He repeated them again, voice growing more frantic. The conversations in the chamber died as everyone turned to watch in deep silence.
Then flames burst over his skin.
It was over almost as soon as it began. He was there one moment and gone the next, nothing left but smoke drifting through the chamber. A fresh scorch mark marred the ground.
Choking coughs filled the air. I inhaled some of the smoke, and even though it didn’t smell any different than ordinary dragon smoke—or even a bonfire—it turned my stomach. I wanted to vomit.
Ander put a steadying hand on my shoulder. When I glanced up, his face was grim, but he squeezed. “He wasn’t worthy.”
“Do we understand dragons, another species from another world, well enough to say what they consider worthy?” I whispered.
“You are,” he promised.
I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t want to argue in what felt suddenly like a funeral. I nodded and tried to look as if I believed my survival at the morning’s end was certain.
The rowdy joy that had filled the chamber when others were chosen was gone.
And then, lucky me, it was time for Clan Amber’s recruits.
“Get it over with,” Ander said low in my ear and, since he was still gripping my shoulder, he gave me a forward shove.
After I survived, I’d probably appreciate that. But at the moment I was more interested in pretending certainty about my survival for ten more minutes.
Still, there was no escape. I stepped forward.
Into the still-smoking ring.
The marks were not abstract from inside the circle. They were individual. Some were faded, some fresh from this morning, but each one was the record of a shifter who had walked to the altar and had not walked back out. My vision had gone dark at the edges, tunneling down as I faced death.
The altar stone was warm under my palms when I laid them down, and I almost snatched my hands away. I had to force myself to press my hands down. Was it still hot from Iven’s burning? Would Lightbringer see my fear and panic, the way my breathing was coming short, and reject me?
I spoke the words of invitation, hoping my voice wouldn’t shake. My voice sounded oddly muffled to my ears, as if it came from far away.
Nothing happened.
I looked up.
I was searching for Fieran before I had decided to search for him. He was the one I wanted now. I wanted to be back on the horse, leaning against his chest, feeling his strong arm around my waist.
Fear had not moved, but he strained forward toward me as if he were just barely resisting the call of his body to my side. His face was calm, composed, but there was something in the heat of his golden eyes.
I repeated the words again.
The room, already hushed, grew silent as the grave.
Ander took a step forward, then stopped. He couldn’t help me now. He had been beginning to reach, and now his hand fell to his side.
Fieran, though, surged toward me. Two of Bismyth’s shifters caught him, trying to deflect him to the side rather than step directly between him and me. He staggered with them, then kept moving forward, and then Anayla stepped in front of him, her hand flat on his chest. Whatever she said was brief. It stopped him. Barely.
I turned back to the sigil.
I felt hollowed out, as if all my hope had been dug out of me with a spoon. Fear had been so sure that I would be claimed that I had believed him. I was believing it less with every second, and the seconds were accumulating. Part of me wanted to run, but if I stepped back out of this scorched circle unclaimed, I would ignite.
I did not know what to do. Speak the words a third time? No one else had done that. Yet I dared not leave the circle, and I had not been claimed.
Flashes of memory rose up in my mind, unbidden by any thought. Touching Tay’s face when I was barely more than a baby myself, and he was squishy-faced and new. Standing at myfather’s side as he drove in the posts for our fence. My mother and I laughing over a joke I didn’t remember as we gathered eggs from our chickens.
Tay’s first coughing fit and how I didn’t know what to do. My father outlined in the doorway, and my joy seeing he was home, and then his body crumpling. My mother putting Lidi in my arms and turning over in her bed, back into her grief.
