Page 133 of Dream Reaper

I already cut the connection to her. We need to shift, Dragon hissed as steam and smoke leaked between his teeth, heating Jerrid’s bare shoulder. One last time. And we need to do it properly this time, or Meat Pasty is going to die. Do you understand?

Jerrid’s fingers twitched. Yes! If he could just move his arm, he’d punch Dragon in the snout…

That won’t be helpful. Dragon’s teeth sank a little deeper into his flesh, not piercing but pressed so hard they would slice through his skin at the slightest provocation. If you want to save Ava, you need to shift. We need to fix this. For her.

The thought rolled through his mind until it tumbled from between his cracked lips. “For her.”

Was this how he would save her? Not by dying…but by putting himself back together?

By stitching the shards of his soul together?

Yes, Dragon thought as he released his hold on Jerrid’s shoulder. It’s time.

Jerrid blinked up at the mist and darkness. This was his final chance.

He could feel that in his bones, the inevitability of this moment. And strangely, his body relaxed, his muscles uncoiling as the mist began to slide away from him as if they could no longer touch him.

“I’m ready,” he whispered.

Dragon slipped between the cracks in his armor, his thoughts warm and eager and somehow older. He tore through Jerrid’s mind, touching a thought here, another one there, spiraling in an ecstatic loop as he spun to see everything there was to see. And yet his joy was tinged with something bittersweet, with the biting tang that came with age.

With knowing things.

But this didn’t feel like an invasion at all. It was like saying hello to an old friend you’d nearly forgotten.

The memories he explored at first were pleasant ones. Jerrid smiled as they sat around the campfire with his family, laughing and eating venison from the spit. Scales slid over his knuckles and up the back of his hand as they shifted to a training session with his father, Carr.

Then he remembered his first dragon ride, how he’d fallen off and broken his arm.

He winced as the scales crawled over his elbow, but the memory of the pain vanished as Dragon frisked away to see other memories. His first steps. His first fight with his father. His first kiss.

It had been a golden-haired lass with freckles who sat on him and stole a kiss after lessons one day. He’d been furious and embarrassed. Scrubbed his mouth with soap and wouldn’t speak to her for weeks. He’d sworn off kissing for life.

Dragon laughed at this memory, a deep, thundering bellow that reverberated down to Jerrid’s toes as they sprouted into clawed feet.

It’s not so bad when you kiss the right lass, is it?

Thoughts of Ava flooded his mind. The first time he’d seen her back in Eroth, a thin-lipped healer who didn’t seem to know he existed. He remembered her huddling in the forest trying to rescue flowers as myrk hounds prepared to attack, and his anger that she would put her life at risk for stupid plants.

The feel of her lips against his ignited fire in his blood and a longing in his soul that he had never known he wanted. As if a piece of himself had always been missing, and she somehow filled it.

No. No, it certainly wasn’t bad with the right lass.

But how did he make that work with Dragon in the way? The thought halted the shift, his wings only partially extended from his shoulders. Stabs of pain dug into his back, and he gritted his teeth, tensing to fight.

I’m not in the way. I’m not trying to get between you.

“So you say, and yet you’re always there! Always in our thoughts!” The pain intensified and dragged a cry from his lips.

I’m not in the way, and I’m not trying to get between you, Dragon insisted. Jerrid. I AM YOU.

The thought ripped open a barrier to some place Jerrid had never dared look, into a cavern he’d never dared open, too afraid of what he would find in the darkness at the center of his soul.

I AM YOU.

What was it Brynja had said? That he’d fractured his soul, and he needed to put it back together? How the shades did he mend a soul?

You’re already doing it, Dragon whispered. Can’t you feel it? The togetherness? The oneness?