
I looked away fast, tucking hair behind my ear. But he’d caught me staring at him the way I’d stare at water after three days in the desert.
Selira rumbled from where she’d curled up nearby.
“Don’t,” I muttered under my breath.
Her laughter came through our bond.
Tolross’s poem sat in my pocket, the paper soft from handling. I pulled it out, running my thumb over the surface. And I tucked it back before the ache in my chest could crack ribs.
Fen stood outside his tent now, talking to one of the other elites. But his shoulders had locked higher than they should be, and his jaw was tight enough I could see it from here. His gaze slanted toward the clusters of elite riders chatting together.
He looked concerned. I wanted to ask him what was wrong.
My feet shifted before I could stop them, my body turning toward him. I forced myself still. Even if I joined him, what would I say? You looked concerned from across the meadow, so I came to investigate.
He’d see right through it. Know that I was watching him as closely as he was watching me, that I cared whether he was falling apart.
Selira’s amusement rolled through me. Yours wants to go to his. Why fight?
“It’s complicated.”
Simple. His saved mine. Mine saved his. This how bonds work.
“That’s dragon logic. Humans are messier.”
Humans complicated. Dragons simple. Her huff rang out. Choose simple or choose slow death. Either way, you choose.
Selira needed tending. I’d noticed wounds when I was grooming her, cuts and crushed scales from beating at the dome. The wounds weren’t serious, but they were bad enough they’d hurt if I didn’t take care of them. I grabbed my medical supplies and walked over to her.
“Let me see your wing,” I said.
She extended it, the membrane stretching taut. Scrapes scored the delicate tissue, angry red.
I unscrewed the salve jar and dipped my fingers in.
Heat gathered in my palms as I worked, the red lines glowing. My magic responded, pouring into the damaged tissue.
Selira’s satisfaction hummed through our bond.
I finished treating the wing and took care of all the other cuts peppering her body before I screwed the lid back on the jar.
Across the meadow, servants moved through the elite camp, making sure their charges had everything needed for the night. Fen’s tent glowed with internal light. His shadow moved inside. He turned, and torchlight caught the line of his throat.
I turned away and headed for the tent Lyndie and I shared.
She sat with her dragon behind our tent. The creature’s head rested on its forearms, his eyes half-closed. Lyndie ran her hand along his neck, her face unreadable.
I dropped my pack inside the tent entrance and went around to sit beside her. Grass pressed into my palms, damp from dew.
“I saw you using magic with Selira,” she said.
My spine went rigid.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she added.
“Why not? It’s illegal. They’d kill me. One less competitor in the Scorching.”
“I could tell, but I won’t. And I need you to understand why.” She sucked in a breath and pushed out the words. “I wasn’t always a commons.”
I turned to look at her properly. Her face had gone carefully blank, the same mask I wore when I didn’t want to expose what I felt.
“I was elite until I was eleven,” she said.
“You were what?” The words came out strangled.
“I know.” Her laugh echoed around us. “Ridiculous, right? The girl who’s been pretending to be commons used to live in a house with seventeen rooms. I can tell you which fork to use at a formal dinner and how to curtsy to high lords and ladies. Very useful skills in Shaleside.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My father was a lord,” she said. “We had a house in the upper district. Servants. Status. Everything you’d expect.”
“What happened?”
“He insulted the queen.” Her voice stayed level, but I heard the tremor underneath. “I don’t know what he said. They don’t tell children the details. We…” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “We ended up in Shaleside and learned to pretend we’d always been commons.”
“Fates.” The word came out in a whisper.
“I remember what we had. I learned elite customs. Dragon handling. How to read rooms and track alliances. How to perform as I should because anything less meant consequences.”
“This dragon…”
“Was mine.” Now her voice cracked. “They took him when we were banished. Obviously, bonds don’t matter, though they didn’t bond him to someone new.
” She pinched her eyes shut before opening them again.
“I spent years learning to be invisible. And when the trial started, I saw him in the pens and convinced the handlers to assign him to me. I told them he was skittish with strangers. That I’d worked with him before in the commons stables. ”
“They believed you.”
“I’m very good at lying when I need to be.” She finally looked at me. “I’ve been pretending to be commons the same way you pretend to be invisible. Because that’s how you survive when the court wants you dead.”
This was ammunition. I could report her. The queen might pull her from the trials. But she was looking at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking and had chosen to trust me anyway.
“Why tell me this?” I asked.
“Because you’re trusting me with your secret. Now you have mine. It makes us equal. You’re the only one I knew I could tell. The only one who might understand what it means to live between worlds.”
I did understand. We were commons, but we didn’t quite fit.
“Are you in danger being here?” I asked.
“If anyone discovers who I really am?” Her mouth pulled upward, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “The queen doesn’t forget insults, and children of traitors don’t get second chances. I’m surprised she didn’t kill my entire family back then. I bet she wanted to.”
“Then why risk it?”