“How did you survive this?” Alisa asked, three days later. “It’s been less than a week and I think I’m losing my mind.”

Azendandor lay dozing on her arm, having just eaten his first meal and finally settled down to what would be, according to Zo Rienna with her seemingly endless knowledge of dragons, a nap of between ten and twenty hours. She would set him down and try to catch some sleep herself once she was sure he was thoroughly out. Twice already she’d tried to move him, only for him to hiss irritably, digging his claws possessively into her sleeve.

“I honestly don’t remember much of it,” Sadie admitted. She patted Mirva, whose head and tail were still visible now as she’d grown too large to fully hide beneath Sadie’s hair any longer. “We just made the best of it, I guess.”

Alisa yawned, staring down at Azendandor. She wanted to move him, but didn’t dare try again just yet. Another few minutes. “There is no best to this. He never stops moving. He just …” she waved her non-dragoned hand, indicating his constant exploration. “And if he thinks I’m not paying attention to him, he stares at me, I feel him judging.”

“Have you taken him outside yet?” Sadie asked. “I’ve not seen you since he hatched.”

“This is the first time I’ve brought him outside my room, and I kept him hooded so he wouldn’t run off.” She stifled another yawn, poorly. “He was starting to get nippy, so …” she gestured around. Located right outside the academy gates, the building had been overhauled to house countless cages of everything from insects and mice, to rabbits and chickens, ready to be requisitioned for hungry growing young dragons. They didn’t have anything particularly large yet, as most of the students’ dragons had yet to reach a size capable of consuming anything even rabbit sized, let alone larger, but according to rumor the Traitor had requisitioned entire herds of sheep and cows to be reserved for the eventual needs of his dragon mage army.

The logistics of it all were beyond Alisa’s comprehension. Already the academy was starting to feel cramped and busy. She had no idea what they were going to do once their hundreds of young dragons began to reach full size.

“Should probably get you back to your room,” Sadie said, startling Alisa out of a half-dream she hadn’t realized she was having.

“Oh, right.” She hadn’t managed to think that far ahead, her only priority was finding someplace to set Azendandor down so she could sleep.

Sadie took Alisa’s arm and led her toward the residence building, and Alisa nodded her thanks. Or maybe she was falling asleep again. She wasn’t entirely sure. Everything was too bright and hazy. She hardly noticed when Sadie gently lifted Azendandor from her sleeve and set him aside in his own nest.

Taking care of Azendandor drove thoughts of anything else from Alisa’s mind so completely that sometimes she hardly remembered existing as anything but babysitter to an overly-energetic intensely curious baby dragon.

She quickly lost track of time, losing days and nights entirely as she chased him around, talked to him, slept fitfully while he hissed and growled and scampered all over her room, then woke to do it all over again.

Every time she saw Zo Rienna, the dragon tutor tried to convince her to complete the bond, and every time Alisa put it off. She hadn’t had time to practice the circle recently, and needed to be sure she could fit it on Azendandor’s slim body without messing it up. She knew she’d only get one chance at this, and she wanted to do it right.

Despite her former misgivings, she had rapidly come to love her crazy explorer of a dragon. Azendandor was bright, inquisitive, and never stopped moving for more than a few seconds. He napped in tiny spaces between scampering about, crawling up furniture, and watching Alisa intently. She talked to him as she’d been instructed, getting him accustomed to her voice.

Right now, for instance, he was exploring the mysterious space between her top blanket and the sheet - a whole new realm, as opposed to the area beneath the sheet, which he’d already searched out in full and was no longer interesting. She watched his tiny lump of a body move in little meandering coils, seemingly without pattern, wandering from one side of the bed to the other, crossing, circling.

She put one hand on the bed in front of him, blocking his path, and giggled when he bumped into her and halted, confused by the obstruction. He moved around for a minute, approaching it from every angle, then she lifted her hand just enough for him to squeeze underneath.

Azendandor continued exploring under the blanket for almost an hour, and Alisa kept adding new obstructions to his search and causing him no end of confusion. Finally done, he poked his head back out into the light with a little shiver.

