Kerrigan put her hand to her mouth as Vulsan pulled a barbed whip out of thin air and uncoiled it before the other man. She had to stop this. It was beyond barbaric. It couldn’t continue.
She stepped forward to intervene, and that was the moment that the man on the ground defiantly lifted his head to look at Vulsan.
Kerrigan gasped.
“Father?” she whispered.
But no one seemed to hear her. Not as she raced across the garden pathway. Not when she screamed as the first lash of the whip came down onto Kivrin Argon’s back. Not as she lunged for Vulsan to keep him from harming the father who had abandoned her, who she still couldn’t leave to this fate. But all she did was pass straight through Vulsan’s form. And all she could do was watch as her father’s back was ravaged. He made not one sound. Not one.
Kerrigan put her hand out. She could stop this. She could make Vulsan stop harming her father. She stretched with every last fiber of her being, into that place where the visions and energy bursts came from. Into that place she had never willingly touched, but she would here, for this.
And for one small fraction of a moment, Vulsan turned his head. His lips parted, and he saw her.
“Who?” he breathed.
A headache seared through her, as hot as a fiery poker to her eyeball. She gasped and collapsed to the ground. Vulsan returned to beating her father. And she could do nothing as blackness rushed up to greet her once more.
Kerrigan? Tieran spoke urgently into her mind.
She shuddered awake. The memory of her father’s whipping at the hands of that man. It was terrible. She couldn’t fathom why her mind had conjured such a thing. She turned her head and vomited onto the stones.
“Are you all right?” Tara asked in concern.
She waved her off. “Fine.”
“Okay,” Tara said uncertainly. “You two are bound forevermore. You will exit through here and fly home to Kinkadia, where you will have a hero’s welcome in the arena.”
Kerrigan straightened and followed Tieran away from the watchful eyes of the Dragon Blessed and the rest of the competitors. She glanced up at him and saw mirrored worry in his eyes.
Once they were finally alone, she breathed out heavily. “It didn’t work, did it?”
Tieran stretched his lithe limbs. No, I don’t believe it did.
“What did you see?”
The Holy Mountain, where I was born. A shudder ran through his scales. It was destroyed.
Kerrigan shivered. “I saw my father being beaten by this enormous golden man in some foreign world. I don’t understand it at all. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I believe dragons are more informed than Fae about what is supposed to happen during the bonding. I was told that we would face three challenges together and that we would have to choose each other above all others each time. Then, we would be bound.
“Yeah, that didn’t happen, did it?”
No.
Kerrigan sighed. “Scales.”
This is why I wasn’t even going to pick you.
Kerrigan glared at him. “Hey, I didn’t even sign up for this. It just happened. You could have picked someone else.”
Well, I wanted to.
“Fine, then go back in there and tell them it didn’t work! You can have one of the other competitors, and we can put this behind us.”
She shouldn’t have been mad with Tieran. She knew that. It wasn’t his fault that it hadn’t worked. She didn’t know what had gone wrong. But dragon binding was essential between dragon and rider. It was how they communicated and found each other and did all the incredible things that dragon riders had accomplished in the thousands of years since the advent of the Society. Without it, they were nothing.
I cannot, Tieran said softly. If I am found defective, then I might never get a rider.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I don’t know if they’ll even let me have this first chance. They’d never let me try again.”
Then, I believe… we’re stuck together. However unfortunate.
Great. All that, and she was stuck with a dragon who didn’t even want her and a binding that hadn’t even worked.
51
The Return
Kerrigan and Tieran were silent on the flight back to Kinkadia. As much as her anxiety was fresh, not to mention confusion over the vivid dream she had seen in the botched binding ceremony, she couldn’t ignore the brilliance of flying.
She was flying. And as long as everything went well, she would get to fly forever. It was what she had always wanted, and it was almost too good to be true.
As the arena came into view, they could hear the cheers erupt at the first sight of them. They were the first dragon pair back. The least expected pair ever. She was not looking forward to the disaster they were about to walk into.
“Do you think they’ll know we’re not bound?” Kerrigan asked nervously.
No. I don’t think they’ll be able to tell. We will just have to be careful.
Kerrigan frowned. Careful. Right. Her specialty.
Tieran did a sweeping loop around the arena to thunderous applause and then came in with a perfect, tight landing at the center of the arena.
Are you ready?
She released a breath. “As I’ll ever be.”
Kerrigan slipped easily from Tieran’s back and came face-to-face with Master Bastian, Mistress Layla, and Mistress Sinead. Bastian’s mouth was hanging open. Layla’s brow was furrowed, and she held her magic tight in outrage. Sinead kept flickering her eyes up and down, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Kerrigan?” Bastian finally got out.
She bowed slightly. “Master Bastian.”
“What have you done?” Layla snarled. “You are not a competitor. How dare you ride a dragon here.”
Tieran leveled his head with Layla and blew a puff of air in her face. Careful. She is mine.
Layla wrenched back, her eyes widening. “Tieran, I meant no offense, but she cannot possibly be your rider.”
“She was not a competitor,” Sinead said, finally overcoming her shock. “There are rules in place for a reason. She would have had to enter the tournament, be tested, go through all three competitions…”
“Not to mention, she is of the House of Dragons,” Layla spat. “She isn’t even part of a tribe.”
“And she’s too young!” Sinead cried.
Another figure approached, bold and furious across the arena. Kerrigan recognized Lorian right away. She straightened her spine. This should be fun.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lorian demanded. “What happened to the dragon’s rider?”
“I am Tieran’s dragon rider,” Kerrigan said boldly.
Lorian scoffed at her. “You? You’re nothing but a half-Fae wretch in the House of Dragons. You’re no more qualified to be a dragon rider than a human off the streets.”
Kerrigan gritted her teeth, but it was Tieran whose fury materialized. Kerrigan is my dragon rider. We are bound. You can no more separate us than you from your own dragon, Oria.
Lorian didn’t back down from Tieran’s anger though. He matched it. “How dare you threaten my dragon bond. I am a full member of the Society. You are still in training until the Society has recognized you as a dragon capable of a rider match. We will speak to your elders about this foolhardy nature.”