by Melody Rose
My chest rose and fell heavily. I didn’t realize until then just how hurt I was at the thought that Monte bonded with someone before me. Had the relationship we had before. A light dimmed in my chest, knowing that maybe what we had was not as special or as valuable to him as I once believed. It hurt to know that I was possibly just another human to him.
I lowered my sword but did not put it back into its sheath. Arabella lowered her own hands right after the inherent threat disappeared.
“I did not know that you could bond with two humans,” Arabella said with a quiet voice.
“I thought you to be dead,” Monte answered reasonably.
“The contamination must have dissolved your bond,” Gideonia concluded, “that and the fact you have been separated for so long.”
Monte looked to his fellow dragons. “Have you ever known something like this?”
“Is this really all that unusual?” Freja said, breaking through the ranks. “Is Eva not bonded with multiple dragons?”
“Yes,” Zulu reported, “but as we have declared her the Queen of Dragons, she can bond with one member of each of the dragon clans. We do not, however, have as strong of a bond as the original one between her and Monte. We can not speak internally, for instance. Only she and Monte can do that.”
“And now Arabella,” I grumbled, mostly to myself.
“Queen of the Dragons?” Arabella’s eyebrows raised. “Well, Montgomery, you sure do know how to pick them, I guess.”
That statement rubbed along the back of my neck like sandpaper. I clenched my fists and fought the urge to charge Arabella just then.
“Okay,” Freja said, drawing the word out slowly, “so Eva can have multiple bonds, but Monte cannot? That seems backward.”
“They are two different types of bonds,” Zulu explained. “And Eva is only able to do it because we granted her the title of queen. Otherwise, it should not be possible.”
“Should not be but is,” I gripped. My attitude soured with each of Zulu’s explanations.
“I have known of animals to take multiple djers,” Zulu reported, “but never at the same time like this.”
“It is unstable,” Hannan chimed in. He took a tentative step forward, coming to the middle of our standoff. “Or that is what some past caretakers have noted. The bonds are not as strong as they could be when paired one on one. They find that the connection pulls tight until one or more of the bonds break.”
“So it’s technically possible but ill-advised?” I asked Hannan.
Arabella looked at me, the two of us meeting eyes for the first time. She was pretty, and that seemed to bother me as well. She also was older, seemingly more mature. I projected a lot onto this woman, albeit unfairly, and immediately labeled her as a sort of mean girl, my enemy.
She seemed to have the opposite reaction. Her face pulled into a smile, and she stepped forward with a hand outstretched, though it was gloved in leather presumably to protect others from her illness.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Arabella said with soft eyes. “Eva, was it?”
I did not want to be nice to her. I kind of wanted to punch her in the face and then fly off on my dragon’s back and get the hell out of here. But, despite whatever I felt then, I knew we couldn’t leave the Coast of Teine without finding the piece of the key.
I shifted my sword to my other hand and dimmed the light emanating from me, as well, as a sign of good faith. “Yeah, Eva Lawrence. Daughter of John and Mary Lawrence.”
“Oh yes,” Arabella said with an uncomfortable giggle. “I forgot they greet one another so formally in Andsdyer.”
“How do you do it here in Teine?” I asked, trying to open my mouth more so my words didn’t push through my teeth.
“We do not have surnames like your people,” Arabella explained with a polite smile. “We do not pride ourselves on lineage as the village as a whole raised the children.”
“So, you do not have parents?” Julei piped up. She peeked out from behind Zulu and clutched her cat so tightly in her hands, his eyes bulged.
“I have birth parents,” Arabella said solemnly, “but they did not raise me in the same way that your parents probably did for you. We are raised together, in a community, by all.”
“Like a cult,” I said unthinkingly.
Everyone looked at me with strange gazes and questioning looks.
“Nevermind,” I said as I hung my head and bit my lip. “Earth thing. Please continue.”
“Earth thing?” Arabella raised an eyebrow and cocked her head.
“It’s where I’m from.” I pointed to my chest. “I’m not from Andsdyer. I kind of traveled here from another dimension.”
Arabella’s mouth popped open like a broken cabinet. It hung there wordlessly, and I couldn’t help but smirk at her surprise. It felt like getting a leg up in the conversation.
“Arabella,” Monte said, breaking the woman out of her shock. “Are there more of you? How many citizens survived?”
Monte’s other djer cleared her throat and shook her head a little. “Very few of us. Yerti got a vision and told us to head to the volcano. Only some of us believed her because Yerti’s visions are known to be wrong from time to time, but we came, and when we tried to venture back outside, everything was destroyed. We have been living here ever since.”
I couldn’t help myself. I snuck a glance at Julei, our own resident seer who had yet to fail us with a foolproof vision. The young girl’s eyebrows were furrowed with confusion and sympathy like she couldn’t quite understand having an unreliable vision.
“So everyone else,” Monte said, still narrowly focused on Arabella, “they are in the volcano?”
“Yes.” Arabella nodded her head vigorously. “Would you like to see them?”
“I would like to save them,” Monte offered nobly. “You should ask them to come out, and we will fly them to Andsdyer where they can live peacefully with more abundance than you can imagine.”
