“He helped formulate the conspiracy that threw the country into chaos,” Alisa said softly, once Tay was gone. She set the research journal he’d left for her on the table, too distracted by the revelations to investigate it at the moment.

’I trust him.’

“Yeah. Against my better judgment, I think I do too.”

Zen coiled his neck around her waist, resting his chin against her chest to stare up at her. ’Are you going to be happy with this?’

Alisa stared down into his big, lavender eyes, and considered. “Everything I thought I knew about The Traitor was wrong,” she said at last. “He wasn’t greedy or violent, and he didn’t even take over. He instigated a violent purge of the Councils, assassinated the reigning Prince, and those are definitely bad things to do, but… unless he’s deceived Tay completely, or Tay is lying to us, it sounds like he might be a good leader. He’s willing to give Tay full discretion with our group, and…” Alisa closed her eyes. “Am I trying too hard to justify this decision?”

’This is the second time your world shifts from beneath you. You will find it hard to trust anything to be solid for a time.’

“You’re probably right.”

Fighting, not fighting; leaving, staying…

Nothing was solid, nothing was firm. Nothing but her bond with Zen, who would never abandon her.

She wrapped her arms around his giant neck, rubbing at the head still resting against her chest, and he thrummed with happy purring. “You’re going to have to stop growing one of these days, or I won’t be able to reach around you any longer,” Alisa teased him.

’I would stop right now if I could,’ Zen grumbled. Alisa grinned, well aware of his opinions on the whole ‘growing thicker’ thing. But there was nothing he could do to stop it short of starving himself, and he didn’t have the self control for that.

“Guess I’ll just have to get in as many hugs as necessary to tide me over.”

Zen snorted, but leaned into her a bit more, almost knocking her over. She laughed and rubbed harder at the scales between his horns, where she knew he had a hard time reaching on his own.

“So we’re staying.” She wasn’t sure it felt right, or even if it felt real. She’d not been assuming anything, waiting for how things would fall, and now that they had… “I don’t know what to think of Tay,” she confessed. “He’s too good at convincing me to do things. I don’t know if I like him.”

’I do. He’s very like a dragon, if you think about it.’

“Because he forces his plans on everyone with no consideration for their own lives?”

Zen huffed hot air into her face, which made her cough and turn away.

“Zen…!”

’You were being unkind.’

“I didn’t mean it that way and you know it.”

’Perhaps,’ Zen conceded. ’But Tay is strong and knows what he wants and acts to attain it. He isn’t afraid of laws like most of you are.’

“Of course, the dragon thinks that ignoring the law is a virtue.”

’Laws are for people who need to be herded through their lives in order to prevent them from trampling on things they’re not meant for. We do not need them.’

“Just don’t say that too loudly, or you’ll get us all in trouble.”

’We are protected now. Tay has seen to it. I can say whatever I please and no one will stop me.’

“No one would stop you before. But that doesn’t make it right.”

'How is it right to stop me from doing what I please? How is it right that a group of strangers get to dictate my life before I'm even hatched?'

"Because they've taken generations to figure out how best to manage large groups of people - dragons and everything included - and keep the peace. You wouldn't want to be the cause of breaking the peace, would you?"

'There would be no breaking of peace if they didn't try to control me. Why is it my responsibility to make them happy? My only responsibility is to myself and to you.'

"I don't want you to break the law."

'I don't want to break it. I am not a revolutionary. I disregard it as irrelevant to my life.'

"Not entirely. You've stopped trying to eat people's pets."

Zen sniffed. 'That is a matter of common courtesy, which I entirely understand. I would not like it if a bigger dragon tried to eat you, so respecting the connections between creatures makes sense.'

"So what laws do you plan to break, then?"

'I do not plan to break them. I do not think of them at all. You are the one who brought them up.'

"No, that was you. You said you liked Tay because he disregarded laws."

Zen huffed, mildly grumpy at being called out. 'If you spend your whole life worrying about what other people say, you'll never get anything done.'

"I don't spend much time worrying about law at all, but I do know them and try not to break them."

'Do you? Do you know them all?'

"Well, not all. I don't know the criteria required to set up a shop at the market. I don't know how taxes work for a native Renandi living here. I only know the parts of it most relevant to me."

'It is none of it relevant to me.'

"How would you know that if you haven't read them?"

Zen rippled his body in a shrug. 'I will read them if there is a version intended for dragons to read. But I wager there is not one.'

Alisa frowned in consideration. Before now, there were only a handful of dragon mages in any country at any time. “You could be right. But I’m sure they’ll make one if we ask for it.”

’I do not need it, nor do you.’

“And none of that has anything to do with whether or not I made the right decision.”

