Page 116 of Feralheart

This bond could be one-sided, a delusion I’d built from desperation and a dragon’s curiosity.

I might’ve gambled everything on a creature who owed me nothing.

The officials kept whispering. The crowd’s laughter built. I flexed my hands at my sides, my fingernails biting into my palms where the red lines lived.

Come. Please.

Silence echoed across the arena. Even those betting stilled, perhaps unsure how to wager coins on a rider without a dragon.

More officials joined the first, hissing together. One pulled out a separate scroll. Checking regulations?

Time stretched.

The crowd’s snickers grew.

They pointed, their laughter carrying across the big, open space.

“She forgot to bring her dragon,” someone called out.

More laughter.

“We need to determine if⁠—”

The shadow came first. Small, then growing big enough to blot out the sun until the arena went dark as twilight. Someone in the stands screamed. Others tipped their heads back, tracking something overhead.

A man in one of the upper rows ducked, his arms flailing. “Wild dragon attack!”

Prince Fenian met my gaze, and his grin rose.

A grin, teeth and all.

My careful count of almost-smiles died right there, ruined by a man who saved the real thing for wild dragons and terrible ideas.

The scale at my throat warmed, then scalded against my skin.

Through the bond, I felt her amusement. And underneath it, hunger. She’d smelled the aerie dragons. The captive ones.

She was coming because I’d called. But she was coming angry.

Mine, she growled.

“Right on time,” I whispered.

Selira dove.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ERADIN

Selira descended into a world that had gone silent.

The wind changed, filled with the scent of cinnamon-stone and wild places, nothing like the grain-fed staleness of the dragons who’d already started panicking in their perfect formations. Heartsbrim shrieked. Two others tried to bolt, their riders yanking on reins that bit into soft tissue, runes flaring to force compliance.

I didn’t need to look up to know she’d arrived. I could feel her through the bond, fierce, wild, mine.

But I looked anyway because I wanted to see their faces when they realized what I’d done.

She came down fast, her wings spread wide, her gray and purple scales catching sunlight and throwing it back in shades I didn’t have names for. The pale stripe along her snout stood out like a scar. Wild-born mark. Proof of what she was.