"Here you have a dragon to protect you."
"The same dragon that your dreams predicted will kill me."
"Say what?" Shovia nearly shrieked. "You dreamt that Veynathei kills Alar?"
"Not intentionally," I rushed to explain. "In both dreams featuring Veynathei it was an accident. She wasn't there in the other two."
Some fates can't be changed.
Alar had said the same thing to me in all four dreams. Was I deluding myself thinking that going home would save him?
"Have you told Veynathei?" I asked.
"No." He stared into his caff cup. "Not yet."
The silence that followed had a pained quality. Everyone at the table understood what saying goodbye to a bonded dragon meant. We'd all bonded less than two weeks ago, and already the thought of being separated from our dragons was visceral, like imagining the removal of a limb.
"Is it possible to break the bond?" Alar asked. "Has it ever been done?"
Morek shook his head. "As far as I know, the bond is permanent. It dissolves only when one of the pair dies."
"What about distance?" Alar asked. "If I'm in Catonia and she's here, will the bond hold? It's only been two weeks. It hasn't had time to solidify."
None of us had an answer.
Codric looked at Alar with pity in his eyes. "Did you ask Lesten?"
"He didn't know either. No bonded rider has ever been separated from their dragon by such a large distance. The bond might stretch. It might attenuate to a whisper. Or it might snap entirely, leaving us both damaged."
"Maybe you should ask Saphir," Shovia suggested. "If anyone knows, it would be him."
"I will." Alar set his cup down. "First thing tomorrow morning."
I looked at him, this man whom I loved more than I'd ever thought possible, and I ached at the terrible calculation forcedby the situation. He was leaving. The dream would not come true, at least not the version I'd seen. He would live, but he would be gone from my life, and I would be here with a dragon-sized hole in my heart and a prophecy that was missing one more of its pieces.
But he would live, and that was what mattered the most.
If he broke his bond with Veynathei, if such a thing was even possible, and if he one day returned to Elucia and bonded with a different dragon, then the nightmare's scenario could never unfold. The dragon in the dream was Veynathei. A different dragon would mean a different future.
18
ALAR
I did not sleep that last night. Sleep was a thief, and I refused to let it steal a single moment from me.
—From the private journals of Prince Alaranthus Tekumuton the Fifth.
Iwasn't going to waste any of the time I had left.
After the others had drifted to their rooms and the apartment had gone quiet except for the muffled sounds of Codric and Shovia talking behind their closed door, sounds I was grateful for because it meant that Codric wasn't lying awake in misery, I pulled my pack from the bottom of the wardrobe and set it on the floor beside the bed.
Kailin had been sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, watching me with those eyes that held too many emotions to catalog.
"I'll help you," she said.
"Thank you."
She unfolded herself and knelt beside me on the floor, and together we began the task of reducing my life in Elucia to what could fit in a single military-issue rucksack.