’We.’

“You really like him, don’t you?”

The emotions channeling through Zen were a tumble of admiration and something like hero-worship. Alisa couldn't discern any specific source for the feelings, they flowed deep and strong, reinforced until they felt almost foundational.

Alisa felt her heart speed up at the sheer weight of Zen's feelings. Too much to sort through, and so strong. Zen jumped into the air and started performing high-speed midair acrobatics, twisting and coiling his long body into patterns as he worked off the sudden energy.

"That's... that's answer enough." She felt breathless and overawed.

Though she and Zen had been bonded for months now, she only rarely felt his emotions so overwhelmingly. It took almost a full minute to disentangle herself from Zen's excited thoughts, all the while resisting the inclination to start dancing across the lawn.

Once she did, reality harshly reasserted itself.

"Oh, no! I forgot about class!" Alisa grabbed her books and sprinted toward the vast amphitheater.

It wasn't until she settled into her seat, Zen finally worn out so he coiled and sprawled across the ground around and beside her, that she realized she'd grabbed the wrong stacks. She'd brought the research journal and several unrelated textbooks, and nothing to take notes in.

She'd have to pay close attention and hope she could remember enough.

'I will help you remember.'

Zen's promise made her smile as she turned her attention to the lesson.

Lane Ryvas stood on the central platform opposite another man Alisa wasn't familiar with. It wasn't until they raised their hands in unison, casting twin halves of a single spell, that she realized with a jolt of comprehension, this must be the other half of Lane Ryvas's bonded pair.

Battlemages always operated in pairs, the bond allowing them power and flexibility beyond the usual. Dragon bonds worked similarly, but using a magical beast instead of another person tended to have as many side-effects as benefits. Battle pairs committed to each other completely, sharing thoughts and power and purpose. Though sometimes they split up for various reasons, the bond was insoluble, irrevocable.

"You can draw on your partner's power at will," Lane Ryvas said, drawing complex circles in the air. "Usually this is saved for emergencies--"

His partner suddenly increased his tempo, drawing faster and faster, while Lane Ryvas continued at his standard pace. Alisa could see Lane Ryvas’s spell begin to thin and falter as his partner's thickened and grew heavier.

The point of this exercise escaped her as she stared, no longer paying attention to the teacher's words.

Power could be artificially thinned if a bonded partner drew on it at the same time.

Dragons, as magical beasts, used their magic innately for everything from flying to their elemental breath and healing. This was the key she'd been missing, the reason her power always seemed to vary day to day. Zen was using it too. When he slept, she'd have heavier and stronger spells because he didn't interfere by subconscious magic usage.

No wonder her formulas always gave seemingly inconsistent random results - she was missing a variable!

"We have some experiments to do," she whispered to Zen.

'Is it truly important?'

"Yes! I'd almost given up, but with this... we might be able to get somewhere."

If she could artificially thin her over-heavy power by having Zen do something taxing at the same time, it still wouldn't be the same as having untainted power, but it would be something.

“Does anyone have any questions?” Lane Ryvas’s voice boomed out, and Alisa tried to remember what he’d been saying.

’He warned that bonding with another is difficult once you’ve bonded a dragon,’ Zen informed her. ’But not impossible. The more people connected, the stronger and more erratic the spells become. Two is stable, three begins to degrade the connections, and more than five is very dangerous.’

“Thank you,” Alisa whispered, then raised her hand.

“Alisa, yes.”

“Does the dragon magic become diluted if you formed an additional link with a non-dragon mage?”

Lane Ryvas smiled sadly. “No. The increase in power may not be as strong, but there is no way to alter the quantity or quality of dragon magic short of binding with another different magical beast. And that is very unwise.”

“Why?” demanded Francine. “If a dragon is good, wouldn’t a dragon and a phoenix be better?”

“Better, by some definitions, yes. More firepower, more raw magic, yes. But you are already feeling the impact of having a single creature bound to you. Imagine that influence but doubled. The bond we use with beasts is different than that between mages, because we must insulate ourselves from the raw alienness of a vastly different sort of intelligence. But in order to communicate at all, there is only so much protection that can be woven in. The more different creatures you bind, the higher chance you’ll lose yourself.”

“I wouldn’t.” Francine flipped her hair away from her face.

“Then go ahead and try,” Sadie growled, too low to carry far. “I’d like to see prancy Francy with a chicken’s brain.”

Alisa giggled despite herself, even though a phoenix and a chicken were almost nothing alike. “She can’t afford it, surely.” Phoenix eggs were a thousand times more expensive than dragon eggs, and attempting to bond an already-reborn phoenix never went well.

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”