Page 253 of Feralheart

The roots pulled back. Whatever lived in Selira’s scale, the Oracle had tasted it and didn’t want more. She couldn’t consume it the way she had everything else. And if she couldn’t consume the scale…

True bonds, Jaris had tried to tell us. It can’t take what’s been given.

The word arrived like my mother’s hands on a wound. The scale wasn’t armor. It was a thing Selira had chosen to give me, freely, and freely given was the one language this cage had no meaning for.

With her retreating, I thought we had a chance. But the Oracle surged back, stronger and angry now, and the floor blazed so bright I had to close my eyes to keep from being blinded.

My shriek rang out.

Fen’s horror slammed into me. He needed to reach his father and pull him free. That determination collided with his need to protect me. He was tearing himself apart trying to choose.

“If the Oracle wants an anchor,” he growled, “it can take my soul and my kingdom, but it will never have you.”

A glow rippled across Jaris’s collar. Each flash of light sent magic from his body into the column, a steady stream that had been draining him for years.

He’d be dead if the Oracle wasn’t keeping him alive so she could keep feeding.

“She needs stable anchors,” Jaris gasped out. “I’m not enough. The other one is not enough. The collared dragons…burn out too fast.”

“She has a name.” Lyndie's blade dipped, the first time it had wavered.

Jaris stopped straining against the roots. “I know,” he rasped. “I know her name. An anchor doesn’t die. It holds. It’s the chain they feed her through. She stays caged, she stays fed, and the crown keeps its miracle.” His too-bright eyes found mine. “Twenty-three years. I watched the race through her light.”

The floor yanked harder.

My magic responded despite my terror, surging toward the column, eager to be used. It would pour itself into this thing and become part of the cage.

I could feel what would happen if I let go. If I stopped fighting. The Oracle would weave itself through me the way she had with Jaris. I’d become a conduit, feeding her forever. Alive but not living. Screaming but never heard.

And Tolross would die because I’d never be granted the wish.

Lyndie stayed outside the glow’s reach, still clutching the blade.

The least terrible way. She hadn’t been talking about Vella at all.

“How long have you known what this place was?” I growled.

“Longer than I’ve known you.” Her blade hand didn’t waver. “It’s been burning through stolen souls for centuries, because they feed it prisoners. It needs an anchor that won’t break.” Her gaze flicked to my blazing hands. “So I found it someone it couldn’t shatter.”

The words hit, a slap across the face.

“You let me save your dragon.” My voice came out flat, shock turning the rage into something feral. “I trusted you.”

My ruined hands were shaking. I made them stop.

“You watched me nearly kill myself breaking your dragon’s collar, and you knew it was for nothing,” I snarled.

“Not for nothing.” Lyndie’s gaze didn’t waver. “Grimstone’s free. That part was real.”

“But we’re not free. You fed it a friend.”

“I fed it the only person who might survive it.”

“Alone?” Fen’s voice could have frozen the veins in the walls. “You learned all this, steered all this alone?”

Her silence was the loudest answer she’d given so far.

Fen’s fury ignited. He’d killed for me in a garden. He’d do it again here, injured shoulder and Oracle be damned. But killing Lyndie wouldn’t get us out, and we both knew it.