Page 247 of Feralheart

My belly heaved. We were told the Scorching was sacred, that winners were honored, that the trials tested worth. It was a lie wrapped around a machine that ground people and dragons into foundation stones.

And we’d just walked into its mouth.

I pulled away from Fen and bent over, gagging, but nothing came up. Just dry retching that made my ribs ache.

A roar split the air.

I spun in time to see Lyndie’s blade punch through Vella Severine’s belly. They stood on the opposite side of the clearing, near a cluster of trees.

Lyndie moved like someone who’d done this before. Her stance looked perfect, her grip solid, the angle of entry precise enough to avoid bone and find the soft spaces inside. She gouged the blade up under Vella’s ribs with a skill that only came from training.

Elite training.

Vella’s face slackened with shock. Her mouth opened, but if sound came out, she was too far away for me to hear it. Blood welled up and spilled over her lips in a thick crimson stream. She fell backward, pulling the blade free as she collapsed, dead before she’d hit the ground.

Blood pooled on the stone, spreading dark on the bone dust.

Lyndie stood over the body, her chest heaving, but she held the blade with a steady grip. She pivoted and staggered back toward us, leaving Vella where she’d fallen.

Blair’s magic had died with him in the canyon. Whoever put a bolt in Reece hadn’t used magic at all, and I’d never once seen a bow in Vella’s hands.

Reece was gone. Vella was dead. And I stood with Fen on a plateau made of crushed bone while blood soaked into stone that had already swallowed too many bodies to count.

The dragons roared and blasted fire into the air.

Selira’s distress crashed through our bond, making me flinch. She lowered herself to the ground, her belly pressed flat, her neck stretched toward me.

While Fen went to Aristus, I stumbled to Selira on legs that barely held me and pressed my forehead against her snout, the scales warm beneath my skin.

Her grief wrapped around mine. She’d felt Reece die.

She mourned with me, though it wasn’t mourning I recognized. This was older. Vaster. Something that didn’t come from her experience but from her bloodline. The accumulated grief of every wild dragon that had ever watched a collared dragon die and been unable to reach them.

Could not hear me. I tried in arena. During trials. I called to them in old way and they could not hear. The collar ate part that hears.

She’d been reaching toward them the whole time, through whatever language dragons used between themselves.

Metal hollows.

I stroked her face, leaning into her.

The building housing the Oracle loomed ahead, throbbing with light that made my eyes water. Its pull intensified, dragging at the magic in my veins, demanding I come closer.

I eased away from Selira, my hands sliding down her snout in a last caress.

When my gaze met Fen’s, he nodded.

“We have to go inside,” I said.

Be careful.

I mounted Selira, my body moving on instinct because conscious thought had deserted me.

Fen climbed onto Aristus’s back, and the dragon’s wings twitched outward.

Mouth waits, Selira said, her unease bleeding through the bond. Teeth hidden. Always teeth.

My voice came out flat. “We’re going anyway.”