The assembled dragon knights and priests stare with wide eyes when the dragon bites the boy. The boy cries out in pain, falling back and trying to pull his arm free. Blood flows as the dragon releases him. He screams in terror as the dragon lunges for his neck next, then screams in pain as he falls back on his injured arm. The knights holding the dragon’s leash yank on it, pulling the dragon back before it can bite the boy’s face. The dragon’s mouth clamps shut on air, but its talons rake down the boy’s side and back. He screams again. More knights run forth to help their compatriots, yanking on the chains of the leash to pull the dragon away from the boy. The dragon continues lunging for him, spitting and hissing. Its talons catch on the boy’s other arm, on his leg. He screams and tries to crawl away.
It is the way for a bonding sometimes, and the dragon knights are not always quick enough to keep a dragon from killing a potential rider. But it has been a long time since a bonding has gone this way, leaving them all unprepared. Knights yell to each other as they pull on the leash, priests run forward to help the bleeding boy. The dragon is young, in a frenzy now. They’d all believed the dragon to be well socialized; they can’t help but question themselves as it continues to lunge, as it tugs on the chains of its leash, as its talons come close to injuring the boy again.
The boy knows none of this. He knows only pain and terror. He shrinks away from the touch of the priests, dragging himself away from the dragon.
None expect the roar that sounds, the call of a dragon that’s lived for more than two generations of dragon knights. The knights continue their struggle to hold the young dragon back as they seek the source of the roar. A shadow crosses over the bonding field and the priests stare openmouthed, the boy forgotten as the dragon lands and the ground shakes beneath her. The leash on the young dragon snaps and it springs for the boy as the dragon knights tumble to the ground. The great dragon catches the young one in her jaws and bites down. Bones crack. The young dragon’s own cry of pain is never more than an inhale. She drops the pieces of its body, knocking priests back with her tail as she stares the dragon knights down. Her hulking frame curls around the injured boy protectively. The dragon knights stare in shock. A brave one steps forward, hands held out at his sides.
The dragon lets out a clicking trill, smoke rising from her nostrils. That sole dragon knight freezes, instincts learned and honed over years recognizing the sound of danger. A burst of flame flies forth, scorching the field before him. He steps back slowly and the flames end. The dragon watches him, then turns to nose at the boy. He whimpers, curled in on himself. She noses him again, then licks at his wounds. His blood slowly stops flowing, but he doesn’t move. She tucks him under a wing, then trills in warning at the dragon knights as they try to step forward again.
The day stretches towards night in such a manner—dragon knights attempt to approach; the dragon keeps them away. More dragons come to the bonding field, those already bonded to dragon knights surrounding it to watch every movement. They wait to swoop in and protect their riders, caring naught for the boy. The dragon knights never stop trying though. They try to approach with food, with water, with bandages and medicines. The dragon trills and growls at each of them, for it has been a long time since she was bonded to a man and she knows none of these riders. She has no trust for them and knows only her future rider to be injured because of them. And so she hides the boy under her wing and refuses to let any of them close as the boy slowly becomes aware of her. He radiates pain and fear, and a deep hatred for the dragon knights. His thoughts repeat in her mind, as does his refusal to bond with her. He considers running. She tells him she’ll take him far from others and he flinches at her voice in his mind.
A carriage rolls onto the field in the late afternoon and she glowers at it, even as it spills out a young, fair-haired child before two more exit—the king and queen with their youngest son, her rider’s tired mind supplies at her questioning tone. This new boy immediately runs up to one dragon knight, tugging on the young man’s arm as he stares at the dragon in the bonding field. The king walks as far as the dragon will allow anyone to go, standing next to the dragon knight who kneels with a basket with food and water. The two speak quietly, the knight explaining all that’s happened with the injured boy since the dawn. Neither looks away from the dragon as the queen and prince join them. Not even when the prince begins questioning them all—about what happened to the boy under the dragon’s wing, about which dragon protects him, about why the knights remain where they are. The prince frowns to each answer he receives, gaze moving between the dragon and the basket. His frown only grows the more he’s told.
