Page 252 of Feralheart

I recognized him from a portrait I’d seen once, though that man had been whole. This man’s skin had gone translucent in places, showing a faint glow of light beneath. His eyes were too bright, his pupils swallowed by a shine that had nothing to do with health.

Twenty-three years had changed him into something that wasn’t quite human anymore.

The collar around his throat fluctuated with the same rhythm as the ones the dragons wore. Like them, it had also worked its way into his flesh.

And it connected him to the column.

Jaris Lancifer.

Fen’s father.

His mouth moved, the sound barely reaching us. “Fen. Run.”

Fen didn’t move. Through the bond, I felt his mind try to reject what his eyes were showing him.

Not possible. The thought careened through him, frantic, searching for another explanation. Any explanation. His father was dead. His body had burned in a pyre. He’d spent most of his life building himself into someone who wouldn’t fail the way Jaris had.

Except Jaris hadn’t failed.

He’d been taken.

His grip on my hand went slack.

“Father?”

The word came out broken, years of grief and rage and endless love compressed into two syllables.

He locked his knees, and his hand found mine and gripped so hard my bones ground together. I was the only thing keeping him upright.

“I tried to stop them. After I won, I tried.” Jaris traced a finger along the collar. “But I couldn’t.” His eyes closed. When they opened again, they held agony. “I’m so sorry, son. The… The wind doesn’t care if you’re scared.” He swallowed hard. “But I’m scared.”

A phrase so like my mother’s, yet different. I’d heard it before. Where?

I couldn’t think about it now. Because a glow was building beneath my boots in the same pattern that had swallowed Reece’s body, a web of light growing brighter by the second.

My boots oozed down into the marble.

The stone pulled at me, recognizing my wild magic.

The perfect replacement for whatever Jaris had become.

The Oracle wanted to claim us as anchors.

The scale pendant flared beneath my tunic, so hot it should’ve burned through fabric and bone. But it didn’t, because the heat was Selira’s essence, concentrated and feral, remembering what this thing was and what she had done to dragonkind for longer than humans had words.

The Oracle felt it too.

Her pull stuttered.

Then she pushed back.

The heat from the scale and the Oracle’s hunger slammed against each other inside my chest.

I cried out, doubling over. Fen’s arm locked around me.

The roots of light beneath my boots flickered, recoiling, then surging again, as if it couldn’t decide whether the scale was prey or predator.

She decided.