“A change,” the dragon said again.
Jason nodded. “I understand.”
Darkness slipped around the trees, making his way toward him, and he watched Jason. There was something off-putting about how the dragon moved, something that unsettled Jason, but he wasn’t going to tell the night dragon that. Unfortunately for him, he had the feeling that the night dragon already knew.
“You must go.”
Jason hesitated. He looked around him before turning his attention back to the night dragon. “I will go, but you need to stay. At least until I figure out just what Lorach is up to. What they are after. You need to stay.”
The night dragon slipped around the trees again before facing Jason. “You must go.”
Jason started out of the forest, and for a moment, it was almost as if the night dragon slipped after him, chasing him, but then the shadows began to retreat, and he stepped free of the darkness, finally making his way out of the forest, to stand at the edge of Dragon Haven once again.
He could see the dragon yard in the distance, and there were half a dozen dragons of different sizes in there. Several of the dragon sensitive people of Dragon Haven were there, working with those dragons. William was among them, his hair wild and distinct, though he stayed close as to the small red dragon that he had always seemed connected to.
Kayla was there, as well. He watched her for a moment and could see William grinning at her, laughing as he spoke to Kayla, every so often sweeping his attention back to the other dragon and then turning his attention back to Kayla.
“They’ve become friendly.”
Jason spun to see his mother standing next to him.
How had she approached so quietly?
Of course, she was a Dragon Soul, or had been, so maybe he shouldn’t put it past her to be able to sneak up on him in such a way.
“Good. He can help her,” Jason said.
“Does he have enough knowledge to help?”
Jason shrugged. “Probably not.” He turned to his mother and frowned at her. She looked healthier than she had when they had first come to Dragon Haven. When he had brought her from the village, she’d been wasting away. Her illness had consumed her and nearly took her from Kayla and Jason altogether. Her golden hair had grown more vibrant, and there was a brightness to her pale eyes that had not been there before.
How had he never noticed before?
Now he realized what she was doing, he could see through the faint traces of illusion, and he recognized the silver beneath.
“You don’t have to hide who you are here in Dragon Haven,” he said.
“I’m not hiding,” she said. She looked down, though, and he knew that he had gotten to the truth of it.
“You’re still ashamed.”
“It’s not ashamed. It’s fear.” She shook her head before finally looking up at him. “We should’ve told you.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “And you still haven’t told me why you went there.”
Kayla had alluded to it, though it hadn’t been enough for him to know the full reason.
“It was what we had to do,” she said.
“You had to?”
“We had to be far enough away from Lorach. Far enough that we wouldn’t be found. Far enough that you wouldn’t be found.” She looked across the dragon yard and locked her gaze on to Kayla. “So that she wouldn’t be found.”
“You were more concerned about her than about me.”
His mother looked over. “I wasn’t sure what potential you might have. You always took after your father, but never enough that I believed you would have the necessary potential to be a Dragon Soul. You had dragon sight, which was both a blessing and a curse, especially there.”
Jason snorted. “It was never a blessing.”
She frowned at him, cocking one eye. “Wasn’t it? When you were hunting, did your dragon sight not help you find movement? Did it not allow you to find your target more easily?”
“I suppose it did,” he said.
“And did it not give you an advantage of being able to see things that others could not?”
Jason rarely focused on his dragon sight these days. Now that he could focus through the dragons themselves, he could borrow from their eyesight, which gave him a very different advantage, and one he used as often as he thought necessary for him to be able to make out details he wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.
With the ice dragon, Jason could use his eyesight to see the crystalline structure in the world, movement through the ice dragon’s enhanced eyes, and understand things he wouldn’t know otherwise. With the iron dragon, Jason made out aspects of the world in shades of orange and red, heat signatures he had come to understand as reflections of different levels of intensities of heat. That wasn’t altogether so different than what Jason’s dragon sight could do.
“None of that matters,” he said.
“I suppose not.”
“You could work with the dragons,” Jason said. He nodded to Kayla. “You could even work with her. She’s been looking for her place in Dragon Haven.” He left unsaid that Kayla had been looking for her place ever since their mother had recovered. He didn’t need to remind her, as he suspected his mother knew. And he wondered whether or not she even cared.
“I abandoned that connection long ago. There is no reason for it to return.”
“If you have a connection to the dragons, then you never really abandoned it.”
“I did.” She looked down. “Besides, Kayla has others who can teach her in ways I cannot. My way of reaching the dragons is not the way those in this place would appreciate.”
He snorted. “You could talk to Henry.”
“I suppose that I could.”
“He’s made the adjustment from Dragon Soul to a functional member of Dragon Haven.”
“I will see what I can do,” she said.
“Besides, when it comes to dealing with Lorach, we might need everyone capable of reaching for the dragon connection to work together.”
There was a moment of concern that flickered in her eyes, but she nodded. “Perhaps.”
“Or you can stay here. Others will protect you.”
She looked up then. “You will protect us. Your father would’ve been proud of you, Jason.”
It wasn’t the first time that she’d said that, and even hearing it now didn’t make it any better or easier for him. All it did was make him more irritated that he had never learned about his connection in time to learn from his father.
Having that connection would’ve made things easier for him when he was younger. He wouldn’t have had to struggle.
But then, would he have ever been able to form the connection he had?
Without feeling how he did, without suffering the way he had, Jason may not have come to know other dragons. He may never have wanted to work with the ice dragon, or come to understand what it would take for him to bond to the iron dragon, or…
He pushed those thoughts away.
“Have you ever seen Lorach using dragon bones for anything?”
His mother wrinkled her brow. “The bones? Other than as decoration, the bones don’t have much use. They can put off some warmth, that much is true, but they are difficult to carve. Only the most skilled artisans can use them, so perhaps it’s for artistic purposes.”