47. Eradin
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ERADIN
The trial magic had left fingerprints.
That was the only way I could describe the sensation of Fen’s emotions still bleeding through my skin, his fear and his want pressing into me like a brand I couldn’t wash off.
I’d felt other people’s feelings before, through Selira and even subtly through the magic in my palms when I was healing.
This was different. This lived in my bones.
I grabbed my things and went to the stream, finding an isolated place where the trees grew thick and no one else was around.
Stripped, I leaped in. The cold hit, merciless, and when I surfaced, gasping, I started scrubbing.
Hair, scalp, and the back of my neck. I worked until my skin was ruddy and my fingers had gone clumsy with cold.
It didn’t help. The ghost of his hand reaching for mine, stroking mine, stayed exactly where it had landed.
When I climbed out, my skin pebbled.
I dried off and pulled on the clean clothes I’d washed last night. Soft leather that didn’t reek. The fabric settled against my skin, and I caught myself smoothing the tunic over my hips.
This was stupid.
We’d survived three trials, but that didn’t erase twenty-seven years of learning exactly what I was worth to his people.
I should eat with Lyndie and Reece. My people. The ones who understood what it meant to be commons in a world designed to erase us. Who wouldn’t look at me like Fen had when the magic stripped us both bare, as if I was someone precious instead of disposable.
I needed to stay away from him.
Dropping to my knees beside the stream, I washed the clothing I’d worn today, my wet hair dangling in my face, sending droplets onto the cold-prickled skin exposed at the top of my tunic.
Our trial had been easier than the others described.
Not marginally, but substantially.
The darts shooting from the walls of the long tunnel had been spaced wide enough that even Reece’s damaged dragon had cleared them without a problem. The timing had been generous. The corridor well-lit.
I’d heard the other elite riders describing trials that had stripped them to the bone like Fen’s had.
We’d emerged without bruises.
I turned it over the way I did a coin when I suspected it had been shaved. The weight felt wrong. The balance felt off. Had we stumbled into a trial meant for someone else? Impossible, given the doors had opened specifically for us.
Or the trial had been adjusted. Softened. Which meant someone had a reason to keep us breathing past the third gate.
After wringing out my clothing, I stood, watching the water run past, trying to make some sense of it all.
Luck could run out. Someone with a reason to keep you alive could always find a better reason to change their mind.
I strode back to the tent I’d share with Lyndie that my fellow commons had set up before we arrived, though I doubted someone had told them we’d survive and to make sure we’d be comfy.
I draped my clothing over boulders and started toward the elite camp.
“Eradin.”
I turned. Lyndie and Reece had set up a small meal near their tent. Bread, cheese, and fruit, laid out on a cloth, water flasks beside it.
Reece waved me over.
“Join us,” he said.
“I have other plans.”
Lyndie’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes solidly met mine. She knew exactly what I meant.
Heat crawled up my neck. “I promised I’d check on someone’s shoulder wound.”
“Right.” Lyndie tore a piece of bread, her movements careful. “The prince’s shoulder.”
Reece’s face tightened, and he kept his voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “He looks at you differently than other elites look at commons.”
“I don’t—”
He held up a hand when I started to speak. “I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying be careful. The world won’t let you have it, even if you both want it.”
Did everyone see what I’d been trying to bury deep enough to suffocate before they noticed?
My face went hot. “I don’t—”
“Eradin.” Reece’s voice softened. “I’ve been watching people survive by reading what they’re not saying for years. And the way you look at him…” He shook his head. “Just be careful, alright? Some things the court won’t forgive.”
Lyndie stood, walking around the small fire to where I’d frozen halfway between their camp and escape. Her hand landed on my arm. “Be careful with your heart. You can’t heal that kind of wound.”
Warmth flooded through me. These people cared. They saw me running toward something dangerous and were trying to warn me away
I had to win for Tolross, but it was getting harder to wish I’d beat them.
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
Lyndie squeezed my arm before letting go.
They were two people who’d survived impossible things sitting on cold sand, warning me about something I already knew. Reece still rubbed the band of skin where his wife’s scarf had been. Lyndie had told me the truth of her past, trusting me not to use it against her.
When we reached the Oracle, only one of us could ask. I tried not to think about which one of us it needed to be.
