Page 71 of Feralheart

Sand had worked itself into the creases of my palms. The scent of dragon blood and burned leather clung to my clothing. Underneath it all, I caught the acrid stink of my own fear-sweat.

A dark-haired servant entered the room, her expression flat. She studied me the same way I’d look at a dragon that had rolled in its own filth.

“Stand,” she said.

“What will happen next?”

“Stand!”

I did as she asked.

She gestured toward a second doorway. “Through there.”

The bathing chamber beyond had been divided with a wooden screen that reached from the floor to the ceiling. On the other side, boots scuffed across stone, and the low murmur of male voices rang out.

Two other women waited inside the room. The wide-eyed blonde from the arena stood near a big tub, dressed in her trial clothes, sand crusting her hands and knees. A servant plucked at the woman’s clothing.

“Take everything off and be quick about it,” the dark-haired servant said by my side.

I released the belt holding the talon-blade first, setting it on a chair, the sheath still warm from riding on my thigh. While the woman twitched with impatience, I stripped down to my skin, my fingers clumsy.

Unsure what to do with the dragon scale, I slid it from my pants’ pocket and tucked it beneath the talon’s sheath.

Three more servants entered. They didn’t speak to us, though they talked with each other.

“This one’s filthy,” one said, gesturing to me.

“They all are.”

“That burn will scar.” She crinkled her nose, bending forward to examine my thigh. She prodded the edges where the scale had seared through fabric and skin, her fingers cold and clinical. “Do we cover it or leave it?”

“Leave it. No one will see it through her gown.”

They filled two tubs with water. One of them gestured for me to step into the first and I did, my burned foot screaming when it touched the water.

My skin quivered. Water closed over my ankles, and my throat tried to close along with it. Hands on my shoulders pushed me down. More hands reached for my hair, releasing it from the leather strip I’d used to bind it, then scraping a comb across my scalp.

I counted.

One. Two. Three.

Like I’d made Tolross count when he broke his wrist.

Four. Five. Six.

Keep counting until you’re focused only on that.

But I didn’t know how to find my focus anymore. Hands pulling and tugging kept yanking me back to the present. The woman inside me choked on water they poured over her head without warning.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve. I’d survived a fire maze. I could survive this.

Except the maze had let me move. Had let me choose. This was different. This was being held down while they erased every trace of who I’d been a short time ago.

They used rough cloths to scrub my arms, back, and legs.

“Turn around.”

“Ask,” I growled.