46. Fen
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
FEN
Aristus surged forward, his wings snapping hard against nothing, and then we were through. White heat seared across my eyelids, my shoulder tore further in the crossing. Then there was no saddle beneath me, no dragon. Just air and the sick knowledge that I was going to hit the ground very soon.
Impact.
Grass. My cheek pressed into it, and I let the cold settle against my skin like a verdict. Alive, then. The relief was almost funny.
Voices broke over me in waves. Hands, too many of them, rolling me over. Touching my shoulder.
“He’s alive,” Vella said, close by. “Someone get a healer. Now.”
I tried to open my eyes but only managed it halfway. The world swam in nauseating circles.
Someone pressed against the wound and warmth bled through. Her magic. She was here. She’d found me.
My mouth wouldn’t cooperate, but I tried to say her name anyway.
Eradin’s face appeared above me, her brown eyes stark with fear. She’d slipped her hands beneath my tunic and pressed them against the wound.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Don’t you dare die after I just—” Her voice cracked. “Stay.”
I wanted to tell her I wasn’t going anywhere. That I’d survived and so had she and that was all that mattered.
But my vision went black before I could make my mouth work.
The last thing I felt was her hands on my shoulder, steady and warm, refusing to let go.
I woke, lying on my bed inside my tent, Vella sitting on a stool beside me.
“The healer will be here soon,” she said, her grip tightening on my arm. “Rest.”
“Where’s Eradin?” I growled.
“I sent the commons away.”
“Bring her back.”
Her gaze widened. “Sire—”
“Bring her back!”
She jumped. “If you insist.” Rising, she left the tent.
Eradin slipped in through the opening not long after. She came over and dropped to the floor at my side.
“Your tunic’s ruined,” she said, not looking at my face. Her hands hovered over the blood-soaked fabric stuck to my shoulder.
“You’re not worried about my tunic.”
“No. I’m not.”
She hadn’t looked at me since she’d entered. Not once. She was looking everywhere else with the intensity of someone who’d decided that looking would cost them more than they could afford to pay.
I understood the feeling.
“I’m alright,” I said.
“Good.” She released a short exhale through her nose. “I need to get this off you.”
“Be my guest.”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“I’m being cooperative.”
“You’re being impossible.” She grabbed the blade from the bedside table and sawed through the fabric. When she peeled the tunic away from the wound, her fingers barely touched my skin, yet my entire nervous system noted every single point of contact anyway.
She dropped the ruined tunic beside her. “Stay still.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Never. Not as long as she was near.
“This is bad. You’ve messed up all my fine stitching.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“During which assassination attempt was that?”
I didn’t answer. The tremor in her lower lip was something I was not supposed to see, so I directed my gaze at the tent ceiling instead.
She rose to get water and supplies, calling out instructions, and in the brief time she wasn’t beside me I had the irrational impulse to reach after her.
When she came back, she dipped a cloth in the water and began cleaning blood from my chest. This close, I was acutely aware that I was not, in any way at all, doing fine.
Her touch was no different from any other healer’s, but the tremble in her fingers each time they brushed my skin gave her away.
“Tell me how this got ripped apart,” she said.
“There were platforms. Mirrors. Spaces where our dragons couldn’t fly.
Alys died first. Her dragon lost altitude and fell, clipping a wing on a mirror.
He couldn’t fly well after that. I told her to jump to Aristus, and she did, but her foot caught in the stirrup.
They both fell. I tried to grab her. Caught her arm, but the weight…
” I swallowed hard. “She slipped from my grip.”
Sucking in a breath, I released it.
“Then Brimmore,” I said. “The mirrors showed him things he should’ve ignored, but he flew straight into one.”
Her hands stilled. “I’m sorry.”
“If only I’d been able to make them understand that their dragons could’ve guided them through it. They wouldn’t listen.”
“Like they wouldn’t listen when I told them to let go of the reins over the lake.” She continued cleaning. “The third trial was about trust, not in each other but in our bonds.”
“Two people are dead because I didn’t lead properly.”
“Two people are dead because this race was designed to kill them.” She wrung out the cloth with a clenched grip, the water turning pink. “You can’t save everyone, Fen.” Her shoulders fell. “Neither can I.”
The way she said my name made my chest pull tight.
“The stitches tore,” she said, examining the wound. “I’m going to have to stitch you up again. It’s going to hurt.” She pulled out the needle and thread, her jaw set. “Try not to move.”
