51. Eradin
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
ERADIN
Tolross’s poem rested in my pocket.
I still hadn’t opened it yet.
I sat against Selira’s flank, her heat seeping through my leathers while the rest of the survivors processed what we’d survived in their own isolated corners of the meadow. Her breathing came shallow, slower than usual.
I’d carried the poem through every trial, yet I didn’t know if I was brave enough to read it.
I pulled it out and laid it on my thigh, staring down at the last piece I might have of my little brother.
My hands trembled when I tried to open it. I made them stop and pressed the paper against my chest.
Reading it would make refusing Tolross real. It would confirm I’d chosen the trials over saving him, even when the vision had offered me everything I was racing for.
And I wasn’t ready to give up. It wasn’t about that. It was about needing this connection to my little brother while he still lived.
Footsteps approached from my left. I knew who it was before I glanced that way.
Fen’s shoulder drooped as he walked. His wound must be killing him. He’d had no time to rest.
He stopped a few feet away, his gaze gliding over me.
I thought he might keep walking, but he didn’t.
Easing past me, he lowered himself to the ground on my right, leaning back against Selira.
Our arms met.
I’d been fracturing, and now I was not.
Yours, Selira said, so quietly I wasn’t sure if it was meant for me or for him.
We sat in silence, neither of us reaching for words. After the trial, silence was the only honest thing left.
Minutes passed, maybe more. Time felt strange now. It had been stretched and compressed until the measurements stopped meaning what they should.
“My little brother painted,” I said.
The words came from nowhere. Or maybe they’d been building since I’d refused his vision and they needed somewhere to go.
Fen turned his head to watch my face, waiting.
“Suns, mostly. On cups and bowls and anything that would hold still long enough.” I traced a finger along the poem’s edge.
“He couldn’t get outside much. Lately, not even to the window to feel the sun on his skin.
He said painting the sun on something brought the warmth inside.
That he could feel it in his heart.” I held up the paper.
“He wrote poetry too, starting when he was eight. Our mother taught him.”
“She taught you as well.”
“Different things.” I swallowed past the thickness in my throat. “She taught me healing. Herbs. How to make my hands do what needed to be done. But Tolross got the art. The words.”
Fen shifted closer until our thighs touched.
“Before he got sick, he’d recite poems while I worked.
Made up verses about dragons and forge fires and silly things that made no sense.
” The memory pulled a sound from me that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt.
“He’d perform them with full dramatic gestures.
Father would pretend to be annoyed, but he’d be smiling. ”
“What happened to him?”
“He got sick. Slowly, then all at once.” The paper crinkled in my grip. “But he’s still in there. Still making art even when his hands shake and he coughs so much he spits up blood. He’s still writing even though every breath costs him.”
My fingers twitched on the poem, and I laid it flat on my thigh, smoothing it with my fingers.
“He gave me this before I left. He told me to read it when I wanted to give up.”
“Have you read it yet?”
“No.” My voice cracked. “I’m not giving up, but I think it’s time. But once I read it, I’ll know I should’ve saved him when I had the chance. That I chose wrong.”
“You chose survival.”
“That’s the same thing as wrong, sometimes.”
I unfolded the poem.
Tolross’s handwriting filled the page, each letter formed with the care he used when his hands weren’t cooperating.
“Do you want me to—”
“I need to read this out loud.” Needed to hear my brother’s words in my voice even though it would gut me.
I read.
When your boots are full of stones
and the road forgot its end,
when the sun is someone’s memory
and the dark won’t be your friend.
Walk anyway.
When the choice is die in quiet
or keep breaking toward the light,
when giving up tastes sweeter
than another losing fight.
Fight anyway.
My throat burned. I knew what he’d been thinking when he’d written it, because I knew my little brother, from the exact slope of his handwriting when his hands were shaking to the way he’d drawn the letters of anyway larger than the rest. The word needed more space to breathe.
He’d written this for a person who might not come back.
Tears trickled down my face.
“I left him.” The words broke out of me. “He needed me, and I left him and in that trial, he was right there. Healthy and whole. Everything I’ve been fighting for. And I turned away.”
He started to speak.
