Page 24 of Feralheart

What had I been thinking? Servants didn’t speak like that to royalty. They didn’t lift their chins and almost look them in the eye, not even if the prince demanded it. They certainly didn’t threaten to aim water at a prince and expect to live.

Servants didn’t notice a prince’s mouth, either.

And they did not, under any circumstances, count a prince’s almost-smiles.

Two. Not that I was counting.

I’d seen something in Prince Fenian’s face that looked almost like surprise.

Or, perhaps, respect.

I shook my head and hoisted the buckets. I was seeing things I wanted to see, making patterns from nothing because it was easier than accepting the simple truth. He was elite. I was commons. Any moment between us was an accident.

Nothing more.

I hauled the buckets to the rinse station, my palms prickling against the handles. The runes’ cold-hot crawl had followed me out of the tack room. Every strap I’d oiled this morning hung on its peg, waiting to bite a dragon’s jaw. I’d worked that leather until it gleamed.

I’d made the torture pretty.

The whole morning clung like the rot-mud I’d smeared on in the blackthorn. Water wouldn’t shift this stain.

But the forest might.

When the midday bell released us, I grabbed my portion of bread and hard cheese, and with my mother’s gathering bag smacking my thigh, I ran for the forest. I ate as I ran, the bread turning to paste in my mouth, washing it down with flask water that tasted of metal pipe.

The aerie disappeared behind me, and the forest opened up, all pine and wet earth, the distant rush of the stream, and birdsong.

Nothing out here wore a harness.

I didn’t slow until my lungs burned.

The stream where I’d freed the dragon yesterday flowed quick and clear. I followed it upstream, searching for the herb clusters my mother had shown me years ago. The first patch had been stripped bare. The second had been trampled, perhaps by the hunt.

Farther upstream, where the water pooled into a still eddy, I located a third, untouched patch.

Relief hit so hard a sob shot up my throat.

I knelt in the mud and harvested the way my mother had taught me. Never take more than half. Leave the roots intact. Whisper thanks to the fates for the bounty.

Graymallow’s green-blue leaves filled my bag, followed by silverleaf’s delicate fronds, each one precious. Enough for two weeks, maybe three if I was careful with the doses.

After tucking the herbs into my bag, I pressed my forehead to the damp ground.

Tears trickled down my cheeks.

Two weeks. Maybe three. Time, something I’d been begging the fates for since Mother died.

Losing Tolross wouldn’t be today's or tomorrow’s crisis.

I’d take it.

I wiped my tears away with muddy hands, smearing dirt across my cheeks.

I was washing my hands and face in the stream when the light flickered. A shadow sliced across my reflection in the water.

I reeled back, pressing myself against a tree trunk, the rough bark biting through my shirt while my pulse thundered in my throat.

Overhead, wings beat in an uneven rhythm, and I spied patches of bruise-colored scales through the canopy. A pale stripe along a snout.