7. Alar
ALAR
"Love does not grant you dominion over the one you love. It grants you the privilege of worrying about them for the rest of your life."
—King Aldric III of Catonia, Letters to My Daughters
Kailin stood before the mirror in our room, weaving her golden hair into several tight braids instead of her usual loose one and humming a melody I didn't recognize.
She looked healthier and happier than she had in weeks, and I didn't know whether it was Morgateth's effect or just the relief that all five of us had successfully bonded.
I should be happy for her, and I was, but I was also furious.
"You're staring holes in my back," she said without turning from the mirror.
"I'm not. I'm just thinking while looking in your general direction."
"Way to make me feel special. Suave, Alar. Really suave," she teased. "What happened to my charming prince?"
I let out an exaggerated sigh. "Fine, you caught me. I was admiring the woman I love, and specifically how the dress uniform pants were lovingly hugging your backside."
She chuckled. "That's better. But given the depth of the crease between your brows, you were also thinking about topics less pleasing than the loving relationship between my uniform pants and my backside."
"There is nothing more deserving of my attention than that."
As an Elurian and as a prince, I had mastered the art of not lying outright by omitting the things I didn't want to say and focusing on something else. We were not as strict about the Precepts of Truth as the Elucians, but that didn't mean that we disregarded them completely.
Being bonded to Veynathei, I needed to remember that my dragonia wasn't bound by the Precepts at all and could lie at will.
The question was, would she?
There were things I needed to keep from her, but that wasn't the same as lying.
I smoothed my expression and focused on fastening the silver buttons of my dress uniform. They caught the light in a way that reminded me of Veynathei's shifting scales.
"Are you going to tell me what's bothering you?" Kailin asked.
"Nothing is bothering me."
She turned from the mirror and fixed me with those blue eyes that always saw too much. There was a new steadiness in her gaze, more power, and I didn't like to think that Morgateth was the one responsible for this new strength.
"Alar."
"Fine." I let the half-buttoned uniform gape at my chest. "You chose Morgateth. That's what's bothering me."
"He chose me."
"You accepted. You could have refused."
"I could have. I didn't want to."
My jaw tightened at the calm certainty in her voice. "He snapped his jaws in your face, Kailin. I and every other person on that roof thought you were about to die."
"He was testing me."
"By terrifying you and all the other cadets?"
"Yes. He was testing whether I was scared of him." She crossed the room and sat beside me. "If I'd flinched, he would have moved on to another cadet. The fact that I didn't flinch told him what he needed to know."
"And what was that?"
"That I'm strong enough."
Strong enough to survive him. That was what she meant, even if she didn't say it. Strong enough to survive a dragon whose three previous riders had died in tragic and suspicious circumstances.
"There were plenty of other dragons you could have chosen from."
"None would have been right for me, and vice versa.
" Her voice was patient, but I could hear the edge beneath it.
We'd had this conversation once already on the roof, in the brief minutes between her landing and when we'd gone to change for the celebration.
It had been interrupted by Morek's exuberant recounting of his flight with Korthax, but there was no buffer now.
"You didn't even wait to see who else might come," I said.
"I didn't need to. When Morgateth walked toward me, I knew. The bond was already forming before either of us spoke." She paused, seeming to search for words. "It was fated to be. I felt it."
It was hard to argue with that when I had felt the same way when Veynathei had walked toward me. The recognition had been instant, bone-deep, undeniable. But Veynathei wasn't a dragon with a body count.
"I don't know, Kailin. Perhaps you should have fought the pull. Three dead riders is not a good track record."
"Those deaths were not his fault." By the sound of her voice, I knew that her patience was wearing thin. "We talked about this, and we arrived at the conclusion that those accidents hadn't been the dragons' fault."
I shook my head. "Those are theories. We can't be sure."
"I'm sure." She put her hand on her chest. "I can feel his grief for those riders, his guilt, his rage at those who might be responsible for their deaths. I know that he didn't murder them because those losses nearly destroyed him."
Every instinct I possessed told me that feelings were not evidence, that the bond could be coloring her perception, that she was too close to the situation to assess it objectively.
But I knew that telling Kailin her feelings were unreliable was the fastest way to turn a tense conversation into a fight, and I didn't want that. Not tonight.
"I'm scared for you," I said instead. "I watched you walk toward that dragon, and I felt helpless. I couldn't protect you from him. I couldn't even speak. You can't imagine how devastating it felt to watch you with him."
Her expression softened, and she reached for my hand, lacing her fingers through mine.
"I know, and I love you for how much you care, but you have to trust me.
I'm not reckless, Alar. Morgateth is exactly the dragon I need.
He's powerful enough to feed me all the energy I could ever consume without tapping out or burning out.
He's also experienced and fierce enough to protect me from the threats we both know are coming. "
She was right.
On every practical level, she was right. Morgateth was arguably the most powerful dragon in the force after Nyxath. For a shaman-in-training who needed a dragon's strength to fuel her prophetic abilities, the match made perfect sense.
But logic and practical considerations aside, Morgateth was dangerous. Even if he wasn't guilty of murdering his riders, he might be guilty of being reckless and causing their accidental deaths.
Kailin must have sensed that I needed a moment, because she let the silence sit between us while she returned to the mirror and finished her hair, fashioning an elegant updo with the tight braids she'd woven earlier.
"By the way," she broke the silence after a while. "Did you see the rescue flight deploy?"
"I didn't, but when Veynathei landed and I dismounted, I heard Captain Odinah talking about it with Captain Shevrak.
Something about an avalanche near the Tarinian border and Elurian civilians stranded.
