Page 121 of Feralheart

His mother’s gaze shot from her son to me and back again.

Stone-dust coated my tongue. The weight of thousands of eyes pressed down on us. Selira’s heartbeat thrummed through my thighs, and the bond hummed between us.

A horn blast shattered the air, and the massive door groaned open.

Darkness yawned beyond.

Tolross’s face flashed through my mind, pale against his pillow. Every wingbeat I survived was another step closer to a wish that could save his life.

Yes, I thought.

Yes.

Selira’s muscles coiled beneath me, her talons raking sand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ERADIN

The horn’s blast stomped through my chest. I was about to become a cautionary tale commons mothers whispered to their children.

Forty-five elite dragons launched from the ground in perfect formation, their riders moving like they’d rehearsed this in their sleep. My team shuffled and jerked, Kerrel’s mount already trying to scramble backward.

Go, Selira shouted through the bond. Now. We fly NOW.

I clamped my thighs tighter around her sides, my hands clutching the spike jutting up in front of me. “Wait.”

Why wait? We are faster. We are better.

She truly was speaking in my mind.

“Are you alright, Kerrel?” We were a team. I wasn’t taking off without him, and he didn’t appear to be in control of his dragon.

“I’m fine,” he shouted.

The last of the elite teams disappeared through the doors.

Fenian went last, Aristus moving with a liquid grace that made the other dragons look clumsy, even the good ones. He glanced my way. Then he was gone.

“Now,” I said.

Selira burst from the ground.

The world compressed into speed and wind and the burn in my thighs as I fought to stay mounted. No saddle meant every movement translated directly into my body, every bank and dive trying to peel me off her spine like old paint. My fingers cramped around the neck spike, my knuckles going from scarlet to white.

We plunged into the tunnel, the rest of my team beside me.

Torches lined the walls in iron sconces, their flames guttering as we passed. The air pressure changed, making my ears pop. The tunnel descended at an angle that shouldn’t exist, too steep to be natural, carved in raked grooves by something I’d rather not encounter if it still lived here.

Behind us, the doors boomed shut. The sound echoed, vibrating through rock that had stood for longer than the kingdom had names for things.

Trapping us inside.

Darkness consumed us, and it was all I could do to see my hand in front of my face.

“Can you see?” I cried out to Selira.

She sent me reassurance through the bond.