Page 25 of Feralheart

The wild dragon circled low, watching me. The same dragon. The one I’d freed from the trap, whose leg I’d packed with herbs meant for my brother.

It had come back.

Heat prickled across my skin, starting at my palms and radiating up my arms. My mind was pulled sideways, into a space that didn’t belong to me.

A damp stone cave, low-ceilinged, smelling of wet clay and minerals. Iron-bitter pain in a hind leg, fading but not gone. A wing that ached. Need for…something it couldn’t define.

And a pull, a come here, seeeeeeee.

The vision lasted only an instant before I snapped back into me. The forest swam in, too bright, too solid.

I gasped, stumbling against the tree. My heart throbbed in my chest, and my palms burned as if I’d thrust them into hot coals.

What was that? The thought had not been mine. The dragon’s? If so, I’d felt what it felt. Seen what it wanted me to see.

My mother had never talked about anything like this. She’d taught me how to calm others, read their bodies, and ease their pain. Not to step inside their minds and live there for a breath.

Overhead, the dragon made a low, rumbling sound. It circled and flew back toward where I stood, swooping lower, its claws extended.

I flinched, and darted behind the tree, but it didn’t land or strike.

It dropped a shed scale the size of a child’s palm, stone-gray with a purple sheen. The scale landed in the mud not far from where I hid behind the tree.

I stared at it, then up at the dragon as it soared past again.

Swamped by the need to touch the scale, I stepped around the tree and grabbed it. I shoved it into my pocket and darted back behind the tree.

The scale was too warm, and if Nuant had been able to smell wild dragon smoke on me before, what would he make of this? What would anyone make of it if they caught me with a wild dragon’s scale in my pocket? I was carrying evidence of a crime I’d already nearly been caught for.

I was a fool, but I couldn’t make myself throw it away.

The dragon flew overhead again, its gaze meeting mine, before it wheeled away, climbing toward the sky.

The thunder of hoofbeats rang out.

Too close.

Harness leather creaked. Men’s voices echoed in the woods.

I dropped flat to the ground, roots gouging into my ribs, the scale in my pocket pressing hot against my hip.

My breathing came too fast.

I bit down on my tongue.

The scale burned like it was trying to give me away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ERADIN

Apatrolman riding an elkbire burst from the woods, galloping down a narrow game trail. At least two times as tall as me, the creature had a dusky blue hide, six-point antlers that could rip through a belly with a jerk of its head, and fangs visible when it opened its mouth to taste the air.

It slowed, its head swaying one way. The other.

Would it pick up my scent?

The rider’s magically enhanced sword could sever a head with one swipe. Bells hung from his stirrup straps, a thin bright jingle meant to sound like safety but instead reminding you that you might one day be hunted.