" I shook my head. "These mountains are a death trap, and yet every year some fools venture out there, Elurion knows for what. Prove that they are brave?"
Kailin shrugged. "I guess. Since Commander Langston devoted so much time to teaching us about the rescue treaty protocols, those kinds of things must be happening often.
That's how I immediately knew what the red flare meant.
Morgateth contacted Nyxath, and she dispatched the rescue team before the alert even reached the Citadel through the official channels. "
"That must have significantly cut the response time. It could have been the difference between the rescuers getting to the victims in time or not."
"Morgateth said that we saved them at least an hour." She secured the last pin in her hair. "We watched the flight pass us on their way to the border."
"Do you know who was stranded up there?"
"No. Probably hikers or climbers who ventured too high."
They were probably Tarinians. Tarina was the only Elurian province that shared a direct border with Elucia, and that mountain range was such a formidable natural barrier that the Elucians didn't even post guards on their side of the border.
Those mountains were treacherous, with unstable cornices and seismic activity that was known to trigger sudden avalanches.
"Whoever they were, they were lucky you were in the air to see their flare," I said.
She chuckled. "They were lucky that Morgateth wanted to show off by flying all the way to the border on our first outing."
I grimaced. "Your dragon took you on a two-hour joyride to the edge of Elucia on your first flight together, and you're wondering why I'm worried about you."
"It wasn't dangerous. Morgateth knows these mountains better than anyone."
"Says who? Morgateth?"
Kailin flinched, and I immediately regretted my sharp tone. "I'm sorry." I rubbed my face with both hands. "I should stop criticizing your choice. I need to learn to live with it."
Sighing, she came to sit beside me and took my hand. "Tell me about Veynathei."
The redirect was so transparent that it almost made me laugh.
"Don't do that," I said.
"Do what?"
"Change the subject by asking me something you know I'll want to talk about. I know what you're doing, and I don't appreciate being managed."
She had the grace to look caught out. "I wasn't managing you. You said that you needed to accept my choice, which was very smart, and it made me think that I need to learn more about the new female who I would be sharing you with from now on."
"Admit it, you just want me to stop talking about Morgateth."
"Both are true."
I knew it was time to drop the argument about Morgateth and move on, but it wasn't in my nature to acquiesce so easily. Still, if I knew what was good for me and for my relationship with Kailin, I'd better drop it.
"Veynathei is extraordinary," I said. "She's very young, becoming eligible for bonding only this year, but there's a wisdom in her beyond her years. I wasn't doing a great job protecting my thoughts, and she found out who I was in the first thirty seconds of our interaction."
Alarm registered in Kailin's eyes. "Did she find out about the prophecy?"
"I don't think so. I wasn't thinking about the prophecy when she approached me, and after she called me by my full name and title, I raised my protective walls."
She let out a breath. "That must have been an uncomfortable moment."
"It was horrifying, but it was also wonderful. She doesn't care that I'm a prince. She doesn't care about the politics, the mission, or any of the things that define me to everyone else. She just sees me, and she likes what she sees."
"Of course she does." Kailin squeezed my hand. "What does she look like?"
Kailin had returned with Morgateth after Veynathei had dropped me off, and I had spent those long minutes terrified that something might have happened to Kailin on her first solo flight.
It had erased all the joy and elation from my own first flight, but I wasn't going to mention it and reopen the argument.
"Her scales shift color. Silver and pale gold mostly, but with hints of turquoise and pink depending on the light.
It's like light refracting through crystal.
" I chuckled. "She knows she's beautiful and she likes to show off.
She spent a good portion of our flight positioning herself to catch the auroras at her best angle. "
Kailin laughed. "I love her already."
"She'd appreciate that. She also has strong opinions about being appreciated."
"She reminds me of Shovia." Kailin leaned her head on my bicep. "She also likes to show off her good looks."
"There is something to that," I agreed. "Vey is also a little reckless, which reminds me of Shovia as well."
"Vey?" Kailin lifted her head off my arm and looked at me. "Is that your nickname for her?"
"I just came up with it. Veynathei is such a mouthful."
"Veyna sounds better than Vey." Kailin returned her head to my arm.
"I have a feeling that she will prefer Vey, but I will let her decide."
The tension between us seemed to dissipate, replaced by the shared wonder of what we'd both experienced today.
"The dragon I dreamt you were riding also had scales that shifted colors in the light, but it was a large male, so if I got that detail wrong, maybe other parts of that nightmare were wrong too."
My heart skipped a beat. What were the odds of her randomly dreaming about a dragon with shifting colors and me bonding with a dragonia that matched that description? The coloring was rare. I doubted there was another dragon like her.
Veynathei was much smaller than Morgateth, but she was larger than most dragonias except for Nyxath. Kailin could easily have mistaken her for a male.
I held my breath as I waited for her to ask whether my dragonia was large. If she asked, I would be forced to tell her the truth, and her anxiety would spike.
In Kailin's nightmare, I had fallen from the dragon's back and died, and Kailin had tried to convince me to go home to avoid that fate. I'd refused, and we'd agreed to disagree, but the dream sat between us like an uninvited guest at nearly every conversation.
"Hey." I cupped her face with my free hand. "I'm here, I'm bonded, and I'm not going anywhere."
"I know." But her smile didn't reach her eyes.
I kissed her, gently at first and then deeper, and felt her melt into me the way she always did, her fingers curling into the fabric of my half-buttoned uniform. For a moment, there was nothing in the world except the two of us and the warmth between us.
When we broke apart, my uniform was more unbuttoned than before, and I felt happy again.