Page 5 of Feralheart

Up close, he was cruelly gorgeous in the way a weapon was. Bred to be lethal and for display. Tall and broad-shouldered, and with ink-black hair shoved back from his face, he moved with his dragon like they shared the same breath. His kind of handsome made people stop and stare. It opened doors and bent wills.

My belly tightened.

I hated how beauty could do that even when you knew what it concealed. My body didn’t care that he hunted for sport. It only knew he was a pretty, dangerous thing.

The party landed their dragons in the meadow and dismounted, their voices rising in confusion.

Lady Chambers strode over to where the dragon had been pinned to the ground. She studied the trap before her gaze swept the vicinity. “The dragon did not get away on its own.”

“There’s no blood trail,” Lord Andra snarled from beside her. “The bloodseekers won’t find a damn thing.”

The bloodseekers jerked against their leashes, their dull brown bodies twisting in the air, snapping fangs at each other, flapping their leathery wings. Horns curved forward from their skulls, sharp-tipped and yellowed. Their spiked tails lashed behind them, and their keening grew more frantic as they searched for a scent that wasn’t there.

The lady huffed. “The wild one didn’t free itself, that’s for sure.”

Lord Andra leaned forward to check the trap himself, waving his hand to cast a spell over it. Seeking… “The release bar’s been sprung. Not chewed through. Hands did this.” He spat into the mud. “We’ve got a traitor in our midst.”

“Find them,” the lady snapped, her gaze sweeping the area. She nudged her chin toward her dragon, and it shot fire into the brush to my right, setting it ablaze. Smoke jetted around me, thick and choking. It was all I could do not to bolt. All I could do to breathe.

I crouched lower in the wet vegetation, grateful it had recently rained.

The fire sputtered out as the riders searched the disturbed ground and the woods opposite from where I hid. The unknown lady found bits of my crushed herbs and held them up.

“Graymallow,” she said, after taking a sniff. “And silverleaf. Someone actually treated the beast.”

Prince Fenian stayed apart from the others, one hand resting on his dragon, Aristus’s left flank. Even those who didn’t work in the castle aerie like me knew the beast’s name.

There was something in the prince’s expression I couldn’t name. A tightness around his mouth, the fact that he hung back rather than join the search with the others. Aristus curled his head around and nudged Fenian with his snout. The prince scratched the dragon’s jaw hinge. Not the brow spines. That makes them spark. Stroking the jaw hinge soothed. Someone had taught him this, or he’d paid attention.

He studied the clearing.

“They couldn’t have gone far.” He sounded so sneeringly cultured and assured.

He was close enough that I could see the gray of his eyes and the small scar cutting above his left eyebrow.

My teeth ached from clenching.

His gaze tracked across the meadow and locked onto the tangle of blackthorn hiding me.

My lungs stopped working.

His jaw tightened, that thing people did before they spoke. I dug my fingers into the mud beneath me. If I ran, they’d hear.

“Release the bonewailers,” Lady Chambers growled. “Let them hunt the traitor.”

“A fantastic idea,” one of the lords said, striding toward his dragon.

“We’re too close to the royal gardens,” the prince said.

The lord shrugged. “Your Highness, it might be fun to watch the workers scatter.”

“I said no.”

The lord blinked at the prince before turning away. “Very well, Sire.”

Lady Chambers released a heavy sigh. “We’ll have to hunt down another quarry then.”

“I don’t want to take my dragon into the caves,” the other woman said. “It’s too close to the Scorching. I need her well-rested and uninjured.”