He looked up at her, made a half hissing, half warbling ‘kkk’ sound, then wriggled his way out far enough to extend his wings, and flapped them to their full length. He had four wings, one pair facing forward and the other backward, triple-jointed so they could fold up into a surprisingly tight bundle at his side, but capable of extending nearly as wide as he was long.

“Did you have fun exploring the dark cave?” Alisa asked. “Just don’t start hoarding gold in there. I do need room to sleep.”

Azendandor watched her until she finished speaking; he always seemed attentive when she spoke, so long as she didn't do it for too long. After a half minute or so he'd lose interest and run off to find something else to do. Once she’d finished this time, he turned and scampered at full speed off the edge of the bed, wings flared as he tried to launch himself into the air.

Flapping furiously, he collided with the far wall and bounced off nose-first, landing with a stunned look. She leaned over to be sure he was okay. He shook himself and folded his wings as though to say ‘I meant to do that,’ head raised.

After strutting about, which amounted to an amusing waddle with his middle section arched like an earthworm, he retreated into his nest and settled down to nap.

Every three or four days, he’d eat, gorging himself on the meat and herbs assigned to him, then sleep the whole day or night. Alisa had begun trying to teach him to be quiet during the night, but he didn’t seem to understand. She tried to remember to talk to him more in the day, and ignore him in the dark, but she spent so much time in a state of exhaustion that recalling what she was supposed to do often escaped her.

She'd never realized just how much work went into watching a dragon. By the time she'd convinced him to stop clawing her furniture, it was too late to save it. Deep gouges in wood where he'd scrambled up it, snags and rips in the fabric of her blankets; her own arms and clothing were crossed with tiny claw runs. She supposed the academy would have to replace it if it mattered to them; she certainly wasn’t able to afford new furniture.

“You should begin bringing him outdoors and attending classes again,” Zo Rienna said on Azendandor’s scheduled checkup around the middle of the second week. “He needs to get used to other people and dragons too, not just you. You really should finalize the bond first, but if you insist on delaying we have to move on regardless.”

“I need more time,” Alisa said. “He’s too small, and I’m out of practice.”

“It’s a simple spell. There are no near-matches with harmful effects. If you wait too long, it won’t integrate properly.”

Alisa asked for a practice slate, which was provided. She held it up to Azendandor’s side, traced his width, then tried to inscribe the bond in the space between the lines. She knew at once it wasn’t working, felt the lines blurring too close to each other. “I can’t, not yet.”

“You could put it on a wing,” suggested Zo Rienna, undeterred.

Alisa shook her head. She firmly locked away the fleeting thought that her hesitation was nothing but an excuse to delay further corruption of her power.

“The closer it is placed to the head, the better the connection,” she recited, her rationalizations feeling less like excuses the more she repeated them. She wasn’t going to put it somewhere he couldn’t shed, wasn't going to have her dragon run around branded like common cattle. “I’m going to wait until he’s wide enough to put it on his back or neck.”

“It is your decision.” The head dragon tutor reluctantly handed over a chain-link collar and lead. “If you’re going to have him out without the bond in place, you’ll need this. Once he learns to fly, you’ll never catch him.”

Azendandor snorted as though affronted. Alisa still wasn’t sure how much he understood of the conversation around him. Sometimes she almost thought he followed what she said to him, other times it was clear he had no idea what she was saying but liked the sound of her voice.

He squirmed restlessly, resisting the attempts to latch the collar and accompanying harness around his neck and forelimbs, but for all his hissing and snapping he was still thinner than Alisa’s forearm and his greatest strength was insufficient to escape. He continued in ill humour to scratch at the restraints, growling softly, and staring at Alisa as though she could be convinced to release him.

“It’s only for when we’re outside,” she reassured him. “Once we’re back in my room, I’ll take it off.”

