Page 26 of Feralheart

The wind shifted, coming from behind me, and the elkbire’s nostrils flared. Its head swung toward my hiding spot.

I cowered, bile roaring up my throat.

“Caught something good, Kess?” the patrolman asked, tightening his grip on his sword.

The creature pawed the ground and snorted.

While the patrolman scanned the area, I counted to a hundred and didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Mud under my throat from the stream still held its rot-smell, and it was all I could do not to sneeze it away.

The wild dragon swooped overhead, its shadow slanting through the canopy, across the ground in front of the elkbire.

The rider looked up.

“Dragon,” he cried. “A wild one. Don’t see those often.” He yanked on the elkbire’s reins and kicked it into a run, blasting magic at the dragon who darted to the side and swooped toward the north.

The moment the patrol was out of view, I tightened my grip on my herb bag and scrambled to my feet.

I ran with branches whipping my face, my boots slipping, and my breath raw in the back of my throat.

I kept going until my legs threatened to give way and my heart was on fire.

I didn’t look back.

Sweaty, my leg muscles burning, and out of breath, I slid through the servants’ gate as the bell signaled the end of my break. One of the stable hands frowned at the mud on my tunic, but he looked away like he hadn’t seen a thing.

Overseer Nuant, standing near the gate, did not look away. His eyes tracked me across the yard before he turned and strode inside the aerie.

My belly dropped. That look meant he was keeping score.

At mid-afternoon, I took a short break from hauling a cart loaded with dragon shit and slipped around to the back of the aerie where staff sometimes gathered. Three stable hands had claimed the crates near the water barrel. The smell of leather oil mixed with dragon dung, familiar enough I barely noticed it anymore.

I collapsed onto an empty crate and flexed my hands. My fingers had gone stiff from gripping the cart handles.

Cree glanced up from where she sat whittling a scrap of wood. She grabbed the dipper from the water bucket and held it out to me.

I took it and drank, the water lukewarm but refreshing. “Thanks.”

“You look like you ran across the entire mountain range.”

“Just the interesting parts.”

Machas sat on the crate across from me, his weathered face tilted toward the sun. Two fingers on his left hand ended at the knuckle, an old injury he never talked about.

“The grain lords were talking about the Scorching,” he said. “They say the Oracle’s waking.”

“I heard commons could compete if we prove ourselves in the entrance trials,” I said.

Jessith grunted beside me. “You mean the widow maker.”

Machas met my eyes. “Commons who enter are given old dragons to ride, ones retired from service. They’re brittle-boned, half-blind, and traumatized. No good odds in that.”

“The commons trials are bad,” Jessith said. “Most don’t make it past the first, let alone the second test. And then, you’ve still got to survive the Scorching.”

“My father spoke of the Scorching once.” Machas’s voice dropped to a secretive hush. “Three applied. Two died in the entrance trials. Orla made it through and got into the race itself. She didn’t win, of course.”

Silence settled over the group.

“My father actually knew her,” he said. “Before Orla left, she told him, the wind doesn’t care if you’re scared.”