What am I supposed to do now?

Everything Alisa had come to rely on, everything that had seemed so stable and certain, yanked out from under her in a single moment. She’d thought she knew what her life would be like. She had allowances for the unexpected, for anything reasonable, but this?

This wasn’t just unexpected, it was unforeseeable.

Could she leave the academy? Run away, hide in the city in the chaos?

But … what then? Her mother lived far away. Even if she had money for transportation, she doubted such a flight would go unnoticed. If the Traitor wanted every possible dragon mage he could get his hands on, then a student running off would be easy to track down. She didn’t want to bring trouble upon her only remaining family.

Yet how could she stay? It burned in her chest, the empty space where all the perfect tranquility of the life she’d built so carefully had been torn away. She would never be able to see Renand Academy in the same way again. It would no longer be a perfect refuge, but a prison; no longer the transition into a better life, but chains holding her down.

She couldn’t leave; she couldn’t stay. There was no good option. No solution. No clever trick she could pull to make things fall back into place, no careful inscription to make the whole coalesce into perfection.

Alisa’s life was over. She would live, she would fight, and she would never accomplish anything worth remembering. Spelling it out didn’t make it any easier to reconcile. She’d done everything right; made a plan, worked hard, made friends (and enemies, but that was unavoidable), and just when things should have been coming together … this.

She trudged to classes and sat and listened. She cast spells, reveling in the pure simplicity of them working, dreading the day when that ability would be finally stripped away for good.

Life no longer glinted with potential, the whole world seemed draped in muffling dimness. Nothing mattered. Nothing ever would matter again.

The fact that everyone else seemed fine with the change, even excited by it, only drove her deeper into despair.

Dragon bonding was usually reserved for a handful of top combat magic trainees, those yet to be paired with anyone but showing greatest potential. It was supposed to be a great honour, a rare opportunity.

Alisa would gladly give it away if she could. But no, somehow, the Traitor had arranged for enough eggs to be delivered for every student in the entire academy. Exactly enough. She couldn’t swap, couldn’t forego; had no excuses whatsoever.

The oldest students were given the first batch, several of which had already begun to hatch. More and more students walked the halls with egg-carriers looped to their sides, powerscript shimmering faintly with heat. Some walked proudly with tiny lizards perched on shoulders, coiled sinuously around wrists, or clinging to clothing.

All too soon, the final delivery arrived, and Alisa’s brief respite was over. She reluctantly filed into the incubation chamber with the rest of her classmates as their turn arrived.

The eggs were significantly more varied than she’d expected. She had seen unbonded dragons around the city before, but most of those were small wild breeds. Like the little sharp-winged flocklings that pestered (and occasionally snacked on) pigeons, or the heavier thick-clawed varieties that prowled like stray cats. Once, a wild fire-breather had soared over the city, and all the children were forced to stay indoors for days until word came that it had been slain.

But she’d still somehow never seen a proper mage’s dragon egg up close. They were dull and disappointing things, mostly browns and reds, some streaked with orange or veined in gold, some grey or black. The smallest would fit comfortably within a closed hand; the largest would require both arms to lift.

A quick count showed the exact correct number. No extras, no deficit. Drat.

Alisa scribbled her name on the chancer when it reached her, shoving the device toward Sadie with unnecessary force.

“Why do you think they’re doing it this way?” Sadie asked as she wrote her own name and passed it on.

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Are you ever going to stop being bitter about this?” Sadie asked.

“Am I ever going to stop being bonded to a stupid fire lizard so I can actually use magic like a normal person?” Alisa snapped back.

“It’s easy to see why normally such an honour would be reserved for those who deserve it,” Francine’s prim, haughty voice lilted through the room. “Why, just the thought of some of the uncouth louts who’ll end up as dragon mages makes me fear for the future of our kingdom.”

That future is already gone, Alisa thought darkly. The kingdom she’d worked so hard to reach would no longer exist, rewritten utterly in the Traitor’s image.

She didn’t have the energy to snap back at Francine any longer. She’d realized that she could utterly ignore the stupid fop’s existence, and found a sort of satisfaction in the freedom not to care about anything any longer.

Staring at the row of eggs before her, she felt her last tiny embers of hope fade away. Half-ignored ideas of running away sprang to the forefront of her mind, only to be discarded for the last time. Once her mark was set, that was it. Her power would never recover; even if her dragon died, its presence would have tainted her magic forever.

Twenty-two students; twenty-two eggs. Eight looked roughly the same, brownish with grey spots and an uneven bumpy texture. Three were darker, veined with gold. The one giant egg sat like a king presiding over its much-smaller cousins.

Alisa didn’t know enough about dragon breeds to guess which egg contained what type of creature. Would it be sinuous and light or heavy and slow, flightless or great-winged, fire-breathing or acid-spitting?

She stared at the row listlessly, her eyes lingering on a mid-sized egg toward the center. It was pale grey and textured, like shale scraped against limestone. Small enough not to be overly heavy, large enough not to get lost. As much as she wished she dared ‘accidentally’ lose her egg, she knew she wouldn’t. Dragon eggs of this caliber were far too valuable to be misplaced without consequences; she’d sooner run away and brave the streets than risk the repercussions of misplacing a mage-ready egg.

Her name was chosen sixth, and she picked up the pale grey egg without further consideration. Its dullness matched her mood.

Sadie ended up with one of the smaller eggs, a dull brown thing of entirely unexceptional texture. Francine quickly bribed the first student to have chosen, who’d picked the giant egg because of course he had, and they quietly swapped before the teacher had finished calling names.

