Page 85 of Feralheart

A flick of my finger and the body incinerated, leaving nothing but ashes behind.

That wouldn’t take care of the blood in the grass, the signs of struggle.

I pulled the signal stone back out of my pocket and sent the message to my private channels, though I no longer knew which of my channels ran clean. The retrieval crew would come. They’d be quiet and efficient. By morning, there’d be no evidence this had ever happened.

Except for the blood on my blade, and whatever was shifting in my chest that I didn’t have a name for.

I’d eliminated a threat. That’s what I’d tell myself. That’s what I’d tell Mother if she asked.

It was close enough to the truth.

Close enough that I almost believed it.

I followed Eradin to the fortress entrance and stepped inside, watching as she walked down the hall to the ballroom. Then leaned against the wall to make sure she was safe.

A commons woman would never be safe.

Terrant waited outside the ballroom doors, a bottle of Vellish red in his hands, his face blank. His eyes touched my cuff and moved on.

Music drifted through the hall. Strings and laughter and the sounds of people who’d never had to choose between what they were built for and what they wanted to be.

I’d just learned the difference.

I should regret my actions.

I didn’t.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ERADIN

The blood wouldn’t wash off.

I stood in the bathing chamber down the hall from the ballroom, holding the talon-blade under cold water while red spiraled down the drain. The water eventually ran clear. My hands did not.

I locked my knees before they gave way, but the bathing chamber tilted anyway, the edges of my vision going soft and bright.

Stone bit into my palms where I gripped the counter, the red lines glowing faintly beneath my skin. The pain pulled me back into my body, sharp enough to keep me on my feet.

When I tried to swallow, my throat wouldn’t work right. I’d forgotten how bodies functioned, and mine had forgotten how to be one.

My hands locked onto the sink’s edge, but tremors crawled up my wrists anyway, working into my elbows, my shoulders. Vital parts of me had come loose and wouldn’t settle back.

Two men dead before I’d finished gasping.

I’d now seen the two things Fenian showed no one—what his hands did in the dark when he thought no one watched, and what they did when someone threatened me. I couldn’t decide which frightened me more. And I couldn’t decide if frightened was the right word at all.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside.

I froze, my hand flying to the talon-blade’s hilt. The footsteps slowed outside the door. I held my breath while my heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to crack them.

The person continued down the hall.

I dragged in a breath that smelled of fear-sweat. My fingers wouldn’t release the blade’s hilt. When I finally pried them loose, red marks striped my palm where the curve had pressed in.

I turned my hands over. The red lines caught the light, but all I could see were the dark crescents under my nails where blood had worked in deep. The stain lived there now.

Fenian’s hands hadn’t trembled. Not when he’d opened a man’s throat with the ease of someone who’d done it before. Or when he’d incinerated another person with magic. Not even when he’d looked at me after, his gray eyes holding mine across blood-soaked grass.