Page 38 of Emerald Waves
Holy shit.
His response was so stunning and completely out of character that for a moment all I could do was stand there and blink at the ramifications of his statement.
Ionus hadn’t been questioning us, he’d been questioning himself.
He never questioned himself.
Not in any moment embedded in my memory.
What had caused that?
How worried must he have been to take his fears to Raven, completely bypassing the four of us.
That was the part that sent a chill through me. How had none of us sensed that he’d reached such a precarious mental state before Alex had come along. Ionus was the most disciplined and unflappable of all of us. I’d always believed that his self-control had to be endless, especially to put up with Odem’s antics without charring our brother. Now it seemed as if we’d missed tiny fissures forming right under our noses. How unbelievably unprepared would we have been if our brother had gone over the edge and got lost in emotions he clearly hadn’t felt the need to share with the rest of us.
The answer was massively.
Yet could I really stand there and fault him for not reaching out with all the secrets I’d kept from him and the rest of our brothers?
No, not when we were standing here in the cave right now because of one of them.
“Now, if you will all settle down for a moment I’ll finish with my explanation,” Raven said, a hint of reproach in her voice.
It gave me pause and left me to wonder if there were other concerns Ionus had gone to her for guidance about over the years as my brothers and I had begun to view him as little more than the stern taskmaster we knew during training. While my own tendency to isolate was a choice I’d made for myself, I worried now that perhaps we’d pushed him into a similar state, whether he wanted things to be that way or not?
Thank the goddess that Alex had come along to shine a little light into his days the way I needed to allow Emerson to do for me.
And yet there was still a big part of me that balked at the thought of reaching out for help of any kind. Was my dragon right? Was I so desperate for my brother’s praise and approval that I’d convinced myself that it would be impossible to earn that if I needed a bit of assistance along the way?
I think he was.
If he were present and dialed into my thoughts the way he’d always been in the past, even when I demanded that he leave me alone to brood, he’d have been gloating right now. The fact that he wasn’t was truly concerning.
“Because dragons tend to be ruled by their emotions as much as the elements they wield, legend has it that the key to unlocking the full scope of their potential was in finding the mate meant to balance them,” Raven explained. “Without that balance, it isn’t just their element a dragon runs the risk of being consumed by, it’s the direction their thoughts carry them in.”
“So, our mates are the key to unlocking our full potential?” Mattias muttered.
“In every way imaginable,” Raven explained. “When you have someone else’s needs, desires, and dreams to consider, there is far less of a tendency to overreact or be impulsive. Tell me, Caro,what would you have done after your encounter in the cave, if you had not been more concerned about what you sensed from your mate than what you’d experienced at the hands of the ones you’d encountered?”
“I’d have hunted for them until I ferreted out where they were hidden, even if it meant tracking them along the earth’s core for weekends on end until I’d exacted my vengeance,” I admitted.
“And no doubt started a war in the process,” Ionus growled. “And given me my first gray hair when none of us heard hide nor hair from you while you were doing it. I am still furious to learn that you were attacked and rendered helpless and kept it from me. What if you had been imprisoned instead of left adrift and floundering beneath your beloved waves. At those depths, none of us but Mattias would have been able to help you. You could have been lost to us and that is not acceptable. Have you ever once considered the damage we could have done and the offenses we might have caused in our hunt for you? I’ve always known that you dove deep, slipping between earth and water, knowing we couldn’t track you or find you if you didn’t wish to be found, but now I’m left to wonder if there haven’t been other times when you were in peril that I have no clue about? I still can’t feel your dragon, but I can feel what this encounter has done to you, and it scares me, brother. You damn near terrified the scales off me upstairs. I thought you were dying, and yet you still tried to push me away.”
“You weren’t the only one who thought I was dying,” I admitted. “The noise in my head was like being stabbed by a million diamond shards.”
“And yet you still thought that I would allow you to return the statue on your own.” Ionus huffed. “That alone tells me that you weren’t really thinking at all.”
“I still don’t see how you intend to accompany me to depths that would crush even you,” I growled, because there I was, catching yet another lecture from him.
Yeah I’d fucked up. I’d removed an artifact that, in hindsight, I should not have touched. I did not give what I’d seen enough consideration, if I had, I’d have recognized that what took place in the cave was a defense mechanism after I’d invertedly surprised the Merdragons residing in it. Instead, I’d convinced myself that the glimpse of them I’d gotten was a hallucination brought on by the hellacious headache I’d been left with after my encounter with them. I hadn’t thought, I hadn’t taken the time to consider all the legend and lore I’d amassed over the years. I knew that every sea monster myth and cryptid creature encounter stemmed from something naturally occurring, though perhaps a bit too illusive for humans to be able to prove the existence of. Hadn’t I catalogued the source of many of those encounters over the years? And taken great pleasure in laughing at the stupidity and outlandishness of humans?
Way too many times to count.
And yet I’d ignored what my dragon’s eyes had witnessed and swam off with that artifact without a thought.
Yeah. I’d fucked up. I owed our Merdragon relations my most sincere apology and assurances that I would be more cautious of where I poked around in the future. Clearly I was not the only dragon of the sea. In fact, it seemed to me now that it might be more their home than mine and perhaps I shouldn’t be dabbling in Mattias chosen element.
How sobering was that.
