Page 214 of Feralheart

Aristus was still dying.

Our hands dropped away, and we stepped back.

The meadow stretched between us and the elite camp. Servants moved around tents with trays and the certainty that the world would sort itself out the way it always had.

Fen watched them for a moment.

Then he turned his back on them and continued to remove Aristus’s tack, his good hand going through the familiar motions with a steadiness his face didn’t match.

I watched him work, the scale warm at my throat, the poem folded carefully in my pocket with its small tear and its two words that still felt like the truest thing anyone had ever said to me.

Fight anyway.

I intended to.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

ERADIN

Every bonded dragon was dying. Not someday, but now. Slowly strangled by the very thing that marked them as chosen.

The knowledge sat in my belly like a stone I’d swallowed whole, and the worst part was my hands. They’d gone still at my sides, the same hands that had polished scales and applied salve and believed they were doing something good. My mother had taught me that healing was sacred work. That touch was the first language of care. I’d been practicing it on dying things and calling it kindness.

Selira’s fury ignited. Told you. Metal-necked ones die. Always die.

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t⁠—”

Now you know. Her rage wasn’t directed at me. It was older than that. Centuries of watching. They do this. Over and over. Choose chains instead of trust.

“We’re going to fix it,” I said.

How do you fix murder?

You couldn’t. I couldn’t.

But I’d try.

I needed to move. Do something. Anything that wasn’t standing here adding up how many dragons I’d groomed while they were dying and called it care.

I grabbed clothing and strode to the river, then bathing and dressing. After, I took the brush from my pack and went to Selira.

Warmth flowed through our bond, and while my hair dripped, I groomed her.

The brush bristles caught on the ridge of Selira’s neck scales, the familiar resistance settling the heat in my chest. This I knew. This I could do.

Stroke. Smooth. Repeat.

My mother’s tune rose inside me, the same song I’d hummed in the aerie while polishing scales on dragons whose collars were killing them.

My hand came to a standstill.

I made myself keep moving, pressing harder, working the brush in circles until Selira’s breathing evened and the tension in her flanks melted.

Touch can say things words can’t. My mother had taught me that.

Footsteps approached from my left. I didn’t look up, but my shoulders tensed. The elite had been watching us since Fen crossed the boundary, their gazes sharp as blades.

“She’s beautiful.” Lyndie said.