I watched the squadron grow larger as they drew near us, then smaller again as they flew over the western peaks, and I was glad that I was in the right place at the right time.
"We should head back,"I said reluctantly. The flight had been extraordinary, the best hour of my life, but the Day of Volition was still underway, and I wanted to know if my friends had bonded and who they had bonded with.
I was particularly worried about Alar and the kind of dragon who would choose to bond with him. I had no doubt that rumors regarding the letter he'd gotten from home had spread through the Dragon Force, reaching the dragons as well.
"One more pass through the high currents,"Morgateth said."I want to show you something."
He climbed again, higher than before, until the air was more memory than substance and the auroras danced around us rather than above. At this altitude, the magnetic currents were visible even to my human eyes, faint shimmers that wove through the thin air like threads of liquid light.
"Watch,"Morgateth said.
He folded his wings and dropped.
My stomach lurched into my throat, and for one terrible instant, I was falling, wind screaming, the mountains rushing up to meet me. Every instinct I had urged me to squeeze my eyes shut, but I didn't. Instead, I leaned forward, pressing my body against his neck, and trusted Morgateth.
The bond flared between us, bright and fierce, and in that moment, I understood something fundamental about what it meant to be bonded. It wasn't just sharing thoughts or emotions or strength. It was the absolute trust that they would catch you when you fell.
Except that trust had been broken through no fault of Morgateth's. Three riders had entrusted their lives to him and were dead now.
No wonder he was devastated.
In his mind, he'd broken that sacred trust. He'd let them down.
He unfurled his wings at the last possible moment, converting our plunge into a sweeping arc that carried us along the mountainside so close that I could have reached out and touched the rock. The g-force pressed me into the saddle, and my vision narrowed to a tunnel of light and rushing stone.
Then we were climbing again, and I laughed.
"That,"he said,"is what trust feels like."
I knew what he meant, but I teased him anyway."That's what terror feels like."
He chuffed."Without terror there is no need for trust."
5
IDRILIA
I had seen photographs. I had watched footage on the evening news. Nothing prepared me for the reality. Nothing could have.
—From the journal of Princess Idrilia of Tarina
The waiting was insufferable.
After the adrenaline of the avalanche and the frantic work of finding and treating the injured, there was nothing left to do but sit and watch the sky and try not to think about how cold it was getting.
Thankfully, we had emergency thermal blankets in our packs, but it was just one per pack, and some of the injured needed more than one for all the meager protection they offered.
I'd given mine to Horrov, bundling him in two, his glassy and unfocused eyes worrying me more than his broken arm. Palel also didn't look good, sitting propped against a boulder withhis bound collarbone, breathing in shallow, careful gasps, which told me his ribs were in worse shape than Sorel's initial estimate.
Denna had a concussion and a badly bruised hip, and her spectacles were bent beyond repair, but she was alive and lucid enough to complain about losing her notebook.
I'd never been so happy to hear someone complain.
The rest of the crew huddled in small groups along the mountainside, conserving warmth and energy, except for Jeffson, who stood scanning the horizon for our rescuers.
As far as I knew, there were five dragons in each flight, and I wondered if that would be enough. How did they even transport the injured? Some of them could sit behind the rider, but some could not. Did these rescue dragons carry special evacuation equipment?
If I weren't embarrassed by my secret obsession with dragons, I would have stood beside Jeffson and waited for the dragons to arrive so I could see them getting near. But I had to appear composed, and I did that by sheer stubbornness.
