“Thank you,” Kerrigan whispered, staring down into the goblet. It just looked like water, as it did in the pool, but she knew it was part of the spell. She looked to Tieran. “Ready?”
As I’ll ever be.
Kerrigan frowned and then downed the drink at the same time Tieran lapped from the pool. For the second time today, her vision went fuzzy, and then she blacked out.
* * *
For the last five years, Kerrigan had thought constantly about what it would be like to go through the dragon-binding ceremony. Having witnessed it firsthand, she had seen each of the competitors drink from the goblet and then enter a state of sleep, coming to with excitement as the bond set in. She’d imagined every scenario for how the binding was actually accomplished.
But she hadn’t envisioned this.
Kerrigan stood on a bridge. It was small and wooden, overtop a bubbling creek that ran through the lawn of an estate. A white marble gazebo stood tall and proud with large columns and a statue of a woman at the center in a scandalously revealing gown. The gardens were massive, even compared to those in Bryonican territory, where the land was fertile and lush. This was a monument to meticulously maintained flora and fauna. And the mansion that sat at the top of the hill, all white stone and iron balustrades and glass windows, was the largest single building home she had ever seen in her life.
“Tieran,” she whispered.
She craned her neck. Tieran was supposed to be here, right? That was part of the binding. Or at least, she had thought it was. That they would have to go on some adventure together. Maybe she had just assumed what she wanted to happen… not reality.
Kerrigan uneasily stepped off the bridge and onto the thick dark-green grass. Her eyes shifted to the horizon. She startled, nearly falling over at the sight. There were mountains in the distance. She had grown up in a mountain and had a pretty good idea what the Vert Mountains looked like. Sure, there were other mountain ranges in Alandria, up north in Tosin territory. But she knew without a doubt that she had never seen these mountains in her life. There was nothing like this on Alandria.
She shivered in fear. Where was she? And why was she here?
Voices rang out from farther away. Anxiety shot through her, but she was here for a reason. She couldn’t just stand here in front of a bridge all day.
She swallowed hard and then walked past the gazebo and down a carefully laid stone path.
A man raged from the front of the house. “How dare you think to rise against your betters!”
The man stood in the doorframe. He was enormous, six and a half feet tall, with a cruel, sneering face and golden-tan skin. He wore a strange garment draped across one shoulder and belted at the waist. A circlet of laurels fit onto his golden hair. He was monstrously beautiful.
Screams could be heard from inside the house.
“Stop, Vulsan! You can’t do this!”
“Restrain her!” he cried back as he stepped out onto the back patio. His massive hand was fisted into the dark hair of another man. He flung the man forward at his feet, as if he were a rag doll. “We will teach you manners.”
The man coughed blood onto the white stone floor, injuries from a previous beating visible on his pale skin.
Kerrigan put her hand to her mouth as Vulsan pulled a barbed whip out of thin air and uncoiled it before the other man. She had to stop this. It was beyond barbaric. It couldn’t continue.
She stepped forward to intervene, and that was the moment that the man on the ground defiantly lifted his head to look at Vulsan.
Kerrigan gasped.
“Father?” she whispered.
But no one seemed to hear her. Not as she raced across the garden pathway. Not when she screamed as the first lash of the whip came down onto Kivrin Argon’s back. Not as she lunged for Vulsan to keep him from harming the father who had abandoned her, who she still couldn’t leave to this fate. But all she did was pass straight through Vulsan’s form. And all she could do was watch as her father’s back was ravaged. He made not one sound. Not one.
Kerrigan put her hand out. She could stop this. She could make Vulsan stop harming her father. She stretched with every last fiber of her being, into that place where the visions and energy bursts came from. Into that place she had never willingly touched, but she would here, for this.
And for one small fraction of a moment, Vulsan turned his head. His lips parted, and he saw her.
“Who?” he breathed.
A headache seared through her, as hot as a fiery poker to her eyeball. She gasped and collapsed to the ground. Vulsan returned to beating her father. And she could do nothing as blackness rushed up to greet her once more.
* * *
Kerrigan? Tieran spoke urgently into her mind.
She shuddered awake. The memory of her father’s whipping at the hands of that man. It was terrible. She couldn’t fathom why her mind had conjured such a thing. She turned her head and vomited onto the stones.
“Are you all right?” Tara asked in concern.
She waved her off. “Fine.”
“Okay,” Tara said uncertainly. “You two are bound forevermore. You will exit through here and fly home to Kinkadia, where you will have a hero’s welcome in the arena.”
Kerrigan straightened and followed Tieran away from the watchful eyes of the Dragon Blessed and the rest of the competitors. She glanced up at him and saw mirrored worry in his eyes.
Once they were finally alone, she breathed out heavily. “It didn’t work, did it?”
Tieran stretched his lithe
