Chapter Seventeen #2
I read the next few passages, but dread seizes my lungs as one thing becomes plainly clear—a bond is rooted in love.
Familial, friend, and most often, romantic love.
It makes sense. Ozias did say bonds were secondarily for reproducing and wouldn’t creating and raising a child together be easier with someone you were connected with?
Which means, the more emotionally connected Zhoric is to me, the more easily I can bond with him.
I let the book lower to my lap, my mind churning.
Ozias and Atlanta are hoping I’m strong enough to force the bond on Zhoric, but figuring out my strength—my elahi—has been slow.
I wonder if it would be possible to make Zhoric feel something for me sooner than we can figure out my power.
I wonder if I can seduce him, trick him, into bonding with me.
Intent on testing my theory, I go into the night to try my hand at being friendly with him, or at least, not entirely antagonistic. Only he’s not there. There’s a feeling of his nearness, but wherever he is, I can’t seem to access him.
Two more nights pass, and I wait for him, but he never shows.
I’ve gone through an unnecessary array of emotions regarding this matter. On edge, at first, wondering when he’d waltz in. Glad, because maybe it’s best if I don’t see him after all. Annoyed, because if he were around, then maybe I’d be able to do something.
I would have spent my time flying, exploring more of my dragon form, but Ninon is still too weak to stay awake when she shifts at night.
Ozias wants me to take to the skies, explaining it will help me further connect to my dragon form, but I can’t bear to leave her side.
He told me Atlanta gets like that sometimes where she’ll go through phases where the nights are hard and all she can do is sleep.
I could tell his concern ran deep when he told me, which only made me worry all the more for Ninon.
Ninon is frustrated that I won’t leave her side.
It’s not often that she’s truly upset with me, but I explained it has nothing to do with her.
That it’s something I’m waiting for us to do together, because that’s what I want.
I don’t mention that it’s also because I’m terrified for her.
Afraid that one morning she might not wake up.
During the day, Ozias and Atlanta have been taking turns helping me meditate. Our goal is to get me to a place where I can shift at will. I fall into a rhythm with my meditations, more determined than ever.
Now, three days after the incident and as many nights with no meetings with Zhoric, Ozias walks onto his terrace where I wait for him.
“No more scars,” I say, looking at the sleek skin of his lower arm and hand. Not a single mark mars his skin, though it is several shades paler than his usual sun-kissed tone.
He fans his hands elegantly before curling them into a fist, studying the new appendage. On the edge of his palm is a smudge of black ink. “Delighted that you’ve been looking so closely at me.”
I raise a brow, though a thrill runs through me. “I always look for scars. Tells a lot about someones weaknesses.”
Ozias moves towards me then, stepping so close that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. “My lack of scars says more about my weakness than my scars ever did, I think.”
The meaning behind his words is like a gentle caress and I suppress a shiver. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“A dragon gets scars as easily as our human forms, and with our line of work, scars are an inevitability. The only way our scars disappear is if we’ve needed to regenerate something new after it was torn away,” he says, nodding down to his arm.
“If a draconem is lacking scars been broken in ways you can’t imagine.
The question you’ll want to ask then, is why. ”
The conversation Thrace and I had back in Dyēus comes rushing back to me, his words filling my brain, his admission of falling in love with my sister.
I wanted to deny it then. Dragons don’t love.
But I read Atlanta’s words. I know my own affection and the way I feel towards those I love—and I am a dragon.
So what I once thought was impossible is now a stark reality.
And I can either face it and accept it—or run from it.
“What are you thinking?” Ozias asks, eyes scanning my face as if he could read me as easily as one of his books.
My pulse jumps and I answer with the nearest truth I care to share. “Thrace.”
His eyes shutter, a slight tic of his facial muscles making the freckle under his left eye flex. “Ah, yes. Exactly what every man wants to hear; another’s name on the lips of the woman he’s desperately attracted to.”
My pulse flies into a full gallop at his candor. “I meant, I was thinking about him and my sister,” I clarify. “He said he loved her, but what would he do for her? Does he love her enough to keep her from harm?”
