Dragons Rising ✔️

Ch 70: The Offer

The katalnis disarmed us and dragged us back to the meeting building and locked us in the dungeon beneath it. It was dank, musty, and looked like it hadn't been used in ages. A layer of dust covered everything, and there was no semblance of furniture in the huge cells. Since we were in the same cell, Clarisa saw this as the perfect opportunity to berate me. I was so exhausted that zoning her out wasn't even that hard.

After a while, Farot's men were dragged in and put in the next cell over. They tried all manner of escape, but the cell bars were thick and spaced close together.

I was too tired to stay awake for long after everything that had happened, and I fell asleep shortly after they arrived.

When I woke up, Pendro, a black katalni, and Leera were standing outside our cell. Leera had an emerald green mindstone at the base of her throat. I wasn't sure how it had reattached itself after all these years, but it looked like it belonged there, as if she had never lost it.

"You three are free to go. Leera explained everything." Pendro unlocked our cell with a set of huge keys.

"Only three?" Bylanna asked.

"You are with the men who attempted to steal the mindstones. You will be staying here."

"She's not," I said. "She tried to help stop them. She was undercover, just like us."

"Though I did what I did to help dragon-kind, not to help Lykela," Bylanna clarified.

"If the mage attests to your trustworthiness, then you may go in peace as well." Pendro swung the cell door open.

Bylanna was the first out, followed closely by the rest of us. She left before I could ask where she would be headed next. Clarisa stormed out after her, still muttering insults about me under her breath. Tawny and I walked together with Leera up the ramp that functioned as stairs.

When we went outside, Bylanna and Clarisa hadn't gone far. Bylanna was blowing some kind of whistle that didn't seem to make any noise, and Clarisa was having a heated discussion with Moonhawk, who'd apparently showed up to see our release. BlueIsle was waiting nearby as well, and she kept nervously running her claws over her dark blue mindstone. When she spotted Tawny, she called her over.

Tawny frowned. "I'm going to... talk with BlueIsle." She headed in BlueIsle's direction.

"We need to talk, too," Leera said.

"About what?" I asked.

Before she could answer, Bylanna's thunderbeast flew into view and landed near her. Bylanna glanced over me and shook her head in obvious disappointment.

"We shouldn't talk here." Leera knelt beside me, which was something I hadn't expected she would ever do again.

"What are you-"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten how to ride already."

"Of course not." I climbed up to sit in front of her wings.

We flew in silence for a while. I enjoyed being in the sky again with Leera for company, but it was a bittersweet kind of enjoyment that I knew couldn't last. Eventually, she landed on a cliff overseeing a rocky valley. When she knelt again, I got off and sat beside her.

"I think I'm going back to Lykela," she said softly.

"After everything that's happened, why would you want to go back?"

She chuckled and blew a puff of air that ruffled my hair. "Because you're going back to Lykela. Aren't you?"

I'd thought about it for a while, and I'd decided that I did want to go back. I missed my family so much, and now that the mindstones were free, there wouldn't be much of a use for me here.

"Yeah, I'll go back. But that doesn't really answer my question."

She looked out over the valley. "Are we... friends?"

There had been a time when the answer would've been a resounding 'no,' first because I thought Leera was an animal and then because I knew she wasn't and we just didn't get along. Now, I could honestly say that the answer was different.

"Yes. You're my best friend." I joined her in looking out over the valley. The sun was setting, lighting the sky with a brilliant array of pinks and oranges.

"Then I have something to give you."

She took off her mindstone as easily as if it were just a loose scale. "Before the purge, a lot of katalnis still bonded. They would permanently exchange their mindstones." She was looking at her mindstone, not at me, and there was a tentativeness in her expression that I wasn't used to seeing. "They usually bonded with very close family, their mate, or their closest friend." She finally looked up at me. "You're my closest friend."

"But isn't BlueIsle...?"

"BlueIsle is a close friend, but we're too different to really understand each other."

"On the other hand, we're too stubborn and hot tempered to keep from annoying each other constantly."

"Well... most the time, we disagreed because you didn't believe that dragons were sentient. You just wanted to boss me around all the time. I don't think that'll be a problem anymore."

She had a point, but if mindstone bonding really was permanent... I hesitated to make a decision.

"Don't you feel lonely now?" she asked.

"Yeah, but we'll get used to being unbonded after a while, won't we?"

"I don't want to get used to it. Katalnis and dragons live in flocks for a reason. We don't like being alone. You're part katalni, so you can't like it either." She set her mindstone in front of me.

I stared at it. I knew that she had to trust me more than anyone else she'd ever known to be doing this. And she was right about me not wanting to be alone. Keeping my secret had always made me feel so isolated, but she was the one person who actually knew what it was like because she could read my mind. Sometimes that was a pain in the neck, but I missed it.

"I don't have a mindstone to give you."

"Neither has any katalni rider before. The bond won't be as strong as one between two katalnis, but it'll be a lot like the one we used to have." She was starting to sound excited, and her excitement was contagious.

But I forced myself to pause and think this through. This would be for the rest of my life and hers. If it was the wrong choice, we would both have to live with the consequences of it. Part of me wanted to think it over for hours and hours, but deep inside, I already knew what I was going to do.