Page 60 of Feralheart

Around me, the other survivors materialized in stages. The woman about my age appeared on her hands and knees, vomit already pooling underneath her. The red-haired man solidified upright, but his legs gave way. He toppled to the ground and lay still, staring at the grains of sand. Only the gray-bearded man managed to stay on his feet, though his face had gone the color of old snow.

The dragons came last, lurching into existence beside their assigned riders. Still saddled and harnessed. Staked down like they’d flee. Lykor’s chain snapped taut as he tried to back away from wherever we’d landed, his wings half-spread, his breathing ragged.

The scale in my pocket flared hot against my thigh, branding my skin. I sucked in a breath and shifted it beneath the fabric. The heat didn’t fade. If anything, it intensified, a pulse that matched my heartbeat.

Another heartbeat. Bigger. Somewhere else.

No, it wasn’t just a heartbeat. A question. The wild dragon, wherever she was, was asking, where are you?

And underneath that, the maze. She recognized it or something like it. Fear spiked through our connection, sharp enough I gasped.

She was as afraid of this as she had been of the Oracle.

I yanked my hand away. The heat lingered, a ghost-touch that crawled up my spine and lodged in my brain.

Waiting.

No, not waiting.

Coming.

The certainty hit like a fist in the gut. Something was coming for me, and the scale knew before I did.

I pushed myself to my feet and forced my eyes to focus.

An arena. Stone rising on all sides, stands filling with elites who materialized as smoothly as stepping through doorways. Not one stumbled. A woman in yellow silk appeared mid-laugh. A man blinked into existence holding wine, the liquid undisturbed.

They cushioned the magic for themselves while we were given violence.

Ahead, the next trial gaped, a throat carved into a valley, walls climbing until they met a strip of sky too narrow to matter. Iron mesh hung overhead, a net to keep dragons from flying over, or to keep us from flying out if our dragons bucked us off.

Watch for timing. Spires. The net overhead. The prince’s words, either a gift or forewarning of my upcoming death.

Scorch marks layered the stone, black on black, some old enough the rock had fused to glass. The sand appeared darker near the entrance, stained with something that had soaked deep.

Runes crawled along the walls of the course in lines I could track even from here. They pulsed with light, a warning written in a language I didn’t understand.

Fire maze, per Prince Fenian.

This was a killing ground. It had been for decades.

The viewing boxes rose above the stands, cushioned seats and silk canopies. I didn’t let myself look for him. But Prince Fenian would be there, watching us die the way his father had, and I couldn’t afford to wonder what his face looked like while he did it.

Betting slips changed hands before I’d gotten the sand out of my mouth. Coins clinked. A child pointed at the red-haired man and said something that made the adults around him laugh.

We weren’t riders here. We were odds.

Servants moved through the rows with food and wine. Musicians started playing a lively tune completely incongruous to what was about to take place. Many laughed, the sound carrying across the open expanse where we stood with dragons that had already been broken.

Eight of us had entered the first course. Six had survived the first round. Would any of us be standing by the time the day was through?

Their screams still echoed in my mind. The wiry man who’d tried to kill me, falling onto stone teeth. The sunburned man who’d nodded at me in the courtyard, his kind eyes going blank somewhere in that wind-torn gap.

An official stepped forward, his voice amplified by magic until it echoed off the walls. “The next trial is a fire maze. Flames will erupt from the runes at irregular intervals. You and your dragon must make your way through the gaps.” He gestured to the entrance, a dark mouth cut into the nearest wall. “Riders will enter one at a time.”

“Watch out for the net overhead. Time…something,” I whispered to the others, though they were far enough away I wasn’t sure they heard. I’d go to them if the handlers weren’t watching.

Marda met my gaze and nodded.