Page 168 of Feralheart

The bellow shattered through camp.

I jolted awake, slamming back into my body.

For one warped moment both were true at once. His hands on my skin and his name on a stranger’s lips. My skin still burned where the dream had touched it, and the camp was shouting that he was dead. The two could not share the same night.

The dream dissolved. The meadow, the tent, and the cold grass under my bedroll. All of it was real and Fen was⁠—

No.

The word tried to claw its way up my throat. My hands were already scrambling for the tent opening before my brain caught up to what my body already knew.

Fen.

They’d killed Fen.

The terror was so big it couldn’t fit inside my chest. All I could think was not him not him not him like a prayer to fates I wasn’t sure existed.

“Don’t.” Lyndie’s hand clamped around my arm. Fear creased her face. “This is elite business. You need to stay out of it.”

I ripped away from her, crawled out of the tent, and lurched to my feet.

The cold, wet grass coated my bare feet as I raced across the meadow.

Elites were emerging from tents, their voices rising. Someone was shouting orders.

I dodged between tents, stomping through mud, shoving past a man who tried to block my path. Another grabbed my arm, and I tore free, my skin burning where his fingers dug in.

Nothing mattered except getting to Fen’s tent.

Royal blue canvas with House Lancifer’s crest.

The entrance flap hung open, a carnivorous mouth.

I threw myself through the entrance.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

ERADIN

My toes caught on the tent's threshold. I slammed onto my hands and knees and scrambled back onto my feet.

Fen sat up in his bedding, blood running down his left arm in dark rivulets and collected beneath the limb, dark against pale fabric, spreading too fast.

Alive.

He was alive. With a blade sticking out of his shoulder and completely…bare chested, but alive.

Shock flickered across his face before something softer took its place.

He saw the terror and relief on my face. My hands still shook because a short time ago I’d thought he was dead and my chest had split down the middle.

Even if the trial hadn’t let him into my innermost thoughts, I’d just told him everything with my face.

His careful prince mask cracked. His hand lifted from the bed, toward me, before dropping.

Elite riders crowded around me, their voices rising in a wall of sound I couldn’t make sense of. Someone grabbed my arm. Another shouted orders.

“Everyone out,” Fen barked. Silence suddenly echoed in the small space. “Get out. I’m not dead yet.”