Chapter 17 #3
I lower the rod, feeling strangely protective of the marsh runner. “They can’t achieve this because they're trying to break the dragons, not understand them.”
Understand them. The words bring a memory. It’s what Selen wanted us to do. What she wanted to teach us. I wonder again what her personal endgame is in all this. If only my magic was mind-reading.
“The Ironhold doesn't care about understanding. It cares about results,” Zeriel says.
I pause and turn to glance at him. “And you? What do you care about?”
“Winning. Restoring my family’s name. Surviving. Anything else is decoration.” He takes the rod from my hand. “We’re not as different as you might think. Sentimentality is a luxury neither of us can afford.”
“Yet here you are, gambling everything on a forbidden connection,” I observe. “Sounds rather sentimental to me.”
“It sounds tactical,” he corrects, though something flickers in his eyes.
“The dragon trials are worth triple points in the tournament. Mastering them could mean the difference between victory and death. Especially for you. My fate is lashed to yours now. If I burn, you burn. So I’d suggest you try not to stumble. ”
I walk in uneasy silence as he continues leading me through the pens. As much as I hate it, I’m unlikely to forget the fact.
Zeriel begins prompting me to test my connection with other breeds.
Some respond more readily than others. The marsh runner and storm wing proved most receptive, their minds curious and surprisingly open.
The embermaw, all smoke and simmering heat, allowed a tentative link before pulling away.
A glade serpent coiled around a dead tree branch and watched me with cool detachment, offering no resistance but no welcome either.
The frostclaw, skittish and sharp-minded, darted away the moment I reached out.
And the heavily-scarred battle drake remains stubbornly resistant despite multiple attempts, its mind a locked gate bristling with remembered pain and fury.
I can’t help wondering if this would be easier with less iron surrounding me. Based on what I know of the original traits of fae-kind, I have to assume so. But at least I’m not completely stymied.
By the time we've worked through half the enclosures, I'm exhausted, my head pounding from the mental strain of so many connections.
“We need to go,” Zeriel says, checking a small timepiece. “The pre-dawn patrol will begin rounds soon.”
I nod, relieved. As fascinating as this experiment has been, each connection has taken something from me—energy, focus, pieces of myself I'm not sure I'll get back.
I don’t know how we’ll use this yet, in a way that wouldn’t give our game away to everyone in an arena.
Particularly given Selen’s warning, further visible dragon-whispering is the last thing I can afford to risk.
It would reveal my magic to the world, assuming that’s what this truly is.
Plus, if I’m going to need blood to even initiate a connection, that would be a practical impossibility.
But perhaps as I grow more into… whatever this ability is, blood won’t always be necessary.
As we prepare to go, I pause before the storm wing's enclosure one last time.
The dragon moves to the bars, watching me with those intelligent eyes.
Without the blood to facilitate a deep connection, I can only sense the faintest echo of its consciousness, but it's enough to feel its reluctance to see me go.
“I'll come back,” I whisper, not sure if it can understand me without the blood bond.
The storm wing makes that soft chirruping sound again. Then, to my surprise, it extends one wing slightly through the bars, not aggressively, but almost like an offering.
I hesitate, then reach out to touch the delicate membrane. The contact sends a shiver through me, not as intense as before but unmistakable.
“What are you doing?” Zeriel calls.
“Not your business,” I mutter, and withdraw my hand reluctantly.
As we make our way out of the dragon pens, Zeriel glances back at the enclosures. I can almost hear the gears of his mind grinding, calculating how to turn what just happened into a weapon. Then he says, almost to himself, “If you can tame a dragon’s will, you can tame anything. Remember that.”
I pause for a moment, unsure what he means exactly. I snort softly. “Tame? That dragon wasn’t tamed. It just didn’t eat me. Next you’ll be telling me I can tame you.”
That gets a glance over his shoulder, his eyes dark as the cavern. “Try it and see who ends up burned.”
I ignore the spark of heat his focus sends through me. “Tame anything,” I repeat. “That your life motto?”
He doesn’t slow. “It works better than yours.”
“Oh? And what’s mine?”
“Run your mouth until someone shuts it for you.”
“Strange,” I say, “yet somehow you haven’t managed it.”
He casts me another dark look over his shoulder, but keeps walking.
Despite my reservations, the storm wing’s gaze clings to me as I follow Zeriel out, that strange hum still thrumming under my skin.
Taming or not, I know what I felt—and it wasn’t something he can tally up on one of his maps.
Whatever Zeriel wants to call it, what passed between me and the dragons wasn’t just awe.
.. It was power. And for the first time in my life, it was mine.