“Uh, Monte,” I said as I held up one finger to interrupt. “How do you plan to cart all these people out of here?”
“There are only ten of us,” Arabella interjected, but I ignored him.
“Because the dragons can only hold so much weight,” I reasoned, “not to mention the fact that we need to be here.” Then I added, in our joined minds. “Looking for the key, remember?”
“What key?” Arabella asked aloud.
I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand. “You know it’s rather rude to go and announce a private conversation aloud to everyone.”
“Well, I am sorry if your so-called private conversation also included me in my head,” Arabella snapped back with just as much sass and irritation as I gave her.
“I forgot, okay?” I argued, not bothering to turn down my tone. “I forgot that you were also apparently linked to him and thus linked to me. Which is really weirding me out, if you ask me.”
“Your speech is so odd,” Arabella commented offhandedly.
“I will not stand for this,” Monte said suddenly. “The both of you need to understand that this is an unusual situation all around. What makes it worse is the both of you griping at one another.”
Even though Monte spoke to both of us, he looked directly at me as if he knew I was the instigator. Which, if I was honest with myself, I was. I forced myself to switch my thinking and observe the situation from Monte’s perspective. He had to feel torn between the past and the present. Old memories surfaced, and he was put into an impossible situation.
My anger tampered at the thought. As hard as I thought this was for me, it was infinitely harder for my djer, and if I cared about him at all, I needed to tone it down. I needed to do my best to be civil and play nice with Arabella even though I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.
I took a deep breath in and worked to keep perspective on the situation.
“Montgomery,” Arabella said with a kind voice, “your offer of escape is generous, but we refuse to leave the Coast of
Teine.”
“Why?” Monte persisted. “You should not have to suffer as such.”
“Teine is our home.” Arabella gestured about, indicating the foggy inside of the volcano. “We have known nothing else.”
“It is not wise to live in a contaminated home,” Gideonia said in a voice that sounded like she was reading from a script, rather than giving sincere advice.
“We understand it is not sensible,” Arabella said with a nod. “However, we refuse to abandon it when it is ill. There are safe places, like inside the volcano where we have subsisted for many years without the dragons.”
Her words hung in the air, on the verge of an insult. I could feel Monte’s guilt from all the way over here. It was in the way he hung his head, the twitch of his tail, and the raised shoulders.
“I never thought to look in here,” Monte admitted to the ground. “I assumed that no one had made it in time. Everything was destroyed. I thought I was the only one left.”
“No one blames you, Montgomery,” Arabella said as she crossed to the dragon’s side. She stroked his hair, brushing it out from behind his eyes.
I almost called out to warn her that Monte doesn’t like anyone to touch his hair, but it would have been in vain. The dragon lifted to meet her touch and even purred a little. I put my hands on my hips and bit my tongue.
“What matters is that you are here now,” Arabella said as if she was speaking only to Monte, even though we could all hear her.
“Yeah, and we’re here for a reason,” I interjected, finally finding an appropriate time that wouldn’t seem too pushy. Or at least a little less pushy than I had been previously.
“It is that key you mentioned?” Arabella asked.
“That’d be it,” I said with a smirk.
“A key to what?” the woman wondered.
“It’s actually a piece of a key,” I corrected, though she couldn’t have possibly known. “That leads to a gate to Rictorus.”
“The mountain kingdom of the dragons?” Arabella supplied. “I thought that was destroyed when the contamination hit. With Reon’s arrival.”
“Yep,” I said, irritation at having to repeat myself. It felt like we had talked about this mission seven hundred times already. “Long story short, we are trying to find it so that we can get to Rictorus and defeat Reon. So, we’d appreciate any information you’ve got.”
“I know nothing of Andsdyer’s folklore,” Arabella answered with a casual shrug. “I cannot imagine why it would have led you here.”
“Show her the riddle, Eva,” Monte commanded with a jerk of his head towards me. “She will understand what I speak of.”
I glared at Monte and almost sent him a message down our mental link but thought better of it. I didn’t need Arabella hearing any more of our conversations, especially when I was about to insult her. Instead, I followed my djer’s instructions and pulled out the piece of paper we found in the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book.
Arabella took the paper with a grateful nod and read it over in silence. While we waited, I shot Hannan a glance and caught his eye. I rolled my eyes and huffed out an impatient sigh. The caretaker simply shrugged innocently, which didn’t help my mood in the slightest. I needed someone to commiserate with me, someone to be on my side in all of this. Hannan’s lack of confrontation was not helping me fulfill that desire.
Suddenly, the woman put a hand to her mouth and looked up at Monte. “You mean…?” she stuttered.
“You believe so too?” Monte asked, excited at having someone on the same wavelength as him.
“It has to be,” Arabella concluded as they looked into each other’s eyes, not remembering that any of the rest of us were there.
I decided to put a stop to that right then. I whistled and held up a hand. “Yoo-hoo, care to share with the class?”
Arabella and Monte’s heads turned to look at the rest of us. Upon seeing us, they seemed to remember their surroundings and looked at least a little bashful, though not nearly enough to satisfy me.
