The Soothsayer.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from smirking, already knowing that my Bonded is going to have a lot to say about the names of the gods, but I also find myself happy with the one chosen for her bond.
The Eternal.
Without question, she is eternally and completely mine. The center of our Bonded Group, eternally the one thing that we can all agree on and come together for, all of us working together to keep her safe.
That's the difference,my bond says.That's how we are going to make it through this time, all of us together.
“What's going on?” Gabe mumbles into the silence of the room, and I answer back without any attempts at secrecy.
They have no place here.
“My bond’s name is the Crux, yours is the Draconis. Atlas is the Cleaver, and Nox is the Corvus.”
I’m expecting some sort of reaction from them, especially my brother, but Nox merely shrugs back. “The Corvus makes sense. They both link back to the Draven name. What if all of the reincarnations of the gods with shadows are born to our family bloodline? Father had them too.”
I groan and rub a hand over my face. “Don’t you think we would’ve heard more about all of this if that were true? That maybe we wouldn't have had to look so hard to find the gods?”
“Did you, though? I mean, I know a lot of the books are rare and out of print, but it sounds like these things were hiding in plain sight… If they were ever hiding at all,” Gabe says, still looking incredibly green around the edges, and Atlas gives him a pat on the back with a sympathetic grimace.
The budding friendship they’d shakily started has turned into one of deep respect, and seeing the lengths that the dragon had gone to to keep the masses of Resistance soldiers away from Oleander was inspiring, to say the least. Atlas himself had mastered the Cleaver’s powers in such a short amount of time, thanks to the urgency of the fighting.
All in all, we’d walked away from everything relatively unscathed, only the now-healed bruises and scratches on my Bonded to show for it. Fighting in the Wasteland had taken too long and we’d come too close to losing her. The moment the shield had snapped into place around Oleander, separating her from the entire Bonded Group, I thought we’d lost her. It had only gotten worse when Nox’s shadows had filled the space, obscuring her from our view as she’d fought her torturer off.
I don’t know what I would’ve done if my brother hadn’t made it in there to get to her.
“Do we need to be worried about that?” Atlas murmurs, running a gentle hand down Oli's cheek, but Nox only shrugs.
“She's always had a close relationship with her bond, even when she was scared of what it could do. Whatever it's showing her right now, it’s important for her to see.”
Any distraction to keep her from thinking about what had happened on the battlefield at the Wasteland is a win in my opinion. When we’d returned to the Sanctuary, it was only the distraction of Gryphon’s bond that had kept her from falling apart.
The moment we had returned here, I could see the cracks beginning to show on her carefully pasted-together facade. No matter how righteous she may feel in her work now that she is doing so to defend her Bonded Group and the community itself, it still takes a toll on her that no one understands as well as I do.
Her kill count in the Wasteland was only rivaled by my own and Nox’s, the sweeping clouds of our Gifts flooding over the soldiers and tearing them apart in the most vicious and violent ways. There isn’t an inch of remorse in me, but still, the cost of that power is heavy on my shoulders. It’s part of being a human with a soul, I think. Knowing that the weight of that choice is yours alone to carry.
I might believe in my abilities to tell right from wrong, but there's no denying that to the Resistance and families of the East Coast, I'm the villain for what I can do, a role I'll gladly play again and again for our safety and freedom.
“Are we going to remember the past lives as well? Am I ever going to remember what it was like to be a dragon back then?” Gabe asks, and when I look up, he's staring at the Soothsayer.
It stares back at him with its blank and soulless eyes as though it has no intention of answering him, but Gabe stares back at it with that open and easy way of his. Whether or not it's that that breaks the god-bond down, he does eventually answer. “If the Draconis chooses to share it with you, then yes, but it has always only ever communicated with the Eternal. It's only ever wanted her.”
Gabe nods for a second and then shrugs. “It communicated well enough with us both when she jumped into my dreams, so I'm not worried. I don't have to remember the past lives to know that everything is okay.”
I hope it’s really that easy.
I shut my eyes again, rubbing a hand over them more out of irritation than anything else, and my bond speaks once again.
I will show you. I will show you what happens if we fail.
* * *
I’m surroundedby a sea of cobblestones and bodies. Underneath my feet, there are rustic wooden slats with nails sticking out everywhere, as though the platform had been thrown together in a rush with whatever materials were on hand. The buildings around me look like quaint village houses rather than any of the modern architecture that I am accustomed to, straw rooftops and roughly hewn stone walls everywhere. It’s as though I’ve been thrown hundreds of years into the past in the blink of an eye.
I guess I have been, in a way.
I don't know where I am or what time it is, but I glance over and find my brother standing with me.
