by K. A. Linde
“Then, leave,” Roake snarled.
“She cannot,” Tara said. “We are sealed in until the ceremony is complete. The other competitors will be escorted back to the mountain. We must begin with our champions.”
“I don’t understand,” Noda said softly. “She’s taking someone else’s spot?”
“No, she is claiming her own spot,” Tara said. “And this isn’t up for discussion. The magic is powerful. A group of thirteen came together to build this for the competitors. There is no way that a single person could break it down. The only logical conclusion is that Kerrigan is a competitor, and she will now be a part of the final task.”
Tara waited to see if anyone else would speak up. But everyone was too shocked by the pronouncement to do much of anything but stare. Kerrigan among them. This wasn’t what she had planned. This was far from it. She had just been following her visions that told her how to help Fordham. She had sent him ahead so that he would make it and she could hold off Darrid. She never dreamed that she would even be allowed to test for a dragon. Not her—a half-Fae with no tribe and no prospects.
“That is settled,” Tara said. “Kerrigan is our fifth and final competitor. Please form a line, and we will begin.”
50
The Bonding
Tara brooked no argument. And though Kerrigan was sure this was an elaborate prank, that it couldn’t possibly be true, that not even in her wildest dreams had she envisioned herself standing in this moment, she moved into a line with the other four competitors. Audria, then Roake, then Noda, then Fordham, and finally Kerrigan before the five dragons.
She swallowed painfully and stared back at the dragons, unable to fathom that this was real life. Her stomach was topsy-turvy, and her mind was reeling, but if this was real, she wasn’t going to give it up for anything.
Five years ago, Kerrigan had stood where Tara was now, and she had spoken these words to Cyrene. It was a duty so honored that Dragon Blessed were spelled to never, ever speak of what happened within. But that didn’t mean Kerrigan didn’t remember. She knew what was coming even though the other four competitors did not. She was far from ready, but she would serve with honor.
“The final task set forth in the tournament is not for you, our final five competitors, but it is actually for the dragons themselves,” Tara said.
“The dragon’s choice,” Kerrigan whispered.
Tara’s smile was magnetic. She knew as much as Kerrigan did. Kerrigan had gone through this as a Dragon Blessed five years ago. The other competitors looked at her in surprise. She had never been able to even speak those words aloud. But finally, she was in a place to speak of her experience.
“Yes, Kerrigan,” Tara said, respectfully bowing her head.
Disim, a young brown boy of maybe eleven or twelve years with a shaved head, stepped up next. “A dragon is not complete without the existence of a dragon rider. Only the best competitors can arrive at this point. After all of the necessary tasks, the competition has prepared you for the Society and living the remainder of your days with a dragon bound.”
Yesmin clasped together her hands, which were black as night, and cleared her throat. Her voice had a slight tremor in it. “It is ultimately the dragon’s decision. They must find you worthy.”
Kerrigan trembled as the shock of the moment coursed through her. All these memories that she had suppressed because she could never speak of them. This was the real reason that they never wanted someone from the House of Dragons to compete. Dragon Blessed knew too much. They waited in the sidelines to help with the tournament. They worked with the dragons day in and day out for years. And most of all, they knew about the final task for the competition. Dragon Blessed would have an unfair advantage, getting to this point. But it didn’t mean a dragon would choose her. She hadn’t proven her worth in the competition. She had just landed here by accident. Maybe it would all be for naught now.
“We will begin with Tieran,” said Tara.
The dragon stepped forward. His midnight-blue scales twinkled in the lantern light inside the cave. He was the smallest of the lot but also the most beautiful. And like any male who had that much beauty, he knew it. She had watched him primp and preen, and the females went crazy for him. But she had never gotten along with him. Not that he was anything like March—he was a dragon after all, and they had keen intelligence and were regal figures—but his attitude always rebuffed against her.
Tieran surveyed the five competitors. His golden eye narrowed when it got to Kerrigan and then whipped back to the other four. And he did nothing.
Kerrigan shifted uncomfortably. The last time, each of the three dragons had known immediately which competitor they wanted to bond with. It normally took a few seconds to come to that conclusion. But Tieran looked torn as he judged each of the five people before him.
“Tieran?” Tara prodded after several agonizing minutes.
I am Tieran of Essex and Thiery. Born of the Holy Mountain. Proud and tenacious with a heart that sings for the skies.
Kerrigan swayed at the sound of his musical voice in her ears. But he stopped again right before he made his choice. She furrowed her brow in confusion.
My choice is one of honor. For I value it above all else. And thus, this choice is difficult because honor and power sing different songs.
Kerrigan and Tara caught each other’s eyes. Tara shrugged her shoulders in confusion. At least Kerrigan wasn’t the only one.
But the music thrums louder than sense. Thus, I must make my decision against my own judgment. If you will accept, I will be dragon bound to… Kerrigan of the House of Dragons.
“What?” she gasped, frozen in place.
Tieran’s words swam all around her. Was he saying that he didn’t want to accept her but that something about her was louder than his own sense? Well, that sounded like a ringing endorsement.
