Page 254 of Feralheart

“This isn’t about the wish, is it?” The pieces were clicking together, each one worse than the last. “There’s no banished family. No mourning mother you want to save. You don’t need a wish.”

“I do need to save my mother.”

“Your sick mother.” I threw her own lie back at her. “The seamstress.”

“She was right.” Her voice frayed. “Nothing up here cares.”

I swore I found pleading in her eyes. Did she truly think I’d forgive her for what she’d done?

“There’s so much more to this than you understand,” she said.

Fen’s eyes met mine, cold fury meeting my exhaustion.

I watched him make the choice. Not for her. For me.

He nodded once and turned his back on Lyndie completely, giving her nothing, not even his anger.

I loved him for it.

The glow intensified, spreading up my legs, wrapping around my thighs. The pull on my magic doubled, and I gasped, my knees giving way.

I’d said it myself at the fire. The trials weren’t testing us. They were selecting. I’d just never guessed what for.

Fen caught me with an arm around my waist, but he was shaking too. The floor had him. It had captured us both.

Jaris’s body jerked, his muscles straining, but he couldn’t rise. Roots of light connected him to the floor, dozens of them, spreading from his collar into the stone beneath him.

“True bonds.” The word tore out of him. His hands clawed at the roots connecting him to the floor, trying to pull free, trying to get closer. “It can’t take what’s been⁠—”

The collar blazed white.

Jaris’s mouth snapped shut, his throat working. His eyes met Fen’s, trying to communicate what the collar wouldn’t let him say.

Roots of light spread up my legs. The Oracle was making room for more anchors.

We had minutes before we joined Jaris.

The scale burned, wild magic meeting ancient hunger, and for an instant, I felt Selira outside, her fury blazing through the bond. Her absolute refusal to let this thing take me.

Her claws raked stone. Once. Twice. The doors shuddered. When she roared, the bond between us pulled taut, a rope stretched to breaking.

“Eradin.” Fen’s voice dragged my attention back. His beautiful gray eyes still held a scrap of hope. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, do it fast.”

The roots of light reached my knees.

There was one chance.

And Lyndie knew. She flicked her eyes from the scale at my throat to the blazing lines on my hands.

I wrapped my hand around the scale, letting the heat sear through my skin, and I pulled the talon-blade from its sheath, keeping it close by my side.

And then I did what was either the stupidest or smartest thing I’d ever done.

Every part of me that wanted to survive shouted not to.

But this creature had known nothing except theft for centuries. Taking was all they’d left her.

Maybe the one thing a prisoner of thieves had no defense against was a gift.