Page 39 of Feralheart

“My son should’ve lived instead of dying for a dream.” His mouth pulled tight. “He had the same look in his eyes that you do now. Determined. Scared underneath but too stubborn to show it.” He looked at me then, really looked. “You won’t listen either, will you?”

“No.”

“Figured. I’ll sign yours, but I need you to know that when you don’t come back, I’ll remember I helped you die.”

I was asking him to relive his son’s death. To watch a person who reminded him of his son walk into the same fire.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t apologize. Chase that dream if you have to, but find a way to live.”

“I will.”

He lifted the stamp with a dragon-hand seal from the box. After staring down at it longer than necessary, he slanted me a look. “You’re sure?”

“Either you do it, or I’ll find someone else.”

His grunt rang out, but he pressed it down on a small piece of parchment. He didn’t meet my eyes as he held it out to me.

“Things there hook deep,” he said in a craggy voice. “And retired mounts remember being hurt.”

I took the waiver. “I suspected as much.”

He pulled a second piece of parchment from the box and wrote on it in cramped script. “Pen locations.” He handed it over. “Don’t let them rush you during familiarization. Take your time reading the dragon they assign you, even if the handler says it’s pointless.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

I left him and strode past the aerie and around the eastern wall of the fortress, using the servants’ path to reach the courtyard in front. The lower ward hall had been built into the right side of the fortress, squat stone, with two entrances. One gilded. One not.

Elites filed through the pretty one with silk drapes framing the doorway and musicians playing something light and forgettable inside. A peek through the entrance showed servants holding trays of wine. Finger treats. Laughter spilled out into the courtyard where the rest of us queued in the sun, waiting for our turn at the second entrance.

I stepped up to the back of the line.

Ahead of me, a man shifted his weight, his face sunburned and weathered. A woman coming over to stand behind me clutched a waiver in both hands, her knuckles white.

Each time someone exited the hall from the commons line, a bell tolled. A counter on the wall ticked upward.

Five had signed up so far.

Prince Fenian walked past, his hunting leathers traded for dark formal wear that made his shoulders look broader. He paused mid-stride, his head turning slightly in my direction.

My pulse flew.

Something about seeing him here, in the space between elite and commons, made every instinct I owned bare its teeth. He didn’t belong in my world. I didn’t belong in his. But we kept ending up in the same places anyway.

His jaw tightened, that tell I’d seen before that meant he must be biting back words. He strode forward again, disappearing through the silk-draped doorway for the elite.

My line moved, and I stepped up until there was no one ahead and only the woman behind.

“Next,” a man called from inside a short time later.

I entered the dark, cool interior.

A clerk sat behind a desk, not looking up as I approached. He held a quill over a fresh, clean application. “Name.”

“Eradin Carver.”