Page 45 of Feralheart

“Sharp enough for stabbing,” he’d said. “Deadly enough for slashing.”

I had no idea how to do either.

Now it lay heavy against my thigh, curved like the claw it had been, balanced differently compared to Father’s blade, the one he’d shown me how to use twice, maybe three times, back when I was young enough to think knowing how to fight meant something.

I got up and tightened the belt around my waist. The leather sat at an angle on my hips, too heavy on one side. As I paced my room, the blade kept catching on my bed frame, the table edge, and my own elbow when I reached for something. I’d spent my whole life learning to move without being seen. Now every step announced itself with the tap against my leg.

This was what being armed felt like. Clumsy. Obvious. Lethal to myself before I could be lethal to anything else.

Through the wall, Tolross coughed, the wet, rattling kind that didn’t stop when you wanted it to.

I counted the seconds between breaths. Four. Five. Six.

He’d make it to seven. He always did.

Eight.

My hand tightened on the blade’s hilt until the curve bit into my palm.

Nine.

His breathing evened out, and my own breath released along with it.

Seven coins in my purse. One week of herbs at best. Nine hours until the trial.

I settled my hand on the blade’s hilt.

The talon shard buzzed under my palm, and the buzz became a pull. Not the slow creep of a vision this time. This was sharp, insistent, a hook buried in my spine. Yanking.

Its hunger had become mine. Cold stone under scales. Waiting. Soon.

The heat in my palms flared, the fine red lines glowing in the dark. I flattened my hands against my thighs, reminding myself I was here, in my room in Shaleside, not wherever the pull wanted to drag me.

It didn’t stop.

I tugged on my jacket. Out in the main room, I stuffed my feet into my boots and laced them fast. My sweep of the room took in Tolross, asleep on his bed by the stove. His journal lay open beside his pillow, charcoal smudged across one page. The curve of a wing. Another dragon drawing.

I could wake him. Tell him where I was going. Why.

My hand lifted toward him, and but I made it stop.

I wasn’t sure I could look into his brown eyes that saw too much and listen while he told me not to die for him.

I dropped my hand and left the cottage.

Shaleside was dark and quiet. People were either sleeping or wishing they were. Above, the fortress blazed like a star that had fallen and gotten stuck on the mountain’s second peak.

The castle’s windows glowed above the fortress. The crown prince was up there somewhere, sleeping the easy sleep of a man bred to win. Or he wasn’t, and the shadows I’d seen under his eyes were being carved deeper by the hour.

It made no difference to me which. I told myself that twice, which was once too many, and kept climbing.

When I reached the top and the fortress, the land leveled out.

Banners strung between the turrets snapped in the wind, silk catching moonlight.

Music sifted and swirled around me, strings and laughter. The sound of people who’d never counted coins.

A new posting on the message board announced the Race Eve Festivities in gilded script. Below it, someone had scratched half rations tomorrow into the wood.