I'd forgotten.
Ravel wasn't a normal man. He was much stronger and faster. That was how he'd been able to catch me.
No wonder I clung to him like a baby monkey to its mama. I was still clutching his flight jacket, but only with one hand, which was an improvement. I needed to release that hand as well, but every time the thought surfaced, it was accompanied by a wave of panic, and my fingers tightened around the worn leather even more.
I needed a few more moments, and then I would let go.
The problem was that panic was only one part of it. I could have forgiven myself for clinging to Ravel out of fear. But it wasn't only that, and I was too wrung out to lie to myself about it the way I usually did. I liked being held by him, especially now, after being abandoned by the man I loved and my bonded dragon. I felt so utterly alone, and he was here, solid and certain.His arm was an iron band I couldn't get free of even if I'd wanted to, and I did not want to. I had spent months calling the thing I felt for Ravel a harmless reflex, a body's response to a striking man, nothing, less than nothing, a thing not worth the trouble of naming.
It did not feel like nothing now, with my hand locked in his coat and my head on his chest, my face in his throat, and no willpower to move away.
It was so confusing.
I loved Alar. That hadn't changed, and falling toward certain death had only proven it. The only one I'd thought about in those seconds was Alar and how devastated he would be when he learned of my death. That was why my last words had been meant for him, a message of love and regret deposited with Morgateth.
So why couldn't I let go of Ravel?
I didn't have an answer, and I was too shaken up to feel shame or guilt or to loosen my fingers on his jacket.
I needed Ravel because right now, right here, there was no one else to hold me, physically or mentally.
I kept reaching for Morgateth out of reflex. I couldn't help it. We hadn't been bonded long, but he'd already become such an integral part of me that turning inward and expecting to find him was a habit.
Now I was hitting a wall.
He'd promised he would never let me fall, and then he had anyway, and on top of that he was letting me down.
I knew his reasons, and I wanted to be forgiving and understanding, but not right now. Now I was fragile, weak, and needy.
He'd even told me to write Alar and tell him that he would keep me safe, and I'd believed him, but he hadn't been the one who'd saved me. It had been Ravel and Onyx.
Morgateth had fled.
I didn't believe he was a coward. I'd felt his terror, amplifying mine. Old wounds had reopened at the sight of me falling, and he had not been able to stay inside his own skin to bear it.
He couldn't handle one more death.
But knowing it didn't fill the hole I was left with. He'd left me, and he'd shut me out, and my head was full of silence where my dragon used to be. In a way, it was more traumatic than the fall.
I'd never known that betrayal could hurt so much, or that the prospect of losing him for good was even more terrifying than Alar never returning to me from Catonia.
What if Morgateth never came back?
What if he'd gone somewhere and stayed there?
What if I'd done this to him?
I'd been distracted, and I might not have checked the saddle straps as well as I should have. If I were more attentive, more diligent, and had checked twice as Alar had asked me to, I might have found the problem and prevented this from happening.
"It's not your fault," Ravel said quietly above my head. "Stop blaming yourself."
"How do you know that's what I'm doing?"
"Because I know you. Despite your humble act, you think you are responsible for everything and everyone, and if something bad happens, it is because you didn't do enough to prevent it, like drinking the tea so you could have foreseen it and so on. You are probably blaming yourself for not checking the straps well enough."
He knew me surprisingly well, but I didn't like the implication that I was full of myself. I wasn't. It was everyone else who thought I was the answer to all of Elucia's problems, not me. I'd just accepted the responsibility.
"I should have inspected the straps twice. Alar even reminded me to do that in his letter, but I was distracted anddidn't do what I was supposed to do, and now Morgateth is gone, and there is a void in my mind where he used to be."