I choose you, Kerrigan, if you will accept me.
She wanted to ask, Why? Why her? When he didn’t even like her. She had hardly expected to be in this position, but if she had thought any dragon would pick her, any at all, the very last one on that list would have been Tieran.
Her mouth hung open as everyone awaited her answer.
“Kerrigan, your answer?” Tara whispered.
This was all she had wanted all her life. She’d wanted to fly. And if this meant that she could join the Society and fly the rest of her life, then she and Tieran could figure out their differences.
“I accept,” she gasped.
“Follow me,” Tara said. “From here, your magic will be bound.”
Kerrigan stepped forward on heavy feet, away from the rest of the competitors, and up to Tieran’s side. Tara walked them to a small pool. A table was set up next to it with five goblets and a book. Tara picked up the book and began to read the binding spell in ancient Fae. Kerrigan wasn’t fluent in the old language despite her tutors’ attempts to get her to understand it, but she could still feel the magic winding around her and Tieran, drawing them together.
One of the goblets was offered to Kerrigan. “Drink from this. You will pass into the spiritual realm, where you and Tieran will meet. When the binding is complete, you will be dragon and rider.” Tara touched Kerrigan’s hand with a wide, genuine smile. “I’m so happy for you. Good luck.”
“Thank you,” Kerrigan whispered, staring down into the goblet. It just looked like water, as it did in the pool, but she knew it was part of the spell. She looked to Tieran. “Ready?”
As I’ll ever be.
Kerrigan frowned and then downed the drink at the same time Tieran lapped from the pool. For the second time today, her vision went fuzzy, and then she blacked out.
For the last five years, Kerrigan had thought constantly about what it would be like to go through the dragon-binding ceremony. Having witnessed it firsthand, she had seen each of the competitors drink from the goblet and then enter a state of sleep, coming to with excitement as the bond set in. She’d imagined every scenario for h
ow the binding was actually accomplished.
But she hadn’t envisioned this.
Kerrigan stood on a bridge. It was small and wooden, overtop a bubbling creek that ran through the lawn of an estate. A white marble gazebo stood tall and proud with large columns and a statue of a woman at the center in a scandalously revealing gown. The gardens were massive, even compared to those in Bryonican territory, where the land was fertile and lush. This was a monument to meticulously maintained flora and fauna. And the mansion that sat at the top of the hill, all white stone and iron balustrades and glass windows, was the largest single building home she had ever seen in her life.
“Tieran,” she whispered.
She craned her neck. Tieran was supposed to be here, right? That was part of the binding. Or at least, she had thought it was. That they would have to go on some adventure together. Maybe she had just assumed what she wanted to happen… not reality.
Kerrigan uneasily stepped off the bridge and onto the thick dark-green grass. Her eyes shifted to the horizon. She startled, nearly falling over at the sight. There were mountains in the distance. She had grown up in a mountain and had a pretty good idea what the Vert Mountains looked like. Sure, there were other mountain ranges in Alandria, up north in Tosin territory. But she knew without a doubt that she had never seen these mountains in her life. There was nothing like this on Alandria.
She shivered in fear. Where was she? And why was she here?
Voices rang out from farther away. Anxiety shot through her, but she was here for a reason. She couldn’t just stand here in front of a bridge all day.
She swallowed hard and then walked past the gazebo and down a carefully laid stone path.
A man raged from the front of the house. “How dare you think to rise against your betters!”
The man stood in the doorframe. He was enormous, six and a half feet tall, with a cruel, sneering face and golden-tan skin. He wore a strange garment draped across one shoulder and belted at the waist. A circlet of laurels fit onto his golden hair. He was monstrously beautiful.
Screams could be heard from inside the house.
“Stop, Vulsan! You can’t do this!”
“Restrain her!” he cried back as he stepped out onto the back patio. His massive hand was fisted into the dark hair of another man. He flung the man forward at his feet, as if he were a rag doll. “We will teach you manners.”
The man coughed blood onto the white stone floor, injuries from a previous beating visible on his pale skin.
Kerrigan put her hand to her mouth as Vulsan pulled a barbed whip out of thin air and uncoiled it before the other man. She had to stop this. It was beyond barbaric. It couldn’t continue.
She stepped forward to intervene, and that was the moment that the man on the ground defiantly lifted his head to look at Vulsan.
Kerrigan gasped.
“Father?” she whispered.
But no one seemed to hear her. Not as she raced across the garden pathway. Not when she screamed as the first lash of the whip came down onto Kivrin Argon’s back. Not as she lunged for Vulsan to keep him from harming the father who had abandoned her, who she still couldn’t leave to this fate. But all she did was pass straight through Vulsan’s form. And all she could do was watch as her father’s back was ravaged. He made not one sound. Not one.
Kerrigan put her hand out. She could stop this. She could make Vulsan stop harming her father. She stretched with every last fiber of her being, into that place where the visions and energy bursts came from. Into that place she had never willingly touched, but she would here, for this.
And for one small fraction of a moment, Vulsan turned his head. His lips parted, and he saw her.
“Who?” he breathed.
