They Targeted My Dragon's Bond, So I Gave Them My Life Instead

The scent hit first—acrid ozone and the coppery tang of blood, so thick it coated the back of my throat. It was the smell of battle, but this was different. This wasn't the scent of victory, or even of hard-won survival. It was the smell of decay.

I stood at the edge of the flight field, my boots sinking slightly into the rain-softened turf. Medics in their stark white tunics moved with a grim, practiced efficiency among the survivors of the northern patrol. Riders were being carried away on stretchers, their flight leathers shredded and stained dark, but my eyes were drawn past them, to the place where the greatest tragedy lay.

A dragon.

It was a Green Clubtail, or had been. Now, its once-vibrant scales were the color of slate, a sickening, dull grey that seemed to absorb the weak afternoon light. It lay on its side, vast and terribly still, its wings bent at unnatural angles. There was no rise and fall of its massive chest, no plume of smoke from its nostrils. There was just… nothing. An absence.

A few yards away, its rider sat on the muddy ground, heedless of the medics trying to speak to him. He was a third-year I vaguely recognized, his face pale and slack. He just rocked back and forth, a slow, rhythmic motion of profound and utter devastation. His eyes were wide and vacant, staring at the empty space where his other half used to be. The bond, the sacred, golden thread that wove rider and dragon into a single entity, had been violently cut. What was left was a hollow shell of a man.

Stay back, Silver One, Tairn’s voice rumbled in my mind, a low thrum of warning that vibrated through my bones.

It feels cold, Andarna added, her thought a faint, shimmering whisper, tinged with fear. So cold.

I knew they were right, but I couldn't stop myself. I had to see. I had to understand. I took a step forward, then another, my gaze fixed on the dead dragon’s hide. The air grew heavier with each footfall, charged with a static I could feel on my skin. As I drew within ten feet of the corpse, it hit me.

A wave of profound nausea rolled through my gut, sudden and debilitating. It wasn't just a physical sickness. It was a psychic void, a cold, parasitic emptiness that radiated from the dead dragon like a plague. It reached for me, for the warmth of the life that still pulsed within me, and for the bright, burning connections to my own dragons. I felt a horrifying, pulling sensation at the golden threads that bound me to Tairn and Andarna, a chilling attempt to unspool the very essence of my soul. The warmth I always felt from them flickered, threatening to go out.

A gasp tore from my throat as my vision swam. The world tilted, the grey sky and the blood-soaked field blurring into one. My knees buckled.

I didn't hit the ground. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me back against a hard, familiar chest. The scent of leather and jasmine filled my senses, a stark and welcome contrast to the stench of death. Xaden’s grip was steady, an anchor in the horrifying emptiness that had just tried to pull me under.

"Get her out of here," a voice commanded—General Sorrengail. My mother. Her tone was clipped, devoid of warmth, but it was Xaden who moved.

He pulled me away, his arm a solid band around my waist, half-leading, half-carrying me toward the fortress. "Breathe, Violet," he murmured, his voice low and for my ears only. "Just breathe." I leaned into him, my body trembling with a cold that had nothing to do with the damp air. The feeling of that void lingered, a phantom touch on the edges of my bond with Tairn and Andarna.

The debrief was held in one of the smaller strategy rooms, the ones with no windows. The air was stale, smelling of old parchment and nervous sweat. General Melgren was there, along with my mother and a handful of other senior officers. We stood near the back, Xaden’s presence a solid wall behind me. The surviving rider, Kael, sat at the heavy oak table. His hands were wrapped, but he wasn't injured. He was just… broken.

"Tell us again," General Sorrengail said, her voice leaving no room for refusal.

Kael lifted his head. His eyes were the hollowed-out pits I’d seen on the field. "They weren't interested in us," he said, his voice flat, dead. "There were six of them. They rose from the ground, their eyes… glowing. We moved to engage, but they flew right past our vanguard. They ignored the riders completely."

He paused, swallowing hard. "They went for the dragons."

A tense silence filled the room. I felt Xaden’s hand find the small of my back, a small point of pressure.

"They began a chant," Kael continued, his gaze unfocused, seeing a memory none of us could. "It wasn't in any language I know. The words felt… sharp. The air grew cold, and this… this energy started to gather around them. A black mist." He shuddered, a full-body tremor. "One of them pointed at Seraphina. My Sefi." His voice cracked, the first hint of emotion breaking through the shock. "The mist… it wrapped around her. She screamed. Not a roar of defiance, but pain. And I felt it."

He looked down at his hands, clenching them on the table. "I felt it inside me. A cold hook, digging into the bond. It was pulling, trying to tear the connection apart from the inside. Tearing her away from me." He choked on a sob. "I tried to hold on. Gods, I tried. But it was like trying to hold onto smoke. It just… unraveled. And then… she was gone."

The silence that followed was absolute. The horror of his words settled over us, a physical weight. This wasn't just killing a dragon; this was murdering a soul.

I watched Xaden’s face, his expression carved from stone. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle jumped along the bone. At his feet, the shadows in the corner of the room seemed to deepen, twisting and coiling like restless serpents. They weren't just obeying the flicker of the torchlight; they were responding to him, to the cold, murderous rage building inside him. I didn't need to see his face to know it. I could feel it, a wave of protective anxiety and sheer fury that poured from him into me through our bond. It was a cold dread that mirrored the one blooming in my own chest. This was not a new tactic. It was a fundamental shift in the war, an attack aimed at the very heart of our world.

Sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the grey, lifeless scales of Kael’s dragon and felt the phantom pull at my own bonds. The silence of my room was too loud, filled with the echo of a dragon’s psychic death scream.

The archives were a tomb, but a comforting one. The air was dry, thick with the scent of aged paper and decaying leather bindings. Here, at least, the silence was honest. I pulled down tome after heavy tome, my fingers stained with dust, scanning brittle pages for anything—a whisper, a myth, a footnote—about magic that could sever a draconic bond. I found texts on strengthening bonds, on the initial connection at the Threshing, on the telepathic nuances between ancient dragons and their riders. Nothing about how to unmake one.

The hours bled into one another, marked only by the slow burn of the torches in their sconces. My stomach was a hollow ache, and my eyes burned from staring at faded ink in the flickering light. I was running my finger down a passage describing draconic mourning rituals when a shadow shifted at the edge of my vision.

It wasn’t one of the library’s natural shadows; it was deeper, cooler. It moved with intent. I didn’t have to look up to know it was him.

Xaden said nothing. He walked to my table, the sound of his boots soft on the stone floor. He placed a small wooden tray beside the precarious stack of books I’d made. On it sat a hunk of dark bread, a wedge of sharp-smelling cheese, and a mug of water. The sight of it was so simple, so mundane, that it almost broke me. He knew I wouldn't have eaten. He knew I’d be here, trying to fight the world with ink and paper.

He pulled a chair from a nearby table, the legs scraping softly against the stone, and sat down beside me. He didn’t look at the books. He didn’t look at me. He just sat, his large frame a solid presence in the cavernous, lonely room. He was close enough that his knee brushed against mine.

The contact was a small thing, just the rough fabric of his trousers against the thin material of my own. But it sent a jolt through me, a current of warmth that pushed back the encroaching cold. It was an anchor. My frantic thoughts slowed, the desperate search for answers quieting for a single, blessed moment. He didn’t offer platitudes or false hope. He didn’t demand I rest. He was simply there, sharing the crushing weight of it all. His presence was a silent acknowledgment of the horror, a shared vigil in the face of a threat we didn’t know how to fight. The fear was still there, a living thing in the space between us, but with his knee pressed against mine, I wasn't bearing it alone.