“You don’t think the dragon’s too on the nose?” he asked, stifling a laugh. Despite himself, Adrissu smiled.
“So that it will strike fear in the hearts of your enemies,” he said, squeezing his shoulder. “And maybe remind you of who has yours.”
“Adrissu,” Ruan sighed, still smiling up at him. “I think this is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me.”
Adrissu rolled his eyes, but still smiled. “You’d best keep the memory close, then.”
Later, when Ruan was sated and asleep in Adrissu’s bed, the dragon watched him quietly, ruminating. For all that he would do to protect the human, someday he would die, and Adrissu would be left without him for what could very well be an eternity.Thatwas why he had kept Ruan at arm’s length for so long. But what more could he do?
There must be something. Even dragons could die, rare as it was—there were rumors of fated pairs staying together even beyond death, but how? He had not found anything in his own books and records, but perhaps there was more beyond his scope of knowledge. There were no dragons nearby, but his mother’s lair was not terribly far. Would she know? He had not spoken to her in thirty years, since he had first leveled Polimnos. Maybe she would know of a fated pair that he could ask; but figuring out how to ask, without revealing his own rather embarrassing position, would prove to be tricky. If he let her suspect that he had found himself part of a fated pair, she would surely ask after his mate; and the knowledge that his mate was not a dragon, but a human, seemed like the kind of information he wanted to keep close, even from his mother. He had no draconic enemies that he knew of, but if he ever did... A human mate would be an easy target.
There must have been a piece of the puzzle that he was missing. He would not leave Ruan to find out, but the next time the human was gone, Adrissu resolved, he would seek it out.
Ruan remained in town for several weeks after that, joining Adrissu at Saltspire Tower most days. They had not exactly spoken about it, but Ruan rarely sat outside the tower and took up his post there anymore. At first, Adrissu was unsure if he should still offer him the gold piece at the end of the day. When he did, Ruan pushed his hand away.
“No need anymore,” he said, laughing nervously. “I’d hardly call what I did todaywork.”
The next time he took a job, as a guard to a caravan of stone down to Vlissingstadt, Adrissu was equal parts sad and relieved. Ruan would be gone a full month, two weeks there and two weeks back, so he would have plenty of time to make the trip out to his mother’s island in the ocean. The day Ruan left, Adrissu quietly set out from his lair at nightfall, flying silently over the dark waters that disguised his black scales.
He flew until the sun began to rise. It would be several more hours until he reached the island, so he found a large rock protruding from the water and settled upon it to rest. The sun warmed his scales, and he stretched his wings to bask. He could not remember the last time that he’d been in this form in the sun.
When he woke, alert and refreshed, he dunked himself under the cold ocean water to cool his overwarmed scales before setting off again. Then he flew idly, hunting fish and waterfowl as he went, until the island that was his mother’s lair came into view, and he had the sense of another dragon nearby—knowing that his mother, like all dragonkind, was feeling the same awareness.
Sure enough, Ilrenth was waiting for him, standing sentinel near the peak of the rocky island for whomever her visitor might be. Alert and proud, she watched him without aggression, following his movement with her glowing blue eyes as he swooped down and perched on the rocky shores.
“Zamnes, my son,” she rumbled as he approached, head low. “You are an unexpected visitor.”
“Hello, mother,” he said, keeping himself low to the ground. Though shewashis mother, as a fellow adult dragon who had proven his independence from her, she no longer had any familial responsibility toward him. If at any point she thought him disrespectful, or lacking deference to her in her lair, she would be entirely justified to attack him, either to drive him away or kill him outright.
Draconic custom valued a dragon’s supremacy in their own lair over anything else. It was barbaric, Adrissu often thought, but it was how dragons were.
“What do you need from me?” she said, lifting her head so she towered over him.
“I am only wondering,” he said slowly, glancing between her and the ground, “If you know anything of the magic behind fated mates.”
For a moment, she was silent. When he looked back up at her, the expression on her face was as inscrutable as ever; but he was sure she was considering the possibilities behind the question–some obvious, some perhaps less so.
“I know some,” she finally said. “Perhaps not more than you. What are you asking?”
“I am... curious about the magic that binds them,” he answered. “I am researching such bonds between souls. My curiosity lies in what might happen to one if the other were to perish.”
She balked slightly at that. “Have you made an enemy of such a pair?”
“Nothing like that. I ask only to sate my own curiosity. Although, if you know of such a pair, perhaps I could seek an audience with them.”
Her eyes narrowed, unsure whether or not she believed him.
“I do know of such a pair,” she said. “But the ones I know of are far in the northeast, in the lands inhabited by dwarves. They will be difficult to reach from here, and may not welcome your presence.”
“Are you on friendly terms with them?”
“I would not say that, no. I only know of them. They were friendly with my mother. So they would tolerate me, but their goodwill toward you would not be guaranteed.”
“I see,” Adrissu murmured. “Do you know anything about such magic?”
“Little,” she replied, and was silent for a moment, considering. “They performed some soul-binding ritual when I was a hatchling that my mother witnessed.”
Adrissu looked up quickly, his heart starting to race. A soul-binding ritual sounded like the very thing he’d been considering. “Would she remember such a ritual, then?”
