Page 245 of Feralheart

Movement to my left caught my eye, shadows that didn’t match those cast by the light.

My cry rang out.

The bolt hit Reece in the chest before my cry had finished.

He toppled off his dragon and hit the crushed bones with a sound I’d hear for the rest of my life.

The dragon screamed.

We all did.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

ERADIN

“No.” The word ripped up my throat.

Fen launched Aristus between me and the shooter, magic coiling across his fingertips, his face cold. Lyndie’s dragon roared, the sound so loud my ears rang.

Peering around, I didn’t see who’d hurt Reece. They must be hiding. Or they’d run.

I slid off Selira. My body screamed, every muscle protesting, my ruined palms flaring white-hot when they dragged across her scales. I hit the ground running, my legs wobbling, threatening to give out.

Lyndie reached Reece first, dropping beside him, rolling him gently onto his back.

“No,” she moaned. “No. This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

The bolt had snapped off on impact, leaving a jagged piece of wood jutting from his chest, the point buried deep. Blood bubbled around the wound with each shallow breath, bright red. The smell of copper filled the air.

Reece coughed. Blood sprayed from his lips, spattering his chin, running into his beard.

He was dying.

We all knew it.

“My granddaughter…” His voice came out wet, gurgling. “My granddaughter, Willa. Watch out for her?”

I grabbed his hand with both of mine. “I promise. I swear it.”

“Reece, hold on.” Lyndie’s voice cracked. “Just hold on. Please.”

I hummed my mother’s tune, the low, wordless song that said I’m here, breathe, you’re not alone. I’d hummed it for injured animals and for Tolross in the night and for a wild dragon bleeding into forest mud.

I hummed it now for a man who deserved better than a canyon made of bones.

It didn’t help. It never helped the ones who were already going. But my mother had taught me to do it anyway, because the dying could still hear, and no one should leave the world in silence.

I laid my palms on his chest, calling my magic. It rose sluggishly, scraping the bottom of a well I’d already drained dry.

The red lines flared beneath my skin, burning me from the inside out.

Not enough.

I pulled harder, ignoring the way my vision blurred, how my hands cried out where the blisters tore open once more. The magic raked against bone-dry reserves, and I dragged it up anyway, pouring everything I had into the wound.

My magic hit tissue that wouldn’t knit. The bolt had shredded his lung and nicked his heart. Blood-filled spaces where air should be, drowning him from the inside while he was still conscious enough to feel it.

“No.” I pushed again, harder. “No, you’re not⁠—”