“Give me another, Xax,” I said, bleary-eyed and more than a little drunk already as I sat on my favorite stool at Moult, my favorite bar in the capital. It was upholstered with a pleasant floral pattern in dark green and exactly the right amount of busted up. Cracks in the cloth let little bits of the fluffy interior show through and gave it the kind of flexibility you just don’t get with something brand new. The legs had been through several rounds of replacements and while none of them fully matched the others in length, it had a kind of fragile stability that made it perfect for rocking forward and back at angles that seemed impossible to sustain without some kind of magical interference. I loved that stool more than I loved some of my siblings.

Xax gave me a side-eyed look (an impressive achievement given the number of eyes), but reached back behind the bar for the bottle of brandy I’d been sampling ever since I’d arrived after my disastrous conversation with Mother earlier in the day. It wasn’t exactly great, the brandy I mean, nothing like the kind of alcohol I had available back at the palace, but it reminded me of my first illicit sips of the harder stuff I’d snuck as a kid. The conversation hadn’t ended well either. I’d stormed out in a huff, doing my best to give the lie to my mother’s newfound need to treat me like an adult. That huff had lasted me about halfway down the hill from the palace on my way into town, where my thoughts had reasserted themselves and I’d been forced into exactly the wrong kind of introspection. Hence my journey, which had started out only as an aimless need to get away, terminated at Moult. That had been… three hours ago? Four? It was getting dark, at least.

As much as I hated to give the queen any kind of credit at that particular moment, she had always understood my need for space. Since I’d been old enough to watch out for myself, I was allowed to go into the city whenever I wanted with only minimal oversight. Every time I stalked through the palace gate some luckless sap at the gatehouse was assigned to tail me from enough distance that I wouldn’t have to think about them, but still within range to intervene if anything went wrong. I say luckless not because it was a particularly difficult job; I’d never gotten into any trouble more serious than a bar fight. No, it was that they had to watch me get drunk and party without being able to participate. I winced thinking about the one time I’d actually managed to convince a guard to join in my revelry, back when I was sixteen. He’d been sacked as soon as Mother found out, of course, and I’d been restricted to palace grounds for six months. I couldn’t even be mad at her about it, which was really the worst part. Mother had been right. She was always right.

Damn it.

Despite his obvious misgivings over my already sorry state, Xax scuttled over to my seat and began to refill my empty glass, pouring carefully with the bottle held firmly but gently between his front set of pincers. The first time I’d visited Moult, probably three or four years ago, I’d been slightly disconcerted by the sight of a pale blue scorpion the size of a small dog tending bar. I’d gotten used to it though. Xax was good people.

he said, setting the bottle down carefully to the side of my glass and fixing his ten small eyes on me.

I sat bolt upright. “We do not talk about her Xax. You know that. We have a rule.”

He projected the feeling of a deep sigh into my mind. He couldn’t actually sigh, just like he couldn’t actually speak of course. Scorpions didn’t breathe the same way people did, with air passively absorbing through their book shaped lungs, and they didn’t have vocal cords to make vibrations in a range we could understand, much less lips to form the sounds that made up Aiatic. Like most bonded creatures, Xax gained some limited telepathic capability as part of the deal. He was generally quite shy, usually preferring to communicate with patrons via tapping a series of plaques inbuilt into the surface of the bar denoting things like cost for drinks, closing times and delays. I’d been coming to Moult for several years, and Xax and I had become something not quite like friends, but certainly we were more comfortable around each other. We talked about things.

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“What was your bonding like?” I asked abruptly.

He stopped, pincers silenced, and the air around us grew cold. That isn’t a metaphor or anything, it literally got chillier. I’d made him uncomfortable.

From what I’d learned over the years, Xax was a kind of Frost Scorpion native to the northern deserts. Apparently, water was so scarce in the dry seasons up there that almost every creature had some kind of adaptation, magical or otherwise. Xax’s people used their power to condense what little moisture existed in the air into enough droplets to keep them alive through the worst of the season. It also served to dampen their ambient temperature and protect them from the Sand Wyverns, one of the apex predators of the region, who spotted prey with their extremely keen thermal sense. In the more temperate climes of the capital city, Xax could condense enough water to freeze a solid carapace of ice around his body. Some of the more esoteric drinks at the bar were served in frozen shell copies of his pincers as glasses, and I was pretty sure that was where the place’s name had come from.

“Sorry, that might have been too personal. I’m just…thinking some things through.”

“I’ve been recently forced to reevaluate my position,” I sighed.

He settled one claw on me, a cool and surprisingly comforting weight on my right hand.

“I don’t know Palor, Xax. Not like I know you.” It was true. While I’d met Xax’s human partner once or twice, he mostly left the running of the bar to the scorpion. Palor seemed nice enough, but not the kind of person I could ask about the thoughts that threatened to penetrate my hard-earned drunken stupor.

he said, humming softly to himself. That was actually a physical song, rather than just the mental sensation that made up the rest of the conversation.

I nodded. Every child was taught about bonding at an early age. The last numbers I’d seen over Mother’s shoulder said that something like five in six citizens ended up bonded, which I’d imagine held true for other states as well. In every nation we’d ever had contact with, the reality was the same. All humans, no matter their culture or physical variations, were born with unique magical talents. Unfortunately, there was really only a small subset of magics that had any practical use. While some were fortunate enough to be born with things like control over various elements, or the ability to shift into the form of a bird and fly, most were not so lucky. Even among those abilities with use, there was the matter of mismatch. While the power to raise bread magically might be incredibly useful to a baker, it was nothing but a trifle to a soldier or a scribe.

For those of us with powers so specific or pointless as to have no practical ability, there was the bond. A pact with a magical creature wherein the human sacrificed their magical talent, giving up a fundamental part of themselves. In exchange, the beast became a companion and friend, its own powers strengthened by the gift of human potential.

The advantage in this was obvious: all creatures of the same type had the same abilities. Every Frost Scorpion like Xax would have his same control over the temperature around their carapaces. Every Caduceus Snake had powerful regenerative magic. Which meant if you were a healer with an inapt talent, all you had to do was bond a Caduceus and suddenly your skills were increased several fold.

Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as picking your preferred power and getting on with it. Different beasts lived in different areas for one, there were limited numbers of many species, and of course they had their own structures and societies. It wasn’t like you could go to the pound and adopt the creature of your choice and suddenly have access to whatever magic you wished. There was politics involved. Like always.

In my case the politics were even more present, of course. The life of a ruler is not her own, as Mother liked to say. Monarchs and their children have to keep in mind the messages that we send with our power. A bond with a Grey Wolf for example would be an incredible concession to House Calanthis, an acknowledgement of the strength of their lands and a tie between them and the throne. A queen who chose to go unbonded and retain her inborn talent for destructive fire magic is sending a message that she expects her reign to be marked by battle.

It wasn’t dissimilar to the struggles of making a royal marriage. In fact, it was far closer to that than I was comfortable with, considering I’d been avoiding both since I was old enough to understand the impact they would have on my life.

I’d never had a choice when it came to a bond. My talent wasn’t just too weak to be worth preserving other options, it was downright useless in almost every situation. From the day I had been born and my ability divined, it had been decided that before taking the throne I would bond a dragon of the Crags. All I had to do was give up a part of my soul.