AMY
Vharos refuses me without moving.
That is impressive considering she is approximately the size of a building and currently blocking most of the eastern training yard.
I stand beneath her lowered head with one hand wrapped around the leather strap of my flight harness. Around us, the morning has already become loud with preparation. Riders cross the stone carrying saddles and weapons, someone is shouting about missing buckles near the western wall, and three dragons wait farther down the yard with the patient irritation of creatures forced to participate in human scheduling.
Vharos ignores all of it.
“Move.”
Her amber eye remains fixed on me.
I pull the harness higher onto my shoulder and try again. “We are supposed to be in the air in six minutes.”
Nothing.
There are disadvantages to bonding a creature capable of killing almost anything that annoys her. One of them is discovering that authority becomes theoretical when the creature in question decides not to cooperate.
I step left.
Vharos moves her head left.
I step right.
So does she.
The movement is almost lazy, but her muzzle stops close enough that warm breath pushes loose strands of hair across my face. I stare at her.
“You cannot possibly think this is subtle.”
Something brushes the edge of my thoughts.
Not language. Vharos rarely gives me anything that cleanly human. The bond carries weight instead: resistance, attention, the unmistakable certainty of no.
My irritation sharpens. “That is not an explanation.”
Her eye narrows.
I have learned that dragons can look judgmental. Nobody warns you about this before the bonding. There should be a pamphlet.
I put one hand against the dark scales along her muzzle and push. Vharos could resist me without noticing. Instead she lets her head move perhaps an inch before returning it deliberately to exactly where it was.
“Fine.”
I turn away from her.
Pain catches beneath my ribs.
Not much. A thin, vicious pull that disappears almost before I register it.
I stop.
Vharos goes completely still behind me.
That is when I understand.
The pain has been there since yesterday.
I landed badly during drills and told nobody because nothing was broken, I could breathe perfectly well if I did not breathe too deeply, and admitting an injury tends to produce healers. Healers produce questions. Questions produce instructions to rest.
I dislike the entire sequence.
Slowly, I look back at her.
“You knew?”
Her head lowers.
The bond opens just enough for me to feel what has been sitting beneath her refusal all morning.
Not fear.
Something older. Harder.
A dragon’s awareness of weakness in the thing tied to her.
And beneath that, anger.
I fold my arms. “I am not dying.”
Vharos’s nostrils flare.
“I am barely injured.”
The answering pressure becomes considerably less polite.
For several seconds we stare at one another while riders move around us and pretend not to notice that the newest dragon rider in Amaranthe is apparently losing an argument conducted mostly in silence.
Then Vharos turns.
She simply turns her enormous body away from me, folds her wings against her sides and lowers herself onto the stone.
The message requires no translation.
I am not flying.
My first instinct is fury. It rises hot and immediate, made worse by the fact that some part of me knows she is right. I have spent enough of my life having other people decide what I can survive. I have very little patience left for anyone doing it on my behalf.
Apparently that includes dragons.
I walk around until I am standing in front of her again. “You chose me.”
One amber eye opens.
“That was your mistake. You don’t get to complain about the consequences now.”
For a moment there is nothing between us except the cold morning air.
Then the bond shifts.
I expect another refusal.
Instead I feel something I have never felt from her before.
A memory.
It arrives too quickly to understand: black sky, fire somewhere below, the violent snap of wings opening against wind. Someone on Vharos’s back. Blood on a hand that is not mine.
Then emptiness.
The image vanishes so abruptly that I stagger.
Vharos closes the bond.
I stare at her.
She looks away.
Every question I have disappears behind the one that matters.
“Who was that?”
Vharos rises.
Not hurriedly. Not angrily.
She unfolds to her full height, turns from me and walks toward the far side of the yard.
“Vharos.”
She does not stop.
The bond remains closed.
I stand alone with the harness still hanging from my hand and the sudden realization that I have been asking the wrong question since the day she chose me.
Everyone wants to know why Vharos chose Amy Halden.
It has never occurred to me to ask who she chose before.