Page 176 of Feralheart

She’d known what we were flying into, but she’d brought me here anyway. She’d let me climb onto her back and enter this race with my eyes closed, because she’d understood that some things could only be seen from the inside.

“You chose me because I could see it.”

I chose you because you knelt in mud. The rest I hoped for.

Aristus watched me, intelligence clear in eyes that had seen twenty-three years of what the collar did to him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t see when I should have.”

He rumbled again, acceptance.

I sensed he’d been waiting for someone to understand for a very long time.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with what I’d just learned. But I knew I wouldn’t forget. Wherever this race took us next, that knowledge would come with me.

I turned away and walked back toward the commons camp where Lyndie and Reece would be preparing for the next trial.

But the collar’s image burned behind my eyes.

Through the bond, Selira sent the memory of grief, carried so long it had sunk into her bones.

She hadn’t been waiting for someone to see. She’d been waiting to stop being the only one who remembered.

My magic strained toward the metal around Aristus’s neck.

Power seeking a wound.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

FEN

The list of suspects was long, and I didn’t have time to figure this out before the next race killed me.

The blade sat on the table where I’d left it, the stylized J on the hilt catching the morning light. My father’s initial. My mother had cleared his desk within days of his death, but someone had kept this knife, a person close enough to have access to things she’d locked away.

They’d tried to kill me with my father’s blade.

When I emerged from the tent, I found servants hurrying through camp, dismantling the elite setup. No one looked at me directly. The elite stood off to the side, near their dragons.

Every single one of them watched me stride across the clearing.

Aristus waited, already saddled.

The wound pulled when I moved, a reminder that someone had entered my tent while I slept and tried to kill me. Whoever it was, they knew the layout. They’d had access. They were someone others—even my dragon—wouldn’t suspect.

That narrowed the list of suspects, but not enough.

Aristus’s saddle sat differently. Eradin had adjusted it to avoid the pressure points where Aristus’s scales had rubbed for years. The girth strap hung looser, giving his ribs room to expand. The breastplate had been positioned to avoid scar tissue.

She’d seen what I hadn’t.

A knot formed in my throat.

I stroked Aristus’s neck and slid my fingers up to the ridge above his eye where the harness had worn the scales smooth. He leaned into my touch, and through our bond I felt his contentment. He turned his head, pressing his jaw against my injured shoulder with a gentleness he’d never used before.

I stood very still while my body locked around the feeling.

“Your Highness.” Vella’s voice cut through the early morning air. She stopped beside me, and she didn’t speak for a long moment. “Are you certain you should fly today? Your wound…”