Page 139 of I Dream of Dragons

“Short?” I frown at him. “What have you done?”

He turns his face to hide a wince, like a scolded child caught red-handed. “I promised the council… and the Gods.” He nods at the telchin who’s watching us impassively. “That by the three-hundredth year of the Reversal I’d find a way back.”

I’m aghast. “What does your stupid promise have to do with me?”

The king’s face purples. “I have been patient. You’ve been here for a hundred years! What have you figured out? How can you open the gates? Why can’t you do it yet?”

“You know why. I haven’t found a way to expand my power without killing this body or driving Jai insane. Finding the right balance?—”

“Jai can’t be killed so easily. Haven’t you figured out yet who he is and what happened?”

I pause. Study his face. “All your threats… were a game? What do you know and why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure. Her appearance…” The king shoots her a narrowed glance that sends steel into my spine. “Her presence has revealed a lot.”

Kneeling on the bed, I level a glare at him. “Such as?”

“When the old dragon falls through the sky, the?—”

“We both know what that means. I am the old dragon. Astar. The firstborn Eosphor.”

“They called you that, sure. At some point.”

“I control dragons.”

“But you aren’t one.”

“What does that have to do with Jai?”

“Think who the old dragon was. Think what happened to you in the otherworld.”

“What does that have to do with…?” I close my mouth. Shake my head. “Really?What does Marsyas have to do with it?”

She produces a soft noise of distress. I can only spare her a glance, and finding her pale but hale, I return my focus to what the king is hinting at.

“Jai is not Marsyas,” I say.

I would remember. I would feel it. I would know.

Jaiwould know.

When the king doesn’t reply, I laugh. It’s a jagged sound. I am not amused. This is frankly ridiculous. Impossible.

I would remember something like that!

“You spend your time howling inside his head,” the king finally says, after I have fallen quiet, the disquiet in my mind not going away. “Crossing didn’t treat either of you kindly. And he spends his time fighting you. That’s not a symbiosis. It’s a war. If you need to take over permanently, do it. If his body dies in the process, do it. It’s time.”

“No!” she hisses, reaching for me. Her small hand grabs my arm with surprising force—or maybe not so surprising, knowing now what she is. Has Jai realized? “Don’t do it.”

“You know I need his body, this soul,” I say quietly, frowning at the king. “That I need him. I can’t function in a mind gone sick or a body gone to waste.”

“You were a spirit once,” he says.

“I haven’t been without a body for a very long time. I don’t think I can go back to that free-roaming nature. And I didn’t cross the gates as a spirit. I would have gone insane.”

“Who is to say you haven’t?”

I wave a dismissive hand at him. Despite the occasional doubt, I know I am sane. He is just prodding me. “Those metalwings, those metal bodies of my people… I believe we made them. For us. To cross through worlds.”