Dragon Aster Trilogy

12: BONDED PLEAS



Kas hadn’t stopped pacing since they reached the Chasm. It looked to be driving him just short of mad to be lacking the wings to reach her. It was solid rock under the mountain, making it impossible to emerge from a Rift under it.

Hain was more interested in what was in the sky. “We have to go, they’re going to kill us if we sit like ducks here.”

“She is right there!” Kas yelled through his despair. “You have wings—you can fly over and—”

“And nothing! I can’t fly.”

“Why won’t you help me?”

“Because I can’t. Even if I could find a way to fly across that wind, that is a mountain of trained dragoons. We’re leaving, now,” Hain said as he caught Kas’ arm in hand. “We lost this round.”

“I will not lose her!” Kas cried in despair as he gripped the arm of the Mei that connected him to Sybl and pulled away from Hain’s grip. “I... I could have told her everything.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything. If you told her then, you would have lost her sooner.”

“Why does Aragmoth not hear my most desperate prayers?”

A piece of Hain broke when the kid was reduced to tears. He had no memory of Kas crying before, not even when he was an infant.

As he could feel his own sadness being sung from a Nova within the Caverns, his conscience started to win over his mind. Dammit. He pulled forth from his psi enough of a trance to see the Threads that reached into the mountain. Then with one last thought on it, Hain touched the one leading to his own Bond.