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I have no idea who’s leading the earth dragons now. Even when Axel was their leader, several of them tried to kill me. That was before he had gone public with our bond, however, and long before everyone thought I had bonded Azar.
Even thinking about it guts me.
I spend at least half an hour curled into a fetal ball, sobbing, before I manage to sit back up and clear my mind. I still don’t have any real evidence that Azar’s dead. So what if they speared him? So what if he exploded? We don’t know anything about dragons, and I didn’t see his head on a pike.
So that means he might have survived.
Something about the numb feeling where the bond should be nags at me, but I can’t allow that fear to weigh me down. Not when little Sammy, brave Coral, and effervescent Jade are still with the dragons. I do consider, for the first time, what their situation might be. They refused to go with Gideon, and he had a whole plan in place. He must have been frustrated, but the US Army was coming.
So he left them.
The man I thought would protect my own family like he’d protect me, left them to die. Because if Azar really did die—would the dragons kill them? Or would they try to force bonds on them? Thinking about it makes me sick. If they blame me for Azar’s death, they might just kill them out of hand. Or if they want to punish them since I’m not handy. . .there’s no telling.
I felt like I knew Azar, but I often have no idea what the other dragons are thinking. Even Azar’s motivations frequently baffled me. They’re so different from us.
And they’re here for the heart—which is now very close.
Hyperion must be gnashing his teeth that he didn’t just chuck me into the volcano when he had the chance. Above all the others, he must hate me passionately. I was the weakness they used to attack his brother. I could have been used to get them what they wanted, and now I’m gone. Gone, back with the sea of millions and millions of humans.
If I were Hyperion, I’d want me dead last week.
Except, of course, he will want me back to chuck into the volcano. There may be a way for me to leverage that, even if Azar’s gone, to get my siblings back. I hate thinking like that—the rage always swells up when I do—but above all else, I’ve always been a pragmatist. If Azar is dead, I can’t afford to just curl up and die, or attack anyone recklessly. If he’s gone, I have to at least try and save my siblings before I do anything else.
At some point, all the adrenaline works its way out of my system, and I sleep. A light tapping on the door wakes me, and this time, my visitor is my own mother.
“Oh,” I say. “You’re here too, after I worked so hard to get them to leave you behind.”
Mom should race across the room and hug me. She should stroke my face with one hand and coo, because those are all things she has always done. She’s a hippy, and she’s an activist, but above all else, she’s a mother.
Her words from before come back to me, then. And who better to protect children from monsters than. . .a monster.
She hangs back near the door, shifting and edgy. “I’m so happy to see that you’re alright.”
Only, she doesn’t look happy. I sit up, my body turning toward her. “Are you?”
She swallows. “Of course I am.” That actually sounds genuine. “I was worried that you might blame me—be angry with me. I know that losing Azar must be hard for you in a way that being freed from Ocharta was not for me.” She clears her throat. “After all, your bond was different than mine. You were entwined, and he wasn’t awful to you.”
She has no idea, but unlike Dad, I can’t trust her to understand. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” She steps closer, the light from the hallway beyond illuminating her silhouette. “Gideon did the impossible, you know, saving all of us. Freeing us by killing us and then bringing us back from the dead. It was all his idea.”
I’m sure it was. “I’m glad you’re free.” That much is true, at least.
I realize then that the walkie-talkie, that’s what he was waiting on. He used the first round of humans that they killed to take down the electro dragons as his guinea pigs. Once he had confirmation that they’d been able to bring those humans back, then he was willing to kill me in the same way.
Ugh.
“Did you go back to the volcano?” Mom’s voice is deceptively light, but I can tell from the intensity of her eyes, even in the terrible lighting, that she was asked to find out this information.
“Mom, really?”
She trots across the room until she’s standing in front of me, and then she drops to one knee, her hands reaching for mine. “I wanted to see you. I asked them to send me to talk to you.”
Still, she’s here to try and get information from me. “Sure.” I snatch my hands back.
At least she has the decency to look hurt. “Are you alright? I’ve been worried you’d struggle with it—the freedom.”
“My bond wasn’t like yours,” I confess. “By the time Gideon killed me, I wanted that bond.”
