Page 46 of Feralheart

The talon-blade tapped my thigh with every step.

A drunk stumbled past me, his formal tunic unbuttoned at the throat. The lord didn’t see me. They rarely did.

I kept my head down and slipped through the servant’s gate, taking the path weaving across the backside of the mountain.

Muffled silence ruled the retired dragon pens, the handlers gone to wherever they went when the nobles weren’t watching and the dragons were asleep. The air smelled of old straw and dragon dung, underlaid with medicine and the rot of wounds that had never quite healed.

Halfway to the tack room, a voice drifted from one of the far stalls.

Low. Male. Coming from Lykor’s pen.

My hand found the talon-blade’s hilt before my brain caught up, and that was the problem. A commons woman, armed, creeping through the pens at midnight. If anyone found me now, no story I told would matter.

I eased into the gap between the feed bins and the wall, folded myself low, and peered through a gap in the boards, into Lykor’s stall.

Moonlight fell through the high vents in gray stripes. Prince Fenian stood beside the dragon, one hand working the hinge of the dragon’s jaw in slow circles, exactly where the tension gathered.

I’d watched him soothe Aristus that way in the meadow while bonewailers circled above me. Someone had taught him this.

The old dragon leaned into his knuckles.

“They should’ve left you in peace,” the prince said.

A low rumble rose up Lykor’s throat.

“I read the lists. After everything, they’re flying you again.” The scratching stopped but started again. “I couldn’t get you pulled. I want you to know I tried.”

A prince, apologizing for failing to a dragon the kingdom had thrown away.

The quiet stretched. Lykor’s tail dragged through the sand.

“Aristus’s breathing caught again this morning. The healers say he needs to rest. They smile when they say it. He gets worse, and they keep smiling.”

I tightened my grip on the bin’s lip, the rough wood biting into the pads of my fingers. The crown prince, who could summon every healer in the realm by lifting one hand, sounded like me standing at the apothecary’s counter with three coppers when I needed five.

“Did you get worse too?” he asked the dragon. “Before? Did he notice?”

He?

“They tell me he was weak.” His hand stilled on the dragon’s jaw. “You’re the only one I’ve never asked.” A rough sound shot out of him, almost a laugh. “I used to come down here to do it. Then I’d remember that dragons don’t lie, and I’d leave.”

Lykor’s head lifted and swung toward where I hid beside the feed bins. The old dragon’s nostrils flared, and the prince turned to follow his gaze.

I’d hidden from this man before, kneeling in blackthorn with the hunters hunting me. Only ten feet and a feed bin between us now.

Lykor huffed and dropped his head back to the sand.

If the prince saw me, his face never said so. He gave the dragon’s jaw another scratch.

“Rest,” he said. “Tomorrow will ask enough of you.”

He walked out of the pen, secured the gate, and was gone.

I counted to a hundred. Then a hundred more.

When I straightened behind the bin, my knees cracked and my fingers had gone numb.

I collected my saddle and harness from the shelves and let myself into Lykor’s stall like I’d done last night and the night before.