"Because I can sense your grief and your guilt.You feel only loss and rage at what you falsely label as ineptness. My friends have a working hypothesis that Elusitor's converts were behind the sabotage that caused those riders' deaths. Tampering with saddles, sneaking drugs into riders' food or perhaps even tempting them to partake. That's why they made fatal mistakes."
For a long moment, Morgateth said nothing.
Then he lunged.
His massive head shot forward, jaws gaping wide, and I heard Shovia scream. I heard the scrape of boots on stone as cadets scrambled backward.
I didn't move.
Morgateth's teeth stopped inches from my face. His breath was hot and smelled of sulfur and smoke. His eyes filled my entire field of vision, crimson and black and burning with a mix of emotions that I hadn't known dragons could convey.
They were supposed to have unreadable faces. They were supposed to have no expressions. Perhaps I was sensing rather than seeing.
We stayed like that for an eternity compressed into seconds. Dragon and human, predator and prey, standing on the edge of something that could be magnificent or devastating.
Then something shifted.
It wasn't words. It wasn't even thoughts, not in the way I normally experienced telepathic communication. It was deeper than that, more fundamental. A meeting of souls rather than minds.
I felt him.
The grief crashed over me first, wave after wave of loss, three riders gone, three bonds shattered. Each death had torn something from him, left wounds that never fully healed. He had cherished them, each one differently but no less completely. He had felt them die, felt the golden thread of the bond snap and tear out a piece of his soul.
Then the rage at those who might be behind those deaths threatened to consume me, the flames stoked higher by the anger at himself for not realizing the danger that had been lurking behind familiar faces.
The guilt came next, crushing in its weight. He hadn't been sufficiently fast, his reflexes hadn't been honed enough. If he had been faster, stronger, they might still be alive. The logic was flawed, but guilt didn't care about logic. He blamed himself for every death, and he carried each one like a stone around his neck.
And beneath it all, buried so deep I almost missed it, was loneliness. Years of isolation, of being feared and avoided by dragons and humans alike, of watching other dragons bond while he remained alone because he feared dooming another rider to the fate of his previous three. Then, beneath the guilt and loneliness and pain, a new feeling arose like a flame through darkness.
Hope.
Fragile, still barely acknowledged, but present. Hope that maybe this time would be different because I was different. Hope that maybe this strange human girl who could hear histhoughts and see his pain might be strong enough and smart enough to avoid all the pitfalls the others had fallen prey to.
Behind the hope rose determination, fierce and unwavering, to protect me. His previous riders had died, but not from lack of trying on his part. He had fought for them, bled for them, would have died for them if fate had allowed it.
He would fight for me with everything he had, until his last breath.
"I need strength," I thought, letting him feel my own truth in return. "My prophetic gift takes so much out of me. I need a powerful partner who can lend me his strength. Out of all the dragons I've seen today, you are the most powerful."
"I will keep you charged with so much power that you won't know what to do with it."It wasn't a boast. He'd stated it as a fact.
I smiled and reached out to touch his snout, and he allowed it. "I choose you, noble Morgateth," I said aloud for all to hear, even though I was not supposed to. As the Hero of Elucia, I was allowed some liberties that others were not. "I choose you as my partner and my protector. You are a powerful dragon worthy of my bond."
He inclined his massive head. "I choose you, Kailin Strom, because you are as fearless as you are compassionate, and because you are the most powerful human in this Citadel, and I'm a vain dragon. I want the best."
I was about to dispute his claim about me being the best when I felt the bond slamming into place.
I staggered under the force of it, my knees nearly buckling. It was nothing like I had imagined, nothing like the gradual warming the training materials described. This was a flood, a torrent, a complete and overwhelming connection of two souls.
Morgateth's emotions poured into me—all the grief and rage and guilt that I had glimpsed before, magnified a thousandfold.
But I also felt his strength.
It flowed into me like liquid fire, filling the hollow places the prophetic dreams had carved, shoring up the walls that had been weakened. For the first time in weeks, I felt whole, complete, strong enough to bear whatever came next.
He knelt, lowering his massive body so I could climb onto his back.
"May I?" I asked even though his invitation was clear for all to see.
