Page 95 of Grave Situation

“What?”

Jaimin sighs. “Askhim, Talon. What does he plan to do now?”

Dammit. “Ah… I don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to.” He glances at Master, then back at me. “Why?”

“He’s trying to pretend Leicht’s not there,” Master says dryly. “Because Talon is the master of hoping if he ignores things, they’ll go away.”

Hold on now. “That’s not true!”

“What did you do when you were first assigned a class to teach?”

My mouth snaps shut. Gods’ turds, he had to bring that up.

“No,” Jaimin says, his mouth quirking in that little smile I used to find so annoying. “Don’t say you tried to ignore the existence of your class?”

I give in. “I wasn’t ignoring them. I was trying to outwait the dean and make him assign somebody else.” Except the wily bastard was prepared for that, and he had the students track me down and trail after me all over the academy, like lost kittens, until I finally conceded defeat.

“We don’t have time for you to sulk right now, Talon,” Master informs me. “Talk to Leicht. We need his input.”

Pressing my lips into a line, I try to think of an excuse. A good one that they’ll actually accept. There isn’t anything. “If I talk to him, the bond is real. Tia…” I bite back the rest. Tia’s dead. She’s not coming back.

They both stare at me with compassion, but that doesn’t change anything. My sister is gone forever, but this mission remains. If I walk away now—if I even can—then the continent is lost. Perhaps even the world. After all, once whoever is raising the zombies takes us down, what’s to stop them from expanding? Tia was a soldier, but even before that, before we went to the academies and began our training, she never ran away from problems. I liked to ignore them; she tackled them head-on.

She’d never forgive me for walking away from this.

“Fine.” I prod the new part of my mind.“Are you there?”

A sense of fleeting amusement flows over me.“Where else would I be?”

“Have you been listening, or do I need to explain?”I’m not in the mood to play word games or chat right now.

“I know what has been said.”

I wait for him to continue, but that seems to be it.

“Well? Do they expect you to return? Can we be apart? What are you planning to do?”

“I had not considered.”

How very helpful.

“Could you consider now? The decision will need to be made soon.”There’s a tiny bite to my mental tone, but it’s deserved. If I have to deal with my grief and make decisions, so does he.

“They will expect me to return,”he admits.“We dragons prefer the company of our own in times of grief.”He pauses.“I’m uncertain if I can. Separation from one’s bonded is uncomfortable for both parties, especially in the early stages of the bond. Whether this… thing… will behave as a regular bond, I don’t know.”

I relay that information.

“Does the bond seem different in any way?” Master asks intently.

The sensation of Leicht’s hesitation vibrates through my bones. He doesn’t want to answer this, and I canfeelit.“No.”

Before I tell Master, I check,“It feels like the bond with Tia did? It doesn’t feel like it could be a temporary anomaly, like we could remove it? Or it might… fade?”I’m clinging to that idea, the thought that this is some kind of trauma response that will dissipate as we become accustomed to the loss of Tia. It almost makes sense—the two of us were linked to her, and she was suddenly and violently ripped from life.

“Does it feel to you as though it could be removed?”The image of a blade severing the tie rises in my mind, and I physically jerk away, causing Jaimin to exclaim in startlement. My mind recoils also, and I feel vaguely ill. How can a simple concept cause such a visceral reaction?“That is how a bonded feels about the loss of a bond,”Leicht replies to my unspoken question.“We must face the truth: It is real and permanent.”

I’m too tired to contemplate how impossible that is. I’ve had that thought already. So has Leicht. Master. Jaimin. We all know it’s not possible.

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