Page 52 of Feralheart

The world didn’t tear; it unraveled. Like the careful seams Mother had taught me to sew, pulled out thread by thread, except the threads were my bones and the pulling happened all at once. My tea tried to come up, but there was nowhere for it to go in the between-space where nothing was solid, not even my body or the scream locked behind teeth that might not exist anymore.

The ground jolted through my boots all at once.

I staggered. The sunburned man dropped to his knees, coiled forward, retching. Marda clutched her belly, her face green.

I pressed my hand to my mouth and breathed through my nose until the nausea passed. Sweat slicked my palms. I locked my knees to keep them from folding.

The sun poked its head above the horizon, outlining our new location.

We stood in a stone arena carved into a mountainside, the walls rising steeply around us. Beyond the far edge, a narrow canyon opened in a jagged scar that dropped into shadows. The entrance to the commons trials? Another opening on my left could be an exit, assuming any of us made it through to the end.

Viewing stands had been built into the arena’s walls, already filling with well-dressed spectators. Their voices carried, full of bright chatter.

Musicians tuned instruments on a platform nearby, and servants moved through the stands with trays of drinks and food.

A shimmering projection bloomed to life above the arena, the same enchanted viewing screen that would follow us through most parts of the race other than when we were given a brief rest between challenges. Assuming we made it into the Scorching, that is.

Lords and ladies didn’t have to be present to watch. That was the point. Distance made it cleaner. Distance let them call it sport.

Our retired dragons waited along the arena’s eastern wall, chained to the stone beneath them.

My heart sank.

Lykor looked worse in full daylight. His scales had dulled to ash-gray, and the scars on his jaw stook out starkly white. He lay with his head on the ground, his breathing shallow, his eyes half-closed.

The other dragons appeared no better. One’s wing hung crooked. Another was missing the spiked tip of its tail. A third kept blasting flames at the chain pinning it to the ground. They’d been discarded. Used until they broke, then shoved into pens and forgotten. I’d polished dragons until they gleamed, and the whole time, these ones had paid for that shine.

Officials moved among us.

“Prepare your mounts,” an older man called out.

One official shoved the wiry man toward the dragons hard enough he stumbled.

“You need to pay attention, or you’ll die before you reach the first course,” the woman said with a slick grin.

The wiry man’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

We walked over to our dragons, me to Lykor. His tack sat in a pile beside him. I pulled the harness from the bag with shaky hands.

The runes threaded through the straps made my palms itch. I forced myself to check each piece, the reins for fraying, the saddle straps for weak spots, the throat latch for⁠—

Boots approached on my right. Expensive leather, nearly silent on stone. I knew who it was before he spoke.

“Hello, Eradin,” he said. “You’re the woman who nearly spilled water on my boots in the stable.”

The stable. Not the quarry road. So we were pretending he hadn’t seen me since. Wise. The officials stood close enough to hear.

Elite competitors didn’t cross the arena to speak with commons. Whatever this was, it wasn’t protocol.

Yet here he was.

“And you’re the prince who made sure I knew it,” I said.

Up close, I could see dark smudges under his eyes, faint enough I’d have missed them if the sun wasn’t slanting just right. It appeared he hadn’t slept either.

I hated that I’d noticed. I hated more that I didn’t have to wonder where his sleep had gone. At midnight he’d been standing in a broken dragon’s stall, asking it questions about a dead man. And I was the only living soul who knew.

He stood close enough I could smell leather and something sharper underneath. Dragon smoke and sleeplessness and whatever cologne princes wore when they were trying not to think about the people they were about to watch die.