“Can I flinch?”
“Fen…” she growled.
She leaned over me to work, close enough that loose strands of her hair brushed my collarbone. She didn’t notice. I noticed with every nerve I possessed.
The first stitch went in clean. I locked my jaw against the pain.
“You flew through a trial with a stab wound,” she said, not looking up from her work. “What exactly were you thinking?”
“That dying would be inconvenient.”
Her shoulders sagged, but her mouth twitched.
“The mirrors showed me a thousand versions of my own failure,” I said softly. “But you’re the only version of the truth I want to keep.”
“Fen…” She pinched her eyes closed before opening them again and focusing on her work.
Three more stitches. Four. Her hands stayed steady even when mine wanted to shake.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said.
“My mother said healing was a gift that demanded use, whether people deserved it or not.”
“Do I deserve it?”
She didn’t look up immediately. When she did, it wasn’t at my face but my throat.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” she said.
“What’s the right one?”
“Whether I’m choosing to give it.” She frowned, continuing to mend my skin. “And I am. So stop trying to bleed out on me.”
The tent felt smaller. Or I was more aware of how close she was.
She coated my wound with salve and herbs and bit her lower lip as she secured a new bandage, leaning back on her heels after. “Try to keep this intact for more than a few hours. And try not to get stabbed again.” She started packing up the supplies.
“I appreciate your medical expertise.”
“I appreciate you not dying.” The words came out sharp, and she looked away, blinking fast.
I caught her chin, tilting her face toward me. “Eradin.”
“What?” Her eyes shimmered with tears, and seeing them ripped through my guts like the sharpest blade.
“All I could think of during that trial was you.”
“Don’t say that.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes, but tugged away and straightened, clutching her bag of supplies to her chest. “I’ll send Boren in with food. You need to eat.”
“Stay.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
The tent flap rustled as she left but snapped open again a short time later.
Vella stepped inside. “We need to talk.”
“We don’t. We survived. There’s nothing else to say.”
“Two people are dead,” she said, and this time her voice shook. “Alys is dead. Do you know she once told me she hoped you’d consider asking her to marry you?”
“I did not.”
Her throat worked, and she left.
I sat up on the side of my bed and gingerly tugged on a fresh tunic, stuffing my feet into my boots someone had removed when they placed me here.
Outside, I did my best not to stagger.
The trials were supposed to test us. Kill us, yes, but through challenge and failure.
This felt different.
We’d gone through attempted murder—real murder in Alys’s and Brimmore’s case.
Teams clustered together. A scan showed only three other than mine left, none of them complete any longer.
Two of my original five were dead, but I couldn’t take pride in that.
Vella and Blair stood near the stream, their heads bent in conversation. Their body language screamed calculation.
As I walked toward the dragons, the other elite riders gave me space.
Eyes followed my movements before sliding away.
I’d become contaminated by commons association and trust in a bond I was quickly discovering was less than what Eradin had with Selira, but much more than my fellow nobles had with their own dragons.
Two unforgivable sins, my mother would say.
Servants moved through camp, preparing meals. They walked past me without acknowledgment, their eyes straight ahead. One approached carrying a bucket of water, saw me, and veered away.
All three commons riders had survived this leg of the race. A record. I’d be sure to rub it in my mother’s face when and if I saw her again.
Boren approached with two younger servants trailing behind holding trays. “I was told to bring you food and water.”
“Place it in my tent, please.”
I didn’t snap, but Boren’s shoulders went rigid. “Very well, Your Highness.”
How many other servants had flinched when I spoke with them, when I’d been too focused on whatever I was doing to notice?
Eradin flinched sometimes. Small movements I’d started catching because I couldn’t stop watching her. A hitch in her shoulders when elite riders passed too close by. The way her face went carefully blank when one of us addressed her.
I’d thought she was being cautious, but all this time, she’d been scared.
They were all scared. Of me and what I represented, and of the court I’d spent my life benefiting from without questioning.
This was what Eradin lived with every day, walking through a world where basic decency was so unexpected it registered as a threat. Where making yourself invisible was the only way to ensure survival.
“Could I have some of that water before you leave?” I asked Boren. “Please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
The youngest servant gave me a wide-eyed look before meeting the gazes of the others.
Boren gave me a small bow. “Water, of course.” He lifted the glass from the tray and handed it to me. “We’ll leave your food where you requested. Will Your Highness needs anything else?”
