Page 237 of Feralheart

“Every Scorching death could’ve been feeding that thing,” I said.

She nodded and focused her attention forward.

“We have to remove the collars.” Her voice carried across the space between us, cutting through wind and the columns’ wail. “The collars are feeding the pillars. Remove them, and we break the connection and stop feeding whatever’s above.”

“You can’t do it,” Reece said. “I’ve heard it could kill the dragons.”

“Maybe.” Eradin’s hands were already glowing red, the serpentine lines crawling up past her elbows. “Or maybe my magic can do it safely. It’s that or we die. The shield isn’t stopping the pillars from sucking down your dragons’ power. They won’t survive to make it to the top.”

“Can you do it?” Lyndie asked, her voice one full shake.

“I want to try.”

I felt what she wasn’t saying. She’d never done this before. No one had. There were no healer texts covering what happened when you tried to pry years of fused metal from living scales. The collars had grown into the dragons’ necks. I’d felt the calluses beneath Aristus’s, the way his scales had built themselves around the intrusion because his body had known it was never going to leave.

Aristus’s pain spiked again. The collar blazed so hot the scent of scorched scales floated through the air.

I studied the canyon walls. The bones embedded in them. The dragons who’d made it this far and died anyway, still wearing their collars, still connected by threads of light to structures that had drained them until they couldn’t go on.

How many had died believing the collar was sacred? How many had been told that the metal around their necks was a gift that made the bond possible?

Every single one of us.

The alternative was watching our dragons die, drained by columns that had been killing bonded dragons for longer than any of us had been alive.

Aristus bellowed in agony. The collar was burning against his scales now, the metal so hot the smell of singed flesh hung in the air.

There was no version of this where I didn’t lose something.

I’d spent most of my life keeping Aristus alive through control. Who touched him. How he was trained. What he ate. Every variable I could manage, I’d done so, because control was the only form of love I’d been taught.

Eradin was asking me to let go of all of it.

Removing the collar might kill him. If we kept it on, the pillars would finish what they’d started. If we turned back, I would never find out what happened to my father.

Aristus’s heartbeat stuttered under my hand. Too fast and too irregular.

Eradin’s fear crashed into me through the bond. Fear for me and what losing Aristus would do to me. She worried she’d watch me break when he died.

Aristus rumbled beneath me, his agreement vibrating through our bond.

And that was what decided this for us both.

“Do it,” I said. “I’d rather he died free than live another day with the collar. I mean it. Whatever happens, I chose this. He does too.”

Through the bond Aristus shared with Selira, I felt her awareness sharpen.

Do it, she said, her certainty cutting through Eradin’s fear. Metal killing.

Eradin urged Selira closer, her hands already glowing so bright the red light cut through the canyon’s gloom. They appeared on fire, like she was burning from the inside out. And she was going to touch Aristus with all that power.

The red light turned her face into something otherworldly. For one moment she didn’t look like the woman I’d loved a short time ago or the stable hand who’d spilled water on my boots. She looked like my salvation.

Her fingers reached for Aristus’s collar.

I curled around his shoulder spike and rested my forehead on his neck, one hand on his smooth scales. His heart beat too fast. Uneven. Failing.

Eradin’s hand covered mine.