I walked away quickly. My pulse kicked up with each step toward the elite camp.
The stream curved through the valley, and I followed it, telling myself I was taking the scenic route. Not stalling or giving myself one more chance to turn around.
I came across Fen crouched beside a large stone near the water’s edge. His body had gone rigid, frozen in a way that made my breath come to a halt.
I approached slowly, my footsteps quiet on the grass. He didn’t hear me. Or, if he did, he didn’t turn. Whatever he was seeing had consumed him completely.
I stopped beside him and looked down.
Scratches in the stone, weathered but readable. A single word carved with something sharp.
Jaris.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
He flinched so hard his body jerked. His head snapped up, and he stared at me like he didn’t know where he was. Like he’d been drowning, and I’d just yanked him to the surface.
His throat worked.
“Jaris.” The word came out strangled. “It was—” He stopped. Started again. “My mother’s pet name for my father. No one else called him that.”
His hand was shaking where it hovered above the carving, not quite touching.
The scratches appeared old, worn smooth by time and water. Years old.
“He competed in the Scorching,” I said.
“He supposedly died in trial two.”
“Supposedly?”
His jaw locked. “We’re between trials three and four.”
“Each leg of the race is supposed to be different. The magic changes them.”
“The rest spots remain the same.”
My brain caught up fast, connecting pieces that shouldn’t fit.
This shouldn’t exist in his father’s timeline, not if he’d died in trial two the way the official story claimed.
Unless—
“I think he made it further than they said.” Fen’s voice dropped to barely audible. “But why would she lie about which trial killed him? Dead is dead.”
I searched for explanations that made sense. “Or someone else carved it. A memorial, maybe.”
We both knew that wasn’t it.
“She lied.” Fen cracked. His face. His voice. And, I suspected, his soul. Twenty-three years of certainty shattered behind his eyes. “My mother lied about how he died.”
His hands curled into fists on his thighs. The tremor in his fingers spread up his arms, into his shoulders. His breathing went shallow and rapid, the kind that came before either violence or collapse.
Every part of me wanted to reach for him. To steady him before he flew apart completely. But I’d never touched him except to heal, and this wound wasn’t one I knew how to fix.
I gripped his good shoulder. “Maybe the real question is… Did this trial kill him at all?”
His face blanched.
If his father had made it this far and he’d carved his name in this stone, then the story told about his death was a lie. And if his mother had lied about when he died, what else had she lied about?
“The blade someone stabbed you with.” I said it before he could. “It was your father’s initial in the hilt, right? I told you that Lord Andra visited Lady Severine. I saw them talking. Someone could be managing us, keeping certain riders alive, removing others, and watching how we respond.”
His head tilted. “Why how they respond?”
I frowned. “I’m not sure, but we were given a different trial than the others for the second one. I think…” I met his gaze, holding it. “I think that someone wanted to see if you’d abandon me or I’d leave you behind.”
“Testing us. The Oracle?”
It could be part of the “proving worthy” they’d mentioned at the start.
“Does the Oracle control the test or does someone else?”
“You mean the fates?”
I shrugged and gestured to the rock. “We’re dealing with a couple of mysteries, or one, all wrapped together.”
“Someone knew my father was alive at least until this rest spot. This person has known for twenty-three years and needed to keep that information hidden. They needed me to believe a story that kept me manageable.” His voice had gone very even.
“This person has access to the trials, the fortress, and to professional killers and ornate blades with personal markings.” He lifted his chin.
“They used my father’s blade to stab me.
Monogrammed. I remember him carrying it always.
” He dragged his palms across my face. “My mother.”
“We might be wrong,” I said, because one of us had to.
“I don’t think we are.”
He ran his fingertip across the marking on the stone.
That was what decided it for me. Not the shaking that had stopped, the cracked voice, or the misery in his eyes, but the fact that he was seeking some sort of connection in the carving. The ground had gone out from under him, and his body didn’t know yet that he’d already fallen.
I’d stood at my mother’s herb shelf for an hour after she died. Counting jars. Not moving.
“Come with me.” I gently touched his arm. “Let’s get you somewhere you can sit down.”
He stood and followed me without argument, his body going through the motions while his brain tried to process what he’d found. What all this could mean.