The back of Ozias’s fingers brush my cheek, light and tender. “You needn’t worry. He would do anything for her.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” I say, the heat of my anger scorching my skin. “He couldn’t even get word to her after the birth of her children, after he took her son. He told me so himself. That doesn’t sound like a man who would do anything for someone he claims to love.”
“It’s complicated in Dyēus. The draconem there aren’t supposed to choose a carremai they could bond with.
It would complicate things for Dyēus because the men there would be compelled to bond with them, which in turn would unleash her dragon.
Most of the elites agree with this situation, but a few are not.
Some believe that by not choosing the best possible mate, we’re not only weakening future generations, but setting something else in motion, too. ”
I try to focus on what he’s saying, but I’m hooked on his words: those they could bond with. “Are you saying my sister and Thrace are compatible? That they could bond?”
“I am saying,” he says, dropping his hand, “they have bonded.”
I rear back, brows drawing together as I struggle to understand. “They—what?”
“I saw their threads once before when I was visiting Dyēus not long ago. They were intertwined in a bond.”
“So what does this mean? Can she shift? Is she safe? Will the Sar Dyēus end her life for this?” The words come out rushed and I clutch my stomach as my insides churn with panic.
“Yes, she can shift, controlled, and as any draconem could.” Shock and a hint of betrayal twists sour and sharp in my nose. Ozias goes on. “Zhoric will do nothing. He needs Thrace, and before anyone or anything else, Thrace will keep your sister safe. That’s what bonded pairs do.”
He’s implying my sister comes even before the Sar Dyēus when it comes to Thrace. It makes sense now: Zhoric’s reaction the other night when I begged him not to harm my sister. It’s not that he won’t. It’s that he can’t. Which raises the question of what will happen to me when I bond with Zhoric.
I step back, and turn towards the open sky.
Big, fluffy clouds drift lazily across the wide, pale blue, all the while a storm swells inside me.
I want to kill him, but will I be able to?
I toss the thought from my mind. Focus. I need to maintain focus.
I can’t do anything for Ninon, for my sister, for anyone, until I find my elahi and master shifting.
And until I do that, I won’t be able to get face to face with the Sar Dyēus and bond him to me, one way or another.
I look over my shoulder. “Should we get started?”
Ozias splays his hand, new and unmarred, gesturing to the ground.
I lie down, the same way I’ve meditated day in and day out.
Only this time a new resolve fills me. A part of me has been afraid to allow this beast to take over my body, to become one with me.
I’ve hated versions of this creature my whole life, but I’m beginning to understand it now.
The depth of who and what I am. Maybe if I can tap into this place inside me, I can allow this bud of feeling for Ozias to take root—another thing to hold me here if my bond with the Sar Dyēus threatens to consume me.
As my thoughts ready to spiral out of control, I tamp them down and collect them against my chest. Then I imagine lifting my hands and letting them go, giving them away to the gentle breeze.
I fall into myself. Here, I know I’m in control, of my destiny, of my life. It’s me against an ever changing world, and I will change with it. I will mold myself into an unrestricted being, one that can harness great power.
I’m so deep within myself that I almost don’t recognize Ozias’s turning figure.
He may as well be the sun or the moon or the stars hovering above, wheeling across this vast plane of existence.
Inside, I wander, looking around corners of my mind that I once thought were empty spaces, down tunnels and over mountains, crossing the rivers of my mind until, finally, finally, I find her.
She sleeps. Her breath bellows her ribs—no, not her breath—mine, in the same rhythm with the rise and fall of my hands upon my stomach.
Dappled sunlight glistens across my scales, pale silvery gray.
My head is nestled in the crook of my long tail.
My mane swaying on a phantom breeze is a forest green so dark that it looks almost black, like moss in the shade.
The beauty of her, of me, strikes so violently, that a sob wracks my body.
She blinks, her eyes opening, the same, honey brown color I know so well boring into me.
Hot tears bubble and fall down my cheeks in heavy rivulets.
You found me.
Yes.
She—no I—stand, curving my back in a luxurious stretch before ambling towards me, eyes focused, at once predatory and serene.
This must be what people see before we take their souls, I think, the thought coming to me unbidden.