A headache seared through her, as hot as a fiery poker to her eyeball. She gasped and collapsed to the ground. Vulsan returned to beating her father. And she could do nothing as blackness rushed up to greet her once more.
Kerrigan? Tieran spoke urgently into her mind.
She shuddered awake. The memory of her father’s whipping at the hands of that man. It was terrible. She couldn’t fathom why her mind had conjured such a thing. She turned her head and vomited onto the stones.
“Are you all right?” Tara asked in concern.
She waved her off. “Fine.”
“Okay,” Tara said uncertainly. “You two are bound forevermore. You will exit through here and fly home to Kinkadia, where you will have a hero’s welcome in the arena.”
Kerrigan straightened and followed Tieran away from the watchful eyes of the Dragon Blessed and the rest of the competitors. She glanced up at him and saw mirrored worry in his eyes.
Once they were finally alone, she breathed out heavily. “It didn’t work, did it?”
Tieran stretched his lithe limbs. No, I don’t believe it did.
“What did you see?”
The Holy Mountain, where I was born. A shudder ran through his scales. It was destroyed.
Kerrigan shivered. “I saw my father being beaten by this enormous golden man in some foreign world. I don’t understand it at all. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I believe dragons are more informed than Fae about what is supposed to happen during the bonding. I was told that we would face three challenges together and that we would have to choose each other above all others each time. Then, we would be bound.
“Yeah, that didn’t happen, did it?”
No.
Kerrigan sighed. “Scales.”
This is why I wasn’t even going to pick you.
Kerrigan glared at him. “Hey, I didn’t even sign up for this. It just happened. You could have picked someone else.”
Well, I wanted to.
“Fine, then go back in there and tell them it didn’t work! You can have one of the other competitors, and we can put this behind us.”
She shouldn’t have been mad with Tieran. She knew that. It wasn’t his fault that it hadn’t worked. She didn’t know what had gone wrong. But dragon binding was essential between dragon and rider. It was how they communicated and found each other and did all the incredible things that dragon riders had accomplished in the thousands of years since the advent of the Society. Without it, they were nothing.
I cannot, Tieran said softly. If I am found defective, then I might never get a rider.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I don’t know if they’ll even let me have this first chance. They’d never let me try again.”
Then, I believe… we’re stuck together. However unfortunate.
Great. All that, and she was stuck with a dragon who didn’t even want her and a binding that hadn’t even worked.
51
The Return
Kerrigan and Tieran were silent on the flight back to Kinkadia. As much as her anxiety was fresh, not to mention confusion over the vivid dream she had seen in the botched binding ceremony, she couldn’t ignore the brilliance of flying.
She was flying. And as long as everything went well, she would get to fly forever. It was what she had always wanted, and it was almost too good to be true.
As the arena came into view, they could hear the cheers erupt at the first sight of them. They were the first dragon pair back. The least expected pair ever. She was not looking forward to the disaster they were about to walk into.
“Do you think they’ll know we’re not bound?” Kerrigan asked nervously.
No. I don’t think they’ll be able to tell. We will just have to be careful.
Kerrigan frowned. Careful. Right. Her specialty.
Tieran did a sweeping loop around the arena to thunderous applause and then came in with a perfect, tight landing at the center of the arena.
Are you ready?
She released a breath. “As I’ll ever be.”
Kerrigan slipped easily from Tieran’s back and came face-to-face with Master Bastian, Mistress Layla, and Mistress Sinead. Bastian’s mouth was hanging open. Layla’s brow was furrowed, and she held her magic t
ight in outrage. Sinead kept flickering her eyes up and down, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Kerrigan?” Bastian finally got out.
She bowed slightly. “Master Bastian.”
“What have you done?” Layla snarled. “You are not a competitor. How dare you ride a dragon here.”
Tieran leveled his head with Layla and blew a puff of air in her face. Careful. She is mine.
Layla wrenched back, her eyes widening. “Tieran, I meant no offense, but she cannot possibly be your rider.”
“She was not a competitor,” Sinead said, finally overcoming her shock. “There are rules in place for a reason. She would have had to enter the tournament, be tested, go through all three competitions…”
“Not to mention, she is of the House of Dragons,” Layla spat. “She isn’t even part of a tribe.”
“And she’s too young!” Sinead cried.
Another figure approached, bold and furious across the arena. Kerrigan recognized Lorian right away. She straightened her spine. This should be fun.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lorian demanded. “What happened to the dragon’s rider?”
“I am Tieran’s dragon rider,” Kerrigan said boldly.
Lorian scoffed at her. “You? You’re nothing but a half-Fae wretch in the House of Dragons. You’re no more qualified to be a dragon rider than a human off the streets.”
Kerrigan gritted her teeth, but it was Tieran whose fury materialized. Kerrigan is my dragon rider. We are bound. You can no more separate us than you from your own dragon, Oria.
Lorian didn’t back down from Tieran’s anger though. He matched it. “How dare you threaten my dragon bond. I am a full member of the Society. You are still in training until the Society has recognized you as a dragon capable of a rider match. We will speak to your elders about this foolhardy nature.”