Page 189 of Feralheart

They were two people who’d survived impossible things sitting on cold sand, warning me about something I already knew. Reece still rubbed the band of skin where his wife’s scarf had been. Lyndie had told me the truth of her past, trusting me not to use it against her.

When we reached the Oracle, only one of us could ask. I tried not to think about which one of us it needed to be.

I walked away quickly. My pulse kicked up with each step toward the elite camp.

The stream curved through the valley, and I followed it, telling myself I was taking the scenic route. Not stalling or giving myself one more chance to turn around.

I came across Fen crouched beside a large stone near the water’s edge. His body had gone rigid, frozen in a way that made my breath come to a halt.

I approached slowly, my footsteps quiet on the grass. He didn’t hear me. Or, if he did, he didn’t turn. Whatever he was seeing had consumed him completely.

I stopped beside him and looked down.

Scratches in the stone, weathered but readable. A single word carved with something sharp.

Jaris.

“What does this mean?” I asked.

He flinched so hard his body jerked. His head snapped up, and he stared at me like he didn’t know where he was. Like he’d been drowning, and I’d just yanked him to the surface.

His throat worked.

“Jaris.” The word came out strangled. “It was—” He stopped. Started again. “My mother’s pet name for my father. No one else called him that.”

His hand was shaking where it hovered above the carving, not quite touching.

The scratches appeared old, worn smooth by time and water. Years old.

“He competed in the Scorching,” I said.

“He supposedly died in trial two.”

“Supposedly?”

His jaw locked. “We’re between trials three and four.”

“Each leg of the race is supposed to be different. The magic changes them.”

“The rest spots remain the same.”

My brain caught up fast, connecting pieces that shouldn’t fit.

This shouldn’t exist in his father’s timeline, not if he’d died in trial two the way the official story claimed.

Unless—

“I think he made it further than they said.” Fen’s voice dropped to barely audible. “But why would she lie about which trial killed him? Dead is dead.”

I searched for explanations that made sense. “Or someone else carved it. A memorial, maybe.”

We both knew that wasn’t it.

“She lied.” Fen cracked. His face. His voice. And, I suspected, his soul. Twenty-three years of certainty shattered behind his eyes. “My mother lied about how he died.”

His hands curled into fists on his thighs. The tremor in his fingers spread up his arms, into his shoulders. His breathing went shallow and rapid, the kind that came before either violence or collapse.

Every part of me wanted to reach for him. To steady him before he flew apart completely. But I’d never touched him except to heal, and this wound wasn’t one I knew how to fix.