Page 165 of Feralheart

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.”