Ravel snorted. "Do you think I wanted to bond with big, bad Obsidian? I hoped the connection would snap with a beautiful female dragon with shimmering gold, purple, or blue scales."
"Why did you want a female?" I asked.
The smirk returned. "I prefer female company, whether she's human or dragon. With males, it's always a competition. It's more harmonious with females."
It was nice that he idealized women, but I could introduce him to some who would change his mind. My grandmother's neighbor, Sarka Pavlid, was a harpy who made her poor husband's life miserable. It was so bad that he often sat on his front porch in the middle of a freezing night, smoking his pipe with a long-suffering expression on his face.
"Isn't it a competition with females too?" I asked.
"It's different. There's more mutual courtesy."
"I give you plenty of courtesy,"Onyx said in both our heads, his mental voice sounding amused.
"Right," Ravel groaned. "I'm not complaining. Onyx is a good companion and a powerful dragon. I don't regret even for a moment that we found each other and bonded. It's just that before the Day of Volition, I always imagined bonding with a female dragon."
That seemed to mollify Onyx, and for the next several minutes, he radiated satisfaction and calm.
We flew over the mountains in comfortable cruising altitude. Below, snow-capped peaks gave way to green valleys, and beyond them lay the Elucian Sea and the Sitorian part of the Daian supercontinent. Somewhere out there, the Shedun were planning their next attack. Somewhere out there, Elusitor converts were being trained to infiltrate and destroy.
But up here, the air was clean, and the sky was endless.
"How is the cutting of the threads going?" Ravel asked.
I hesitated. "I'm not sure. I feel much better, stronger, but I don't know if it's the rest, the food, and the good sleep at night, or whether I'm actually untangling the web I created. It's not like I can see the connections. It's like pulling myself back from places I don't remember going."
"You must be able to feel them, though," he said.
"The tendrils are everywhere, but I don't know if they're loose and floating around or still attached to creatures' consciousnesses." I heard the frustration leak into my voice. "How do you measure something you can't see?"
Ravel was quiet for a moment. "Maybe you're not supposed to cut them. Maybe you're just supposed to manage them."
The idea was intriguing. "The problem is still the same. How am I supposed to manage what I can't see?"
"Like you do with Onyx. You open and close that connection at will, don't you?"
"I...yes. But that's different. Onyx is such a big presence. He's impossible to miss or mistake for something else. These other connections are small creatures with tiny consciousnesses that I inhabited once and have a hard time finding again."
"The principle is the same," Ravel insisted. "Instead of severing the threads, you could learn how to turn them on and off, or dim them when you don't need them, then brighten them when you do."
The idea was so simple it felt revolutionary. Why hadn't I thought of that?
But was it doable?
The fact that it sounded good in theory didn't mean I could actually control all of those gossamer threads.
"Let's find a place to land," Ravel said. "I want to try something."
Onyx descended toward a mountain peak that had a small natural platform jutting from its top. The view was breathtaking—the Citadel visible in the distance, the world spread out below us like a map.
We dismounted and sat on sun-warmed rocks. Complete privacy, nothing but wind and sky and the occasional bird of prey circling overhead.
"What do you have in mind?" I asked, suddenly feeling a little awkward about being alone out here with the commander.
After the explosion and the constant security concerns, being this isolated felt both liberating and dangerous. But Onyx was here. We were safe.
"It's a trust exercise."
"I've never heard of it."
