The dream came anyway, tearing through whatever barriers the draught had built and dragged me under with the force of a tidal wave.
I stood on a mountainside.
No—I floated above it, watching from somewhere outside my body. The terrain was rugged, familiar. The mountains that ringed the Citadel, the ones we'd flown over during numerous training exercises. I recognized the jagged peak to the north, the valley that cut between two ridges.
A dragon appeared.
I didn't know him. The size indicated that it was male, but the color of his scales shifted colors in the light, or maybe my dreaming mind couldn't hold onto the details. He was beautiful, powerful, majestic as he banked through the currents.
Alar was on his back.
He wore full rider gear, the reinforced jacket and the goggles, and possessed the confident posture of someone who belonged in the sky. A rider, bonded and trained, months into his new life. Perhaps even years.
I could sense the bond between them pulsing like a living thing, a golden thread connecting dragon and rider. I felt its warmth, its strength, the profound rightness of two souls intertwined.
It was beautiful.
The wind was gentle. The sky was clear. Nothing about this scene suggested danger.
And then things started to go wrong.
The dragon banked hard and fast as if he was trying to evade a projectile, except no one was shooting at him. The sudden movement made no sense. Alar shifted in the saddle, adjusting his weight, but the angle was wrong.
He was sliding.
I watched his hands scramble for purchase, fingers clawing at straps that slipped through his grip. The dragon tried to correct, banking the other way, but it was too late.
Alar fell.
The scream that tore from my throat had no sound. I was trapped in this vision, forced to watch as he plummeted through empty air, his body growing smaller and smaller against the mountain backdrop.
He hit the rocks.
The impact was silent, but I felt it—felt the snuffing out of that golden thread, felt the bond shatter. One moment, he was there, alive, connected to his dragon and to me and to everything that mattered.
The next moment, nothing.
Terror consumed me. Pure, primal, all-encompassing terror that went beyond anything I'd felt in my previous nightmares. This wasn't a vague sense of doom; it didn't have the nightmarish quality of the attack on the Citadel. This felt real, as if I was watching this horror in real time.
Alar was dead. No one could survive such a fall. Not even a rider who had been given the gift of immortality.
Some fates can't be changed.
The words echoed through the vision, the same words that I'd heard him say to me twice before. But this time, something else followed them.
The scene shifted.
A woman floated above the scene, her deep crimson and gold robes flowing in the wind, her hair arranged in an elaborate updo that required the help of a maid specializing in such tasks. The fabric was rich and heavy, embroidered with beautiful patterns. Everything about her spoke of power, of status, of a life lived in palaces and throne rooms.
Of royalty.
I couldn't see her face because she had her back to me. I didn't know who she was or even if she was young or old. Only that she radiated authority, determination, and love for Alar.
Somehow, impossibly, her presence changed everything.
The vision shifted around me, the path that had led to Alar's death bent and redirected. The rocks where he'd fallen became empty. The shattered bond became whole. The terrible silence filled with the sound of his breathing, his heartbeat, his life continuing.
Somehow, she saved him.