“This riddle,” Arabella said as she shook the paper in her hand, “references a legendary being for us in Teine.”
“He is a sea creature,” Monte jumped in, “so we do not believe that he has been affected by the contamination.”
“Which means you still have a chance to get the key,” Arabella continued. The two of them played off one another in such an alarming manner, I couldn’t stand it.
“Well, who is it?” I asked, ready for this charade to end.
“Lorinis, the King of the mermaids,” Arabella and Monte said at the exact same time. When they realized they spoke in tandem, the two of them looked to each other and smiled like giddy school children sharing a secret.
I inhaled sharply and was about to speak when a hand rested on my arm. Hannan stopped me with a warning touch, knowing I was probably about to say something I’d regret.
“Mermaids?” Hannan asked. “I know some mermaids personally.”
“So do I,” I added unnecessarily.
“Our realms had great relations until the contamination, of course,” Arabella explained. “Especially ever since the end of the war in Andsdyer, when the humans wanted to domesticate the mermaids.”
“That is not what happened,” Freja interrupted, clearly offended. “We offered them the chance to bond, and they refused, which was their right.”
“But then you banished them from the kingdom,” Arabella countered with an intensity we hadn’t seen from her yet. “By the order of the king.”
“Okay, yeah, things are tense with the mermaids,” I cut in, suddenly becoming the peace-maker. “But where can we find him?”
“Lorinis’s kingdom lives in the sea between Andsdyer and Teine, but it is hidden to landfolk,” Arabella explained. “Save for one.”
“Is she here?” Monte asked with eager eyes.
“Yes,” Arabella said, “in the volcano.”
“Then we must see her,” Monte exclaimed excitedly.
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, not sorry at all. “Who are we talking about?”
“Opala,” Arabella said as if I should know who that is.
“Who is Opala?” I asked, suddenly feeling very dumb.
“She was our village elder, one of the most coveted members of our society,” Arabella continued in a respectful, almost admirable voice. “It is rumored that she is the only human to ever win the heart of a mermaid. So much so that they tried to find a way to be together, but our kingdoms forbid it. Still, their good relations were the reason Teine and the mermaids had such a wonderful trade relationship.”
“How romantic,” I said sarcastically. “Can we talk to her?”
“I will have to ask,” Arabella said sternly, like a child explaining the rules to a newcomer. “I know she will grant Monte an audience, but for the rest of you, I am unsure.”
“Where Monte goes, I go,” I demanded quickly. “He is just going to tell me everything she says anyway, right, Monte?”
I didn’t mean to put the dragon in a rough spot, but apparently, I did something to embarrass him because his eyes avoided mine, and he didn’t answer right away. Everyone felt the stress of the silence as we waited for his answer.
“We should respect the elder and see what she says,” Monte replied.
Anger burned under my skin, but I kept my face as neutral as I could. “Sure, we absolutely will do that.”
“I can at least take you down there,” Arabella offered. “Get you out of this mist.”
She turned on her heel and beckoned for us to follow with the flick of her wrist. Monte followed automatically, and the rest of us ventured onward. I hung back only for a moment. Hannan, Julei, and Freja stayed with me, while the dragons stomped ahead.
“We need to be careful going down there,” I warned. “We don’t need another repeat of the Library.”
“At least we have the dragons this time,” Julei said, trying to be helpful.
“I know we have two of th
em,” I grimace, “but I’m unsure about Monte.”
“Eva, how can you say that?” Hannan asked, appalled. “You are the Queen of Dragons. You are his djer.”
“I don’t know how much that means here,” I replied ominously, and my stomach dropped at the thought of losing my first friend and ally in this foreign world.
22
Arabella led us down a winding stone ramp. I walked right behind her so I could illuminate the way for the others. It radiated down off me into a halo shape, dousing me in light. The path and caverns were wide enough for the dragons, so they descended with us. It was like hiking down a mountain, with sloping turns that kept the trail even and the descent at minimal intervals. The ground itself was surprisingly smooth and level, as though a machine had done it. I thought about commenting on it, but I also didn’t want to talk to Arabella any more than I had to. The walkway was large enough for us humans to walk two in two like Noah’s animals. Freja and Julei chatted to one another in front of us while Hannan and I brought up the rear.
“You could at least try to not look disgusted,” Hannan chided with a playful smirk. He elbowed me gently, trying to get me to smile, but it didn’t work. I simply wobbled on my feet, then corrected myself without responding to him.
“I know you do not like her, but she has not given us any reason not to trust her,” Hannan said, still wanting to engage in conversation with me.
“Yet,” I griped.
Hannan rolled his eyes. “Does the fact that Monte bonded with her, chose her, mean anything to you? It is a sign that he trusts her, and you trust him, do you not?”
“I did,” I said through gritted teeth. “Until I found out that he had this whole other djer before me.”
“I do not begrudge you for being with Kehn before me,” Hannan said simply.
“What?” I finally conceded and looked at Hannan. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Is it not?” Hannan wondered, even though his tone implied he already knew the answer. “Yes, I was jealous. Despite the fact that I am not normally a jealous being, it was hard seeing you with him, even harder to see him hurt you like he did.”