Alisa looked down at the egg she held, warm and stone-heavy, and wondered if her dragon would be as unhappy about the match as she was. Somehow, that thought cut through her self pity and made her feel guilty. It wasn’t the unhatched creature’s fault that it had been forced upon her. Even if it was just a stupid lizard.

The teacher led them through the powerscript for the bonding, lecturing on the process the entire time.

“By inscribing your power into the egg’s shell, the dragon inside will begin to attune itself to your specific magic. When it hatches, it will already know you instinctively and you can complete the second stage of the bond at that time, linking your minds and power together permanently.”

They spent the next hour practicing the powerscript for the bond link, but Alisa hardly paid attention. Compared to the complicated illusion she’d spent a month perfecting, this was a crude and ugly spell. Wide heavy strokes that any moron could draw, even with dragonpower tainting their spirit.

Then the time came, and Alisa inscribed the fateful lines onto her egg, feeling the lock click closed on her future. She’d thought herself resigned, but the moment the fire-bright energy started feeding back into her through the newly-established link, she found she was crying and couldn’t stop.

“See?” Francine’s voice rang out. “Some simply aren’t suited to such powerful positions. We really should have instigated vetting for this whole affair before allowing unsuitable individuals to proceed.”

Alisa scrubbed at her eyes, trying to conjure up anger or indignation, or anything but despair. Sadie snapped something back in her defence, but Alisa hardly heard. Before she could master her emotions, the teacher frowned at them all to be silent and return their attention to the powerscript.

The second half of the bond was similar to the first, but it would be placed directly onto the dragon’s body. The actual marks would be lost with its first shed scales but the spell itself would linger, fed by the mingling of powers, indelible.

Alisa dutifully memorized the powerscript, ignoring the blurring of her vision and the way her stylus output thicker, blobbier lines on the practice slate than usual. She could already feel the heat in her power, the wildness straining at the edges.

She tried a tiny circle at the edge of the slate, watching the overly heavy lines of power blur into each other until the whole thing collapsed in a flash and hiss of smoke.

How could she possibly come back from this?

Years of dedicated practice; becoming the best powerscripter in her home town. Applying for every scholarship grant she could get her hands on, her dear mother scraping together more than she could afford. Everything to put Alisa in the position to do better for herself and pursue her plans for the future, all wasted.

Carefully trained hands that never trembled? Useless. Perfect memory for circle composition? Useless.

Nothing to be done. She’d go off to war and fight the Traitor’s enemies until she was old and useless.

She drifted through the rest of the day’s classes in a haze, the warm presence of the stupid dragon egg pressed against her side as constant a reminder of her loss as the changed feel of the power cycling through her. She could barely remember the cool silver feeling of untainted power any longer, it had never been important to think about or notice. Why hadn’t she spent more time appreciating what she’d had? Why hadn’t she—

“Alisa!” Sadie hissed, prodding her.

She whirled, fists clenched, an angry retort springing ready to her lips. “What is it now?” If Francine thought Alisa would be an easy target, she had another think coming.

But Sadie wasn’t nodding toward an irate Francine. It wasn’t anyone in their class at all.

Alisa blinked, staring at the duo who’d been standing behind her, gradually recalling who they must be. The twins? They were a year older, and while she’d seen them around they’d never spoken. What did they want with her?

“You’ve chosen very well,” said the girl. She was almost as tall as her brother, her thick dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders.

Alisa’s confusion must have been obvious, because the girl elaborated.

“Your dragon egg. Aelanir Draconi are an often overlooked breed for dragon mages, but they are undeniably among the best.” She patted the egg at her own side, which though concealed by its wrapping was familiar in size and shape. “I had to make several promises to get mine. I suspect we must be friends in the future.”

Alisa sighed. In the past she’d have been thrilled to be approached by an upperclassman, and promising friendship at first meeting was the sort of perfect beginning she once would have dreamed about. But making contacts no longer mattered. They were all going to fight and pointlessly die simply to satisfy the Traitor’s dreams of conquest.

“Alisa,” Sadie whispered pleadingly.

“So what do you want?” Alisa made no attempt to conceal her insincerity. “I got a rare dragon, yay.”

The girl frowned. “I know there’s no formal bonding between dragon mages, but I’m putting together something of a study group. Those of us with real potential need to stick together. Not the flashy kind of potential you understand, like those who go for the Grandus as though size is everything.”

Any other day, Alisa probably would have been happy to make mockery of Francine’s decisions. But today, her words came out flat and uninterested. “So you come to me.”

“Well, naturally. We three are the only ones to have Aelaniri, so we really won’t have a choice in the matter. Aelaniri are very social creatures, you know.”

“I know nothing of dragons. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the nuisance creatures who might leave dead pigeons on your windowsill or utterly destroy your life.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” said the boy, speaking up unexpectedly. “You’ll see. Dragon mages can still live fulfilling lives.”

The girl scowled. “Reen, please. Can you be at least a little tactful? Not everyone thinks like you do.”

“Can you be at least a little perceptive?” The boy, Reen, shrugged one shoulder; there was no bite to his words, spoken casually. “She doesn’t want this. Your recruitment pitch isn’t going to get anywhere.”

“But she has the other Aelaniri. We will end up together in time regardless of our opinions.”

“Let it be, Lia.” He turned back to Alisa and Sadie, giving a little half bow. “Oh, by the way, I’m Reen, and this is Lia. I’m sorry we were so rude.”

“Sadie,” Sadie said. “And this is Alisa.”

“Reeeeen…” Lia drew out the name irritably.

“Not everyone knows who you are by default.”

“They should.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Alisa said, turning to go.

“Wait! I haven’t told you about—”

“Leave it,” Reen said quietly. Lia’s voice cut off mid-shout.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you another time!” Lia called. “Nice meeting you!”