Page 40 of Feralheart

“Entry type.”

“Service waiver.” I held the two slips of paper toward him.

He grunted and wrote the information down before lifting a stained short blade from the table and thrusting it my way. “The hazard writ requires a bloodmark. Slice your thumb and press it here.”

I poked my thumb and smeared a print into the square. The cut stung.

My blood soaked into the paper, spreading in a dark bloom. A puff of smoke coiled away, followed by a flash. When the smoke cleared, my bloodmark had turned blue.

“Next of kin.”

This was it. The moment when Tolross became part of my choice instead of the reason for it.

“Welmore Carver.” My father’s name came out steady. I’d made it steady.

The clerk tapped the bottom of the form. Words appeared, ink bleeding up through the parchment in a thready bruise. He spun the paper my way.

“I’m going to read this part out loud,” he said, pointing to lines on the bottom. “Pay attention.” His gaze narrowed on the paper. “Failure to complete the trial results in a wage levy until the entry cost is recovered. That means you will pay one way or the other.”

“I understand.”

“No refunds. No exceptions. Do you understand that as well?”

“Yes.”

He grunted and turned the form back his way, stamping it with a heavy thud, affixing a crown seal to the paper.

A bell tolled outside, and the tally rose to seven.

The clerk held out his hand, demonstrating. “Palm down. Trial mark.”

I didn’t flinch as he laid a rod across the back of my hand, pressing and holding it to the count of three.

Heat punched through my skin, metal-hot, the kind that kept burning after you pulled away. The smell hit me, my own flesh cooking. I ground my teeth together hard enough my jaw creaked and thought of the look I’d find on Tolross’s face when he realized what I’d done. His pain would be worse than this.

The clerk’s face stayed bored. He could’ve watched a hundred of us bite back screams already today.

I didn’t give him mine.

When he pulled the rod away, a thin black stripe marked my hand from knuckle to wrist. The skin around it had already started to swell. The mark throbbed. I flexed my fingers and the skin pulled, the stripe catching the light. Everyone who saw this would know what I’d done.

There was no hiding now that the magic had seen me.

The clerk handed me a slate token, with a number etched deep into it. “Mount assignment: Lykor, Pen C-3. Familiarization today at dusk. The trial begins at dawn in three days. Make sure you’re in the fortress courtyard on time.”

I pocketed the token, and it clinked against the scale.

In another part of the fortress, behind silk and music, I assumed Prince Fenian was signing his name with wine in hand and no blood required.

If I made it through the commons trials, we’d be racing against each other.

A sharp, bright feeling flared in my chest.

I hoped I made it into the Scorching. Not because I thought I could win. I wasn’t that foolish. But because someone like the prince needed to see that we didn’t break quietly. That we fought even when the odds were against us from the start.

Maybe especially then.

I turned and walked back out into the sun.