It wasn't the abstract concept we'd studied in political philosophy at the academy. It also wasn't the personal freedom to choose my own path that I'd wrestled with since the day my brother had been found gifted and I'd realized I might be gifted as well. This was primal and vast and so overwhelmingly right that I wanted to laugh and cry and scream all at once.
I threw my head back and laughed.
The wind stole the sound from my lips, but Morgateth heard it through the bond and responded with a rumble that vibrated through my body. Satisfaction. Pleasure. A fierce, possessive joy that mirrored my own.
"Again,"he said.
"Again what?"
"Laugh. It's been a long time since I've heard that. Dragons don't laugh, and humans are terrified of me."
The words carried an undercurrent of grief that I felt viscerally, as if those three riders he'd lost had been my own family and I mourned their loss. I hadn't known them, but I felt as if I did through Morgateth's memories of them.
Not exactly memories, though. He didn't project events involving them into my mind, or even images of what they had looked like. It was more how he had felt losing them while still bonded and what it had done to him.
His pain was so staggering that I wanted to ask him to throttle it down.
"I'm sorry,"he said."I didn't intend to kill your mood. Let's try this again."He banked left and then shot toward the sky, flooding me with exhilaration.
I should have been terrified, but the joy of flight, of freedom, and Morgateth's sheer mastery of the sky was so overwhelming that I couldn't summon fear even if I tried.
I laughed again, and he kept climbing, above the peaks, above the auroras, into air so thin and cold that my lungs burned. But the burn felt good. Everything felt good. Morgateth's strength poured through the bond like a river of light, filling the hollow places the prophetic dreams had carved out of me, and shoring up walls that had been barely holding up for weeks.
I hadn't realized how depleted I'd been until my reservoir was refilled.
"You were running on empty,"Morgateth said."How long has it been like this?"
"Weeks. The dream about Podana hollowed me out. I was trying to rest and replenish my reserves, but it helped only a little."
"You should have bonded with me right after that dream. Saphir should have arranged for a private bonding ceremony for you."
"I wasn't ready. Besides, I didn't know it was even possible to have a private ceremony."
"Why weren't you ready?"
That was a good question. I had needed more flight instruction, but since I'd bonded with an old and experienced dragon, I could have gotten away with much less preparation.
"I'm not old."Morgateth sounded offended."I'm considered young in dragon years. In fact, even Nyxath and her siblings are not old. A millennium is nothing for a dragon."
I realized that I hadn't been shielding my thoughts and he could read them freely. We were bonded, but that didn't mean that we had to share everything.
I raised my shields."You shouldn't read my thoughts."
"Why not? What secrets are you hiding that you cannot share with me?"
I laughed."I'm so full of secrets that I should weigh much more than I do."
"Why? What could you possibly have to hide from me?"
What indeed.
"Secrets that are not mine to share."
Morgateth didn't answer with words. Instead, he banked hard to the right and dove. Was he trying to punish me by having me throw up on his back?
"Are you mad at me?"
"No."He leveled out, easing into a glide."I have a temper, which makes me dangerous. I shouldn't have bonded with you. I shouldn't have come to the bonding ceremony at all."