When the prince moves, he’s gone before anyone truly understands what he’s doing—taking the basket to confidently stride across the patch of scorched earth. The dragon watches him, eyes half-lidded and gaze lazy. She likes him. He reminds her of her first rider. The boy tucked against her side rolls his head to stare at the approaching prince. He’s exhausted and in pain, expression blank as he looks the prince over. Gold hair, gold eyes. A cloak fluttering in the breeze. The prince glances at the dragon warily as he reaches her head. She could swallow him whole, but all she does is watch him until she can no more as he continues to the boy under her wing. The prince looks to that boy—then stops and stares, mouth falling open and eyes wide at all the blood that covers the boy.
“What happened to you?” the prince asks.
A moment of nothing, then—the rider’s eyes dart to the carcass of the young dragon. It waits for when the bond between dragon and rider is accepted, for then the dragons will come forth to claim it. But for now the prince stares at the pieces of the dragon, thinking the pile looks disturbingly like the butcher’s block in the kitchens.
When his gaze returns to the other boy, he finds the rider staring at him again. There’s enough sun in the sky to see the blue of the rider’s eyes, open wide now, and the prince thinks they’re a lovely blue, the color of a summer morning sky.
The prince’s cheeks color slightly. He sounds like a bard. His brother will laugh at him if he shares that thought and so he vows to keep it to himself. “Are you hungry?” he asks abruptly, lifting the basket. The rider nods and begins to sit up. The prince runs to him, setting aside the basket to help him. The rider flinches from him at first, looking at him warily. The prince stares back. “My name’s Bridei,” he says softly.
The rider hesitates, then, “Senach.”
Bridei beams.
Senach frowns.
Bridei slowly frowns back as he looks Senach over. “I’ll be right back,” he says as he stands.
Senach only stares as the prince runs back to his parents, to where they and the dragon knights, astonished, stare at the prince. He looks to the basket slowly, pulling it closer with his least injured arm. The food is simple, enough to last him more than one day if need be: bread, hard cheese wrapped in beeswax, two apples, dried apricots, dried meat. He eats a dried apricot slowly, looking up to watch as Bridei speaks—argues with the knights. A knight is sent away and returns with another, one who carries his own basket. Bridei speaks solemnly with this new knight who kneels to take items out of his basket and give them to Bridei in a smaller one. The prince nods at everything said about each item, then takes the basket and brings it to Senach. Senach stares with another frown. Bridei says nothing, only sets the basket down before running back. Two more dragon knights have joined the others, holding buckets of water that sloshes over the rims. Bridei takes one and carries it back to Senach, setting it next to him and running back for the second. A few rags rest on the rim of the bucket, and Senach takes one to wipe his hands clean of blood. He’d rather not taste it.
When Bridei returns, he takes the rag Senach had used and begins to carefully examine the other boy’s injuries. Senach flinches, inhaling sharply as pain sparks furiously, but he doesn’t pull away from Bridei. Not a word is said between them, not until Bridei is finished tending to his wounds and sitting back to stare at the dragon next to them in wonder.
“She’s so big,” he says softly. Senach grunts and turns away from her, staring out across the bonding field without looking at the dragons resting along the edges of it. Bridei stares at him next. “Can you walk? I can help you to the carriage.”
Senach shakes his head. “I’m not going with them.”
Bridei looks at his wounds. “But . . .”
“I’m not a dragon knight,” Senach says furiously, glaring at Bridei. Bridei recoils, nodding. Senach relaxes, looking away guiltily and chewing on a strip of dried meat. “I’m not a dragon rider,” he adds quietly. “I said no.”
Something akin to anger flashes across Bridei’s face. He glances at the dragon next to them. “Will she let you leave if you go elsewhere?” he asks.
“Not alone.”
“Oh.”
