Page 166 of Feralheart

“I’m very good at lying when I need to be.” She finally looked at me. “I’ve been pretending to be commons the same way you pretend to be invisible. Because that’s how you survive when the court wants you dead.”

This was ammunition. I could report her. The queen might pull her from the trials. But she was looking at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking and had chosen to trust me anyway.

“Why tell me this?” I asked.

“Because you’re trusting me with your secret. Now you have mine. It makes us equal. You’re the only one I knew I could tell. The only one who might understand what it means to live between worlds.”

I did understand. We were commons, but we didn’t quite fit.

“Are you in danger being here?” I asked.

“If anyone discovers who I really am?” Her mouth pulled upward, though it wasn’t quite a smile. “The queen doesn’t forget insults, and children of traitors don’t get second chances. I’m surprised she didn’t kill my entire family back then. I bet she wanted to.”

“Then why risk it?”

“For the same reason you did.” She met my eyes again. “Maybe I’m a fool for reminding her that some of my family still lives. But someone I love is dying, and this is the only way to save them. My father died not long after we arrived in Shaleside. My mother…” She blinked fast, choosing the words carefully. “She became a ghost whose body stayed but whose soul walked out the day we were stripped of status.”

I was terrified of losing Tolross. Lyndie had already lost her mother. She was trying to get her back.

“The wish,” I said.

“The wish.” She nodded. “I want what they took from her when they took everything else.”

“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said. “About all of it.”

Her eyes went shiny before she blinked it away. “Don’t be. Pity makes it worse.”

“It’s not pity.” I picked at the grass between us. “It’s recognition. We’re both trying to save someone who’s already gone in the ways that matter most.”

“Only one of us gets the wish. I won’t forget that. Neither should you.”

In other words, we could help each other survive, but eventually we’d have to choose between alliance and winning.

“Do you trust the prince?” Lyndie asked, glancing toward his tent.

“I do.” If nothing else, I had that.

Lyndie nodded, but she couldn’t have expected that answer. “Be careful. Elite always have motives, even when they seem genuine.”

She stood and walked over to duck inside our tent, leaving me sitting in the grass near her dragon.

I stayed there when I should’ve gone to bed myself, watching the elite camp.

Fen’s shadow still moved inside his tent.

Finally, I got up and went inside the tent.

Lyndie lay on her bedroll, facing the outer wall. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not.

I stretched out on my bed, every muscle groaning.

The tent fabric glowed faint orange from fires outside. The scent of smoke and leather and grass hung in the air, but underneath it I swore I could smell clean linen and dragon-smoke. Him.

“Eradin?” Lyndie’s voice was so quiet, I barely heard her. “Whatever you’re feeling for him, be careful. Elite break things. It’s what they do best.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Instead I dreamed of the last trial.