Page 180 of Feralheart

I’d danced with Alys at the summer ball when I was seventeen. She’d stepped on my feet three times and laughed about it. Now she was gone, and retrieving her body was not an option.

“Fuck,” I growled. I whirled around, glaring at the others. “This didn’t have to happen. It fucking didn’t have to happen!”

“She fell. It was an accident.” But I can tell from his face that Blair wasn’t convinced.

“We need to trust our dragons.” I guided Aristus straight, through what appeared to be a stable area, but the place kept shifting. What looked clear quickly showed the faint shimmer I was learning to associate with dead areas.

My shoulder ached with every adjustment. Holding on one-handed through Aristus’s course corrections meant using my thighs and my core for everything.

My body was running out of reserves to draw on.

Aristus felt my weariness through the bond. His alarm spiked, his flight stuttering.

“Just get us through,” I said through gritted teeth.

“We’re going to die following someone who believes he can understand his dragon,” Blair muttered behind me.

“Then die,” I said, not looking back. “But do it honestly instead of pretending you know better than a creature who can sense magic you can’t even see.”

Whispers erupted behind me.

“Please, listen to me,” Vella said in what she must believe was a reasonable tone. “We cannot trust animals over our own judgment.”

“You cannot. I can.”

Lord Brimmore grunted. “Your Highness⁠—”

“Stay with me. Stay with Aristus. Or fly wherever you please. If we remain together, you will follow me without question.”

I didn’t look back to see what they decided.

I was trusting Aristus.

He took us deeper, and they followed.

Aristus navigated the dead area by feel, pulling us through gaps I couldn’t see, choosing the ugly, awkward paths over the obvious beautiful ones every single time. Our bond stopped feeling like a line I was pulling on and started feeling like a conversation.

The mirrors stopped reflecting and started hunting, coiled around my ribs, dragging me toward glass that had gone liquid. On the surface to my left, my father’s corpse sat up on the pyre, his eyes tracking me, his mouth forming words I couldn’t hear but understood anyway.

You’re becoming your mother. Sacrificing everything for a crown that will eat you alive.

I jerked my gaze away.

On the right I saw Eradin, dead in the sand. Selira keening over her body. And me, standing off in the distance, doing nothing. Choosing my princely existence over everything else, like I’d been trained.

“Don’t look at them.” My voice came out hoarse. “They’re not real.”

But Lord Brimmore’s was staring at his reflection in a mirror below him, his face gray. In the image, his children stood behind him, small and crying. Asking why he’d left them.

“Brimmore,” Vella shouted. “Eyes forward!”

Too late.

His dragon shot down at his command, toward the reflection, drawn like iron to a lodestone. They hit the surface, and it rippled. Turning. Pulling. Dragon and rider were sucked into the glass, their shapes distorting, stretching.

They vanished, and the mirror smoothed over.

My stomach tried to empty itself. I swallowed it down, tasting bile.