“Don’t.” I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to shove the tears back in. “Don’t tell me I did the right thing. Don’t—”
“Shhh.” He turned and his hand found my shoulder, the touch gentle enough it made everything worse. “I’m not telling you anything.”
My tears came harder.
The words blurred. I tried to refold the paper, but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. The creases wouldn’t line up. The paper crinkled oddly.
“Eradin.” Fen’s voice came from somewhere far away.
“He gave this to me knowing it might be the last time he’d see me.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. “He wrote this knowing he might die while I was gone, and these would be his last words to me. That I’d be reading them, and he’d already be—”
The paper tore, a small rip along one of the worn creases. It had been compressed in my pocket too long.
I’d done this. My own hands had torn the one thing he’d given me to carry.
A small, broken sound slipped from my throat.
Fen’s hands covered mine before I could try to fix it myself. He took the poem from my grip and smoothed it flat on his thigh, refolding it along the creases that were still intact. He took more care with the worn paper folds than most people took with things that cost a fortune.
He held it out to me after. “He’s not gone yet. You’re still fighting for him. That’s what this says. Fight anyway. He knows you are.”
I took the poem back. The small tear felt like an accusation.
“What if I can’t save him?” I could barely force the question out. “What if I do everything right and win and the wish still isn’t enough?”
“Then you’ll know you tried.” His throat worked. “That’s more than most people get.”
I curled forward, the poem clutched to my chest, and the last parts of me I’d been holding together broke loose. Grief poured out in sounds I’d been swallowing since my mother died. Since Tolross got sick. Since I’d learned that wanting things only made losing them hurt more.
Fen didn’t try to stop it.
He put his arm around my shoulders and tugged me into his side. He held me while I cried against his chest, soaking through his tunic.
Grief was a wretched thing. It ripped through you when you least expected it, as if it could sense when you felt low and just wanted to shove you over the edge.
When I could breathe again and the tears had slowed enough I could speak without my voice shattering, I found him staring at nothing.
“I saw my father,” he said.
The words landed in the quiet between us.
“He looked exactly like I remembered. Before—” His throat worked. “It was so long ago, but I remembered. He said my name. Fen. He was the first to call me Fen. Never Fenian, the name my mother preferred. Fen.”
I waited.
“He told me he was proud of me. That I’d grown into someone strong.” Fen’s jaw locked. “It was everything I’ve wanted to hear for twenty-three years. And I flew away from it.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say that wouldn’t cheapen it.
But I reached over and stroked my fingers across his hand like I would touch an injured creature to let them know their pain was seen even when it couldn’t be fixed. He turned his hand over and linked our fingers together.
We stayed like that for a while, both of us holding onto grief that didn’t have anywhere else to go.
After a while, my body remembered it had other purposes besides grief. I shifted, wincing when my muscles protested.
“I should tend to the dragons,” I said.
Fen tilted my chin up, stroking along my jawline. “Your dragon is fine.”
“Aristus is still saddled.” I pushed to my feet, my legs shaking. “And Reece is lying in the grass. His dragon needs care.”
Understanding flickered across his face. I needed to move. Do something useful. Stop wallowing in pain that had nowhere productive to go.
He stood, slower than usual, wincing.
We walked to where Aristus waited. The black and silver dragon had lowered himself to the ground, his sides heaving with each breath. The tremor in his wings had spread to his flanks, a constant flutter beneath scales that looked duller than they should.
I approached slowly, my hands already reaching for the saddle straps.
My palms prickled with heat I hadn’t summoned.
“Let me help.” Fen moved to Aristus’s other side.
We worked the buckles free. The saddle came off in my hands, and I set it aside.
The sound Aristus made vibrated through his chest.
I ran my hands along his neck, checking for pressure points. Feeling for inflammation. My magic stirred beneath my skin, responding to something it sensed even though I couldn’t identify what it was yet.
The collar sat where it always did, warm from Aristus’s body.
The moment my fingers got close, heat exploded in my palms, though this wasn’t the gentle warmth of healing. This burned like touching metal left too long in a forge fire.
I jerked back with a gasp.
Fen was beside me in an instant. “What’s wrong?”