Why else would they have done that if there wasn’t a larger duty waiting?
“How do I save everyone?” she asked. “Is there a way to break all the bonds at once?”
Obie reached up to lower his hood. His bushy eyebrows drew together over his pale eyes, lending him a more severe appearance than usual. “You have misunderstood us, child,” he said. It was always a shock when he finally spoke, his rich timbre a rare gift.“There is no way to break the bonds before you rid the world of dragons.”
“But then… what about Elara?”
The gods exchanged glances. Finally, it was Mala who continued. “Eradicating the dragons will destroy the threat of the Fury, but it will also destroy their Riders along with them. Including your sister.”
“I—What?” Faron stumbled back, nearly hitting the glass wall. “No.No!You’re supposed to help me save her. You’re—”
“Thiswillsave her, Empyrean,” said Irie. “Her soul is tainted by her connection to that creature. Death is the only mercy that we can offer. There is no other way.”
“Therehasto be. You’re wrong! I’ll find another way. Withoutyou.”
Faron shoved out of the sunroom before they could say anything else, their words echoing unpleasantly in her head.Death is the only mercy that we can offer. It will also destroy their Riders… Including your sister. You have misunderstood us.As if it were a simple thing for her to accept, being responsible for the death of the sister she’d promised to save. She imagined telling Elara that the gods she and the rest of the island worshipped had casually suggested she must pay for her unwanted bond with her life, and had to choke back tears. Knowing Elara, she would obey the gods’ will if she thought it would make the world safer. Her sister had always been the nobler of the two of them.
How could they sentence someone like that to death? What kind of world would she be creating, if good people like her sister had to be sacrificed to build it?
No.No.
Faron stumbled sightlessly through the hallways of the temple, rage curling in her chest. They had tried to keep secrets from her. They were using her to solve problems they had caused. Again and again, they used her, and when she was in need, they turned their backs on her. If she couldn’t trust them with this, then how could she trust them at all?
And if she couldn’t turn to the gods, who could she trust?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ELARA
AS MUCH ASELARA WANTED TO AVOID UNPACKING, SHE COULDnot spend her time at Hearthstone living out of her two bags. After putting away her clothes, she sat on the edge of the bed with the drake figurine in hand, unearthed from beneath her dresses and shoes. Aveline had given this to her—a rendering of Justice based on the red color of the flank—to use for covert astral calls. Elara found the switch at the bottom that allowed harmless pea-size bursts of flame to erupt at regular intervals. She’d heard stories of these kind of figurines overheating and shattering in explosive blasts if used incorrectly, but Justice warmed her palms in a way that felt more comforting than hazardous.
Instinctively, she tried to draw upon her summoning, to feed an astral’s power into the fire so that the call would find the exact person she was looking for.
Only a howling absence answered.
Her chest tightened, a pressure that built and built the more her attempts to summon someone, anyone, failed. The figurine remained a useless hunk of scalestone in her hands. The bedroom around her was lit by the electric lamps affixed to the walls,without the glow of a single astral to brighten it. She screamed her aunts’ names again and again, but none of them appeared to her.
Alone. She was truly alone.
“Not entirely,” said Zephyra, making her jump.“My apologies, little one. You were calling too loudly for me to ignore—”
“I wasn’t calling foryou,” Elara sent back.“I was trying to summon.”
“I see.”
Something about the dragon’s even tone made Elara’s throat close up. She forced herself to breathe, to relax, even as she asked, “Why can’t I summon?”
“Your Iryan magic is incompatible with the bond.”Though Zephyra was gentle, even apologetic, in her delivery, every word felt like a needle beneath Elara’s nail beds.“Think of our bond as… as a merging of fractured souls never meant to be separated in the first place. From what I can tell from your memories of schooling, the basis of summoning is to send one’s soul outside the body as a beacon to attract ancestral souls. Once the astral accepts the call, the summoner can manipulate the added power of that second soul as they see fit. Is that not so?”
“I… Yes. But—”
“Because those souls are inherently different, inherently incompatible, prolonged exposure results in fever, fatigue, and even death. But what you weren’t taught is that summoning is only made possible because the human soul is fractured by nature. It is but a broken piece of the divine spirit of creation, limited in its power and scope. With me and Signey, your soul is finally whole, your power and senses magnified by ours—and, as such, it is impossible for you to summon.”
Elara’s mind spun. She had never heard summoning—or dragon bonds—described like this, as if they were somehow interconnected. The bond was a mystery and a curse. She couldn’tseem to accept that she had been chosen not because of an accident or a mistake, but because her very soul was somehow connected to a divine war beast and an angry Langlish soldier. If what Zephyra was saying was true, then it had always been her destiny to be a traitor to her country, to be wielded as a weapon against her sister.
The room rippled into swirls of color. Elara wiped at her eyes, but the tears kept coming until she couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could only sob into the empty bedroom with Justice’s tail digging into her thigh like a warning. She didn’t want this. Yes, she’d wanted to be chosen, to be special, to be remembered, but not like this. She’d thought she’d reached the depths of her grief for a future that would never be, lying in that infirmary bed as the queen told her that she couldn’t join the military. But now she couldn’t even summon.
She couldn’t call her sister or Reeve, her parents or Aveline. She may never see her aunts, or any other deceased member of her family, ever again. She was alone. Alone, alone, alone.