“No. Thank you. That’s all.”
The three left.
I drank the water, set down the glass near my tent, and walked the perimeter of the cavern, stopping where Alys’s tent would’ve been erected near Vella’s.
I hadn’t realized she cared.
I stood there for a moment, then made myself turn and walk toward Aristus.
Across the valley, Eradin was helping Reece with his dragon’s wing. Lyndie spoke to them, and they laughed, the sound carrying on the cooling air.
They’d survived together, I assumed by trusting their dragons. They’d become a team in ways my own group never had or would.
I continued toward Aristus.
He’d curled up on the ground, his head low, exhaustion bleeding through our bond.
“I’ll be back,” I told him.
I walked over to Eradin, and she turned, her gaze meeting mine before darting to my shoulder.
“You’re not resting.” Worry leaked through her voice.
“I’m not pulling at my stitches,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Maybe I like having you patch me up.”
“Don’t say things like that,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I actually came over to see if you had any brushes or cloths. I want to groom Aristus.”
“I’ll take care of Aristus. You need to rest your shoulder.”
I reached out and grabbed her hand, though I could only stroke her knuckles once before she tugged it away, her gaze shooting to the elite area.
“I want to do this for Aristus. He saved my life.”
“Then I’ll help you.” She jogged to her pack lying in front of the tent she’d share with Lyndie, returning with two brushes, holding one out. “Let’s get this over with because I’m going to make sure you rest after we’re done.”
“I promise I’ll try to obey.”
Her laugh came out breathy. “You’re terrible at following orders.”
“Only yours. Always yours.” The words slipped out.
Silence stretched long enough that panic started creeping up my spine. I’d said too much. Admitted too much. She was going to—
“Let’s take care of Aristus.” Her voice had gone quiet. Careful. “Before it gets too dark to see properly.”
I walked over to Aristus much slower than I liked, Eradin remained with me, her hand out to grab onto me if I started to fall. A stronger man would shrug her way, snap that I could handle this myself.
I said nothing.
We groomed Aristus. Or Eradin did, with me fumbling around beside her.
She guided my wrist once to show me the direction the scales lay, her grip light and matter-of-fact, gone before I’d finished registering it. I found myself slowing my work after that, making mistakes that required correction.
Aristus turned his head to look at me with one eye.
“Don’t,” I said quietly.
His exhale almost sounded like laughter.
When we’d finished, she took the brush from me and tossed it onto the ground.
“Inside your tent with you,” she said, pointing in that direction. “You haven’t eaten, have you? I asked your servants to bring you food.”
I wasn’t surprised. If left to my mother, I’d starve.
“I drank water,” I said.
“It’s not enough.”
“Will you join me?”
Her brown eyes went darker than pitch. “I shouldn’t.”
Shouldn’t tasted better than can’t.
“It’s alright. I can eat alone. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable,” I said.
Her chin lifted. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
I knew what she meant. She didn’t know what was going on between us. That was good, because neither did I.
“We could eat together,” I said. “Talk. I’ll leave the tent flap open.” I said the latter because I didn’t want anyone seeing and saying anything nasty about her.
Then I’d have to kill them, and right now, moving my arm killed me. No need yet to take on slaying a bunch of elites to prove my point.
Funny how I knew I wouldn’t have to take on Lyndie or Reece.
“Alright,” she said. “I need to do a few things first, but I’ll join you.”
“Promise?”
She met my gaze. “I promise.”
She took the brushes back to her bag and spoke quietly with Lyndie.
I stroked Aristus’s snout. His neck when he lowered his head.
I felt his confusion, and oddly, his shame.
Sorry. Tried.
The thought came wrapped in grief so deep it made my throat close off.
“You didn’t fail anyone.” I stroked the spikes jutting up above his eyes. “I made you fly when you needed to rest.”
His breathing shuddered.
Aristus had known before I had. He’d been waiting with a patience I’d done nothing to deserve for me to stop pretending long enough to see it.
I pressed my forehead to the ridge between his eyes. His breath came slow and steady.
When I lifted my head, I found Selira staring at me.
The dragon held my gaze for a long, unreadable moment before she lowered her head back to the grass, seemingly satisfied with whatever she’d determined.
My shoulder ached.
But Eradin had promised to come and eat with me.
I walked back toward my tent to wait.