Page 96 of Feralheart

The sound that came out instead was animal. Feral.

Grief like that lived in bones until something cracked them open. I’d locked it down the day Mother stopped breathing, and now it was tearing free, every loss I’d swallowed and moment I’d made myself small. Every night I’d listened to Tolross struggle for air and known I couldn’t fix it.

Selira pressed her snout against my forehead, her breath warm on my face.

I stayed there until the shaking stopped, and I could breathe freely.

When I finally lifted my head, Selira was still there. Still watching with eyes that saw all of me and hadn’t looked away.

She lowered her head, an invitation I suspected dragons had been offering since before humans learned to write their names.

When I stood, I felt different. Taller, though my height hadn’t changed. I’d been compressed into a too-small space my whole life and now I’d finally expanded.

Fenian had killed for me, but he’d seen a commons who needed saving.

Tomorrow he’d see this.

The thought sent heat through my chest that had nothing to do with the bond.

I placed both palms on her snout.

I could almost hear my mother’s voice. This is what you were always building toward. With every creature you sang to in the dark.

I started humming her tune, the low, wordless melody that meant I’m here. I won’t hurt you. Breathe.

Selira stilled beneath my palms.

Mine.

Underneath the certainty of mine lived something else, older and quieter. And she pulled me along with her, showing me something that had been passed down through generations of wild dragons, the way migration routes were inherited and carried in the body.

A thing in the mountains. It had been there longer than the kingdom. It ate what came to it, and it had been eating dragons since before elites learned to put metal around their necks and call it sacred.

Selira had always known this the way she knew the air she flew through and the ground beneath her.

She’d understood where old hungry things lived and gave them the right distance.

Until mine had overridden everything else.

Now the distance was no longer possible.

The vision released me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ERADIN

The bond sang between us, a living thing that had rewritten every certainty I’d ever held about who I was and what I was meant to be. But singing didn’t mean I knew how to dance to the tune.

I pushed myself up, my legs threatening mutiny. Selira watched me with sharp eyes. Wild dragons didn’t have patience for human hesitation, but she was waiting to see what I’d do with what she’d given me.

“I need to ride you,” I said. “If, um, that’s alright with you, I mean.”

Her head tilted. Amusement rippled through the bond.

Yes.

“I don’t know how. I’ve never—” The words got stuck. “I’ve only ever ridden Lykor, and that was with a saddle. I don’t know what I’m doing.”