Senach turns away from the prince now, eating and looking at anything but dragons. Anything but the golden boy next to him, the one now stained with his blood. Bridei appears not to mind, standing and walking around the dragon. He runs his hands along her evergreen scales. She rumbles, turning to look at him. Twilight feathers make up her ruff, and her eyes are the same summer sky color of Senach’s. The difference is in the pupil still, where his remains a human’s rounded one and hers a thin slit as she looks at Bridei.
“Her name is Aedín,” Senach says.
He sounds so exhausted Bridei glances back at him. Senach sits with his eyes closed, breath so even he looks as if he’s fallen asleep sitting up. Bridei leaves him be, stepping up to touch the dragon’s nose slowly. “Aedín was the name of Prince Galan’s dragon. Is she—”
One of the buckets clatters against a rock, Senach scrambling away from the dragon. He backs up against her wing and halts, glaring at her. “Don’t do that,” he says, staring at her eyes. “Don’t—don’t.”
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“Are you all right?” Bridei asks, backing away from the dragon’s snout. She hasn’t moved an inch.
Senach doesn’t answer, curling in on himself. Bridei tries again to speak to him, then a third time, but never receives an answer. Senach remains turned away from him, facing the darkness under Aedín’s wing. Bridei stares at his back, the thick bandages covering it. Then he sighs and gathers up the buckets to take them back to the dragon knights, who wait with blankets for Bridei to take to Senach’s side. Senach doesn’t move as one of the blankets is draped over him, nor when Bridei says he has to return to the castle—but he’ll be back in the morning, he says, because they need to see if Aedín will let him come down again. Senach pulls the blanket over his head. Bridei leaves slowly, always looking back at the boy under the dragon’s wing.
Night comes. The dragon knights slowly leave the bonding field, leaving two behind to watch over dragon and boy. The dragon resettles herself, nosing the boy again. He sighs and looks at her, then flinches again to hear her voice in his mind. When he turns away from her and drifts into sleep, she settles to sleep herself. In the morning, Bridei returns as he said he would, and babbles away about Senach coming back to the castle with him as he tends to Senach’s wounds again. Senach ignores his words, then later ignores the calls of the dragon knights. When he hears the voice of the dragon again, he ignores that as well.
She goes to his dreams instead, a tall woman with fair skin and dark hair sitting with him at the lake. There’s a greenish blue hue to her skin, dragon eyes set in a delicately carved face. Scales line her cheeks, swirl around her arms. Only she talks at first, telling the tale of how Galan found her in the mountains, injured in her nest, and tended to her. Their bond formed slowly as she healed, and he flew back to the castle on her back to join the dragon knights. Senach doesn’t ask questions until she tells of their first battle together. His voice is quiet as he speaks, like he’s still unsure of her. Slowly, he begins asking about her. About the bond. She answers in his dreams and in his mind when they’re awake, helping him to discover the limits of their bond.
Already, he has her eyes completely.
As she looks at this new boy of hers, she wonders what else he’ll gain. Galan had her eyes, with scales along his shoulders and down his spine.
She wakes first one night when someone comes sneaking onto the bonding field—the little golden prince, trying not to trip over rocks. Bridei clutches his cloak about him tightly, shivering in the cool air as he walks by the patch of scorched earth. There are no dragon knights around tonight to stop him, the danger having passed. Aedín watches him and he pats her snout before continuing to Senach’s side. Senach sits up sluggishly, short dark hair sticking in every direction as he rubs his eyes. He doesn’t speak first, just stares at Bridei silently as the prince sits next to him on his blanket.
Bridei doesn’t speak either, hugging his legs as he looks Senach over. He looks at Aedín next, touching her wing gently, then stares up at the stars. His hair is braided neatly, tied off with a green ribbon. He smells like honeysuckle.
Aedín’s tail twitches around to nudge Senach hard enough he falls against Bridei’s side. Face hot, Senach glares at her, but her eyes are closed. He can feel her amusement tickling his mind.
“Shouldn’t you be in the castle?” Senach asks harshly.
Bridei frowns, then shrugs. “I asked if I could come out. My mother said yes.”
