Page 123 of Feralheart

The dragon’s wings locked, and the pair plummeted, spiraling down toward the eerily smooth surface.

They hit with a heavy smack and were gobbled down. A ripple smoothed outward from where they’d made impact, lapping along the shore, before the surface went flat again.

I’d bitten my tongue, but the pain felt distant, unimportant when compared to what was coming. We had to cross that silver death.

Teams scattered, fleeing across the lake. Some made it. Most didn’t. The shore started to empty except for us.

Selira’s frustration crashed through the bond. We are faster!

“We’re also alive,” I said under my breath.

Lyndie sidled her dragon closer to Selira, her gaze tracking the mist patterns. “They have no idea how to get past this,” she whispered, shooting me a level look. “I hoped one of the elite had read about a similar test in the past. I think we should wait. See how this plays out before…”

Before we tried to race across like the others and died.

“Agreed.” I scanned the cavern, looking for exits that didn’t exist other than one far in the distance, on the opposite shore. Water lapped right up to the steep cave walls, and far above, faelights floated, outlining jagged rock, revealing no way out in that direction.

The air tasted like metal and blood and something older, the way a grave might if graves could exhale. Selira’s muscles remained rigid beneath me, and through the bond I felt her recognition. Her species remembered this thing living beneath the surface. Remembered what it did to dragons who flew too close.

I leaned across her neck.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “How can we cross?”

Badbadbad.

“But how?”

She didn’t reply.

Shapes writhed inside the mist, teeth or tendrils or something worse. They didn’t have eyes that I could see, but they moved as if they knew exactly where we waited. Tasting the air. Daring us to try to cross.

Panic rippled through the remaining riders. Three more teams tried to rush the crossing together. The mist took some, stone spreading faster than screams. The lake smoothed over like it had never been disturbed.

The shore was thinning fast.

My hands cramped on Selira’s shoulder spike.

Movement overhead made my head snap up. Aristus’s midnight scales caught the dim light.

No. Not the lake. Not him.

But Fenian was already guiding his dragon forward, approaching the silver surface with its mist of death. Air scraped down my throat. I didn’t dare shout a warning. If he looked back, he wouldn’t look forward.

I couldn’t do anything but watch.

But he did something I’d never seen an elite do.

Fenian let go of the reins, and they went slack on Aristus’s neck. He shifted his weight forward and let the dragon decide where and how to fly.

My pulse drummed in my ears. Heat that had nothing to do with the bond or my palms flooded through me, settling low in my belly where it had no business being.

He’d learned that from our conversations. A crown prince had listened when a commons woman spoke, and he’d let go of everything he’d been taught.

For me. Because of me.

The knowledge made me dizzy.

He glanced back. Time stretched and compressed all at once. I knew what he’d done. He knew I’d seen it.