Page 22 of House of Embers
It was hard to think of the Society up here, with the wind whipping through her bound hair and the chill biting through her leathers and everything so far below looking as small as ants. She wished that she could revel in this feeling forever, forget the rest of her responsibilities and keep flying.
“We haven’t had time to discuss the bond,”Tieran said as they soared around a mountain and circled back through the valley.“You said there was another way.”
“I asked my mother about it,” Kerrigan told him. “Well, she said that the way we’ve been doing it here is barbaric.”
“As Cleora said.”
“Yes. Cleora said that bonding riders and dragons together so one would die if the other did was terrible, but I hadn’t really considered it like that. That was how we had the Irena Bargain. That was how the Society began.”
Tieran was silent a beat.“Of course.”
“Is that not how the Irena Bargain happened?”
“It is. As you tell it, a maiden walked into the mountain and bonded the leader of our kind, the Great Ferrinix. Together, they joined all the others, and the Society was created to end the war.”
“And how do the dragons tell it?”
He remained silent for longer. So long that Kerrigan thought that he might not answer.
“I would be breaking dragon law to tell you.”
Kerrigan’s eyes widened at that. “There’s dragon law?”
He huffed steam from his snout.“Don’t be daft. We govern ourselves and tolerate your kind at best.”
She laughed. “Fair, I suppose. So how do I hear the whole story?”
“A Great would have to tell you.”
Kerrigan mused on that. Most of the Greats were dead, and the ones that remained had returned to the Holy Mountain, where humans weren’t welcome. Didn’t seem likely that she’d ever find out then.
“All right. Well, that’s a history lesson for another time, I suppose. My mother said that Doma don’t bond dragons. They don’t even have to use crux bonds to connect to them, that Doma are powerful enough to assert control over other life-forms.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No. The way they use it is definitely not good. But if I use the magic the way she said and make it go both ways, I think that it’ll work just by the force of my new magic, without endangering either of us if something happens.”
“Let us try then.”
Kerrigan could hear the eagerness in her mind. He wanted this. They both did. And she would do anything to have that bond back the way it was meant to be. The fact that they could do it without the fear of death was an added bonus.
“All right. Here I go,” Kerrigan told him.
She’d had doubts about the vastness of her magic her entire life. Finding out she was Doma and not just that but a descendant of the strongest magic users currently in existence was a fact that had floored her. She still sometimes doubted it, but as she reached into the pit of her gut and felt for the well, it was hard to doubt. She was flush full of magic. More magic than she’d ever had before. Enough magic to make all the dragons do as she told them…if she were as messed up in the head as her grandfather.
But that wasn’t what she wanted.
All she needed to do was link her and Tieran together. And she felt for the first time that she could do that.
She tugged a bead of magic out of the well, connected a string to it, and pulled. It came freely, willingly, as if it had always wanted to do her bidding. She spread her arms wide and felt the energy build and build and build. Then she plucked it free and felt it course into Tieran. Not a tether like before. Not a bond like the one that connected her to Fordham, but a hook that slid into place.
Tieran shuddered at the first touch, as if it was an invasion. She hesitated at that reaction, but he settled almost immediately. She raised her hands to the heavens, looking at the sky and reaching for the unseen stars before bringing her hands down quickly.
The connection stuck.
Then held.
She released her magic on a breath and laughed. It was so close to a bond. So close that she could almost feel him the way she had always wanted to. The way she had in a crux bond. Except there was no direction. She didn’t have to move her hand to feel him anymore. It was just a connection. New and wholly original.
