Page 241 of Feralheart

Yet Aristus sang, and the sound echoed off the canyon walls.

Selira came closer, and the two dragons touched noses. Wild calling to wild, even when one had been caged for most of his life.

My eyelids drooped. I wanted to rest. I’d snuggle in Fen’s arms and sleep for a week. But Reece’s dragon was dying, and there was no time for anything except moving. The collar around his neck blazed so bright the scales underneath had started to blacken.

“Selira.”

She caught me as I half-fell, half-jumped from Aristus’s back to hers.

The world tilted, and my vision narrowed, burning out like I’d stared at the sun too long.

She carried me up to Reece’s dragon, Fen and Aristus right behind.

The dragon thrashed beneath Reece while devastation cratered the older man’s face.

When Selira got close, I leaped from her back, my ankle rolling when I hit the ground. I hobbled over to where the dragon lay on the bone-strewn surface, his sides heaving.

I wrapped my hands around the collar, and pain screamed up my arms.

Magic hemorrhaged out of me.

Quick and steady. The wound doesn’t care if you’re scared.

My mother’s voice echoed so clearly I almost turned to look for her. She’d said those words in every sickroom and cottage bedroom where she’d laid her hands on someone broken and willed them to live.

She’d worn long sleeves her whole life to hide what I was doing now.

And now I knew why.

This collar felt different. Brittle. Stress fractures ran through the metal in spiderwebs, years of compensating breaking the dragon and the collar together.

My vision blurred.

The red lines had reached my shoulders. Each pull came from a well scraping rock bottom.

I made my magic work anyway.

It hit, and the collar burst outward. I controlled the break before shrapnel could shred the dragon’s throat. The metal fragmented under my hands, pieces coming loose, and I had to dig each one out of his neck.

I forced my fingers to keep working, searching for the last pieces by feel because my vision had narrowed to a pinpoint.

Blood welled from beneath his scales and dripped. My palms had turned into raw meat.

Reece’s dragon surged upward as I finished and tumbled backward. Selira’s wing caught me, guiding me onto her back before I could hit the ground.

Keep going, Selira said. Almost done. Almost free.

One more. Just one more.

Lyndie’s dragon lay above us, his movements jerky. The collar around his neck throbbed light in time with a heartbeat that wasn’t the dragon’s.

Selira climbed while white crept into my vision from all sides. The world was too bright and getting brighter, and my hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip her neck spike.

When we drew level with Lyndie, I slid off Selira’s back, stumbling across the open space between us, my hands reaching for the collar.

This one felt elegant. The runes had been woven into layers upon layers of spellwork. High-level magic, if I had my guess. The kind you’d only know if you’d studied it for thousands of years.

But what could I do but try?