Senach isn’t sure he believes that. It’s too dark, too many wild dragons flying overhead. “Why?”
“Did you know there’s a dragon knight with feathers behind his ears?” Bridei asks. “He sheds them sometimes, like his dragon does.”
Senach rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer. Bridei scowls and falls silent again. They watch the stars together, Bridei gasping quietly at a dragon that flies across the moon. Then the prince eyes Aedín and Senach. Senach frowns.
“Are you going to learn to fly on her?” Bridei asks. “She’s much bigger than the ones the pages and squires learn on.”
Senach lifts one of his arms, covered in bandages with thin lines of red. “They should have tried a different dragon if they wanted me to learn with the others,” he says flatly.
Bridei winces, then takes his arm to look at the bandage. It’s the same gentle touch he’s used since he first ran to Senach’s side, unafraid of Aedín. “How are your injuries?” he asks softly when he lets go of Senach’s arm.
Senach hugs himself. “They make it hard to sleep.”
“Oh.”
They stare at each other then, neither knowing what to say. Aedín opens an eye to glance at them, then closes her eye again as they watch the stars together. They end up sitting against her side, sharing a blanket. Neither is aware of how much time passes like that, Bridei wriggling and slouching down to very nearly rest his head against Senach’s shoulder. The moon is high in the sky when they’re interrupted by a shout.
“Bridei!”
The prince jumps guiltily, then his expression shutters. “Talorc,” he says softly.
The older prince stands as close as Aedín will allow anyone, hands on his hips as he frowns. “Just because you can approach them doesn’t mean you should be sneaking out of the castle at night,” Talorc says. “It’s mating season. The wild dragons are dangerous at this time.”
“You said you had permission,” Senach murmurs.
Bridei looks at the ground, then stands with a sigh. “I’m coming,” he calls to his brother.
Senach wraps his blanket tighter around himself, watching Bridei walk away. He moves as slow as he always does, his reluctance to leave Senach’s side and return to the castle clear in every line of his body. Aedín’s insistence Senach go with Bridei is gentle in his mind, as is her reminder that some of his wounds have yet to stop bleeding despite Bridei’s care for them during the days. But it’s the frown that Bridei looks back with that propels Senach to his feet. He stumbles forward, staring back at Bridei’s wide eyes.
“Can I come?” he asks.
Bridei smiles and walks with him. Talorc’s eyes go wide as Senach steps free of Aedín’s side. The dragon stretches as they walk across the bonding field, then shoots a plume of fire into the air to call for other dragons. Senach glances back as Bridei helps him across a patch of rocks, managing to find the young dragon’s carcass even in the dark. They’ll feast on it now and take the bones. Some may take bones to their riders, others to their nests, and a dedicated few to one of their various graveyards. Senach shudders as he looks away and follows the two princes.
Talorc takes them straight to the barracks. He speaks with the dragon knights awake in its hall. Senach sits next to the hearth and ignores them, grateful for the fire. He ignores Bridei, too, as the prince sits next to him. A knight comes to crouch next to them, smiling softly as he tries to talk to Senach. Senach stares at him silently for a long moment, then pointedly turns away. Bridei pats his uninjured shoulder and talks to the knight for him. Eventually, the two boys are left alone by the fire. Senach grows drowsy quickly. Bridei yawns next to him.
When Talorc finally comes to take Bridei away, he almost has to drag his brother out of the barracks. Senach watches them go sleepily, then looks at the dragon knights. They all stare at him as if they’re not quite sure what to do with him. He glares back, daring one of them to step forward. That same knight that’d crouched next to him is the one to step forward, not at all perturbed by the glare Senach gives him. He only grabs the back of Senach’s shirt to haul the boy to his feet, then leads him through the maze of the barracks to the bathing room. There, he’s washed and his wounds tended to anew. Three have to be stitched together. Senach sits through it all silently. After, he’s taken to a long, dark room full of pages and squires. Senach glances at their sleeping forms as he’s given an empty bed and left alone.
He finds the bed uncomfortable and lonely after nights spent against his dragon’s side.
He begins lessons with the pages in the morning. The three of them stare at him warily, his story already passed amongst them. He ignores them. When they move into the courtyard, twice he catches Bridei watching them from the castle windows until the prince is chased away by his own tutors. The pages keep their distance from Senach, leaning against their young dragons as they fill the courtyard and learn how to harness and groom their dragons. Senach can do nothing but sit to the side and listen during this lesson, and he grows bored until the afternoon when Bridei comes charging out of the castle before anyone can stop him to join lessons of swordsmanship and horseback riding.
Bridei is the first student to speak to Senach.
Senach rarely speaks to Bridei.
The months blur together with the lessons. Dragons and history and languages in the mornings; swordsmanship and horses and anything else the knights can think of in the afternoons. Bridei starts joining more lessons than the afternoon ones, avoiding his tutors within the castle. The pages and squires avoid Bridei as they avoid Senach, and Senach hears them talking amongst themselves at night about the pretty princeling intruding on their lessons. One snide comment is made while they groom their horses after an afternoon ride once, where Bridei can hear it. Bridei frowns at his horse but doesn’t turn around. Senach glares at the squire until she turns red and walks away. Another looks at Senach with as much disdain as his voice holds when he says Bridei’s name. Senach uses his wooden sword to give the boy a good wallop during one lesson as soon as he can, and the boy says little more after that.
When winter blooms in full, they’re ushered inside for morning and afternoon lessons alike. Senach finds the castle unnerving, staring at the bones that hold the castle up. Once, he touches one and finds his mind assaulted by the whispers of spirits. Aedín is in his mind immediately, chasing the voices away. She teaches him to build walls against the voices as the others learned to do long before he arrived. She and Galan had fumbled through learning that together and she gives the wisdom gained freely.
Bridei is quieter inside, amongst the children of the castle’s nobility. He claims seats at Senach’s side always but says little, fidgets and drives Senach to distraction until Senach snaps at him. The children of the nobility, though, are crueler than the pages and squires. The pages and squires band together in lessons, traveling in pairs. The children of the nobility taunt them with the great deeds of long dead dragon knights, asking how any of these new ones might fare quite so well. They taunt and toy with Bridei for lackluster skills compared to Talorc’s accomplishments. As with the pages and squires, Bridei says nothing back and only looks away.
Once, though, Bridei trips a boy draped in finery into a pile of manure during a cold outing to the stables after his comments about the daughter of a dragon knight. Senach hides a smile by breathing on his hands to warm them.
Then a snowstorm traps them in the castle. The son of some lord grows bored and bold. He gathers his lackeys together and begins whispering to them, glancing often at Bridei. Bridei sits next to a window, staring out at the snow as it swirls through the air. The little lordling grows bolder, speaks louder—how can Bridei compare to Talorc, for Talorc had mastered much by their age. Talorc had known five languages when he was their age, and Bridei knows only three. Talorc was the king’s cupbearer, learning at his father’s side. Bridei is forgotten and left for others to teach. And still Bridei never looks away from the window. Senach looks between the Bridei and the little lordling with a frown. The other boy doesn’t stop talking, like he can say anything he wants simply because Bridei won’t acknowledge him.
Senach slips to the edges of the boy’s group, aware of the eyes that snap to him. The pages and the squires watch him curiously, warily. The little lordling’s lackeys pay him no mind as he listens to the jeering. Senach’s expression is blank as he steps forward, pushing himself through to stand in front of the other boy. The boy glances at him but continues on, slowly stopping when it becomes apparent that Senach won’t walk away or stop staring at him.
“What?” the boy demands.
Senach punches him, feeling a satisfying crunch under his hand.
The other children scramble away. The boy stares in shock as the pain races up to his mind—and then he drops to the floor with a wail, clutching at his bleeding nose. Senach looks to Bridei. Bridei’s eyes are comically wide as he stares not at the bleeding boy, but at Senach.
And then the prince starts to laugh.