He didn’t seem appeased, but once they reached the outdoors he immediately stopped squirming and stood attentively, staring. This was the first time he’d been outside without his hood (which he also hated, but by now knew it meant food, so tolerated.) She’d never seen him so still for so long, only the tip of his tail twitching, nose raised, tongue flicking.

He jumped off her arm, ran in a tiny circle as he examined the grass, then took off toward the bushes. The lead brought him up short and he hissed and snapped at it furiously. He spent several seconds trying to bite the sturdy chain, then stopped and abruptly ran off another direction.

A tiny pink flower caught his attention and he nudged it with his nose. It didn’t react. He slunk around and pounced on it from a different angle, grabbed it in his mouth, and jerked it from its stem with a quick snap of his neck.

“No, don’t eat that!” Alisa told him, coming over to take it from him, but he backed away from her and hissed through his nostrils. “I don’t know if it’s safe for you to eat clover,” she told him sternly. “Drop it.”

He did not, jerking his head in a quick bob as he stopped nibbling and swallowed it.

“You are a troublemaker, aren’t you?” Alisa picked him up with a sigh. “I'd really appreciate it if you don't do such things again."

Azendandor, shockingly, disregarded her advice. As soon as she let him down, he promptly decapitated a second flower, swallowing it with an air of satisfaction, then ran around at random poking at various blades of grass.

After a few minutes, he stopped and stared for so long Alisa crouched down to see what had him so interested. He'd found a square-backed beetle, crawling slowly down a blade of grass. With hesitant flicks of his tongue, he crept up closer to the moving thing, nudging it with his nose.

The beetle flapped its wings, buzzing, but didn't fly away. Azendandor snorted and sneezed, backing off with a posture of deepest affront, and huffed out of his nose at the beetle before turning as though it meant nothing to him and starting toward the bushes again. This time, Alisa walked with him - jogged to keep up, actually, though he still outpaced her and ended up running in impatient circles while she tried to follow - and allowed him to explore the big leafy branches.

Naturally, he promptly got his lead tangled up, and ended up dangling from it hissing and wriggling after an ill-advised attempt to launch himself into the air from the thick bramble.

"You need to be more careful, you could hurt yourself." Alisa unwound the lead, talking to him all the while. "First you go eating strange plants, now you're trying to choke yourself--"

She broke off as he lunged for the twig tangling the lead. He grabbed it in his mouth, snapped it with another quick jerk of his neck, then flopped to the ground where he stood for a long moment, tasting the stick to decide if it would be a good meal.

"No, that's not food." Alisa tried to take it from his mouth, but he skittered backwards, bunching up his body again, all four wings extended fully to make him look as large and dangerous as possible.

"You know you're entirely ridiculous, don't you?" Alisa asked wearily, but she couldn't deny a degree of fondness for the little scamp.

Azendandor apparently decided that being ridiculous didn't quite extend to eating branches, so he let it fall from his mouth as he lost interest, immediately starting for the next bush in line.

"Nope, that's enough bushes for today." Alisa pulled back on the lead, starting toward the lecture hall. "Time for you to meet some of my classmates. We're going to be working together for the next several years."

She'd started out with her usual cheery voice, but her tone dropped as the weight of her words settled in.

For a few days, she'd been so caught up in taking care of Azendandor that she'd all but forgotten the deeper implications of what he represented. Now, it all came rushing back, a dark weight that had been temporarily set aside while she wore herself ragged with an infant hatchling, now returning at full strength.

Taking care of Azendandor wasn't a vacation, wasn't a side job. It was a precursor to war.

She wouldn't mind so much, being bonded to a dragon, if it didn't taint her power and put her on a path of violence and conquest. Even the power taint she could deal with, now she’d had months to grow accustomed to the idea. There may be less demand for innovation with dragon mages, but that only meant it was an untapped market. She could have still made something of herself, given time, given freedom to live as she pleased.

But that wasn't the purpose. They were to be an army, hundreds of dragon mages, more than any single country had ever fielded at one time throughout all of history.

She picked up Azendandor and held him to her chest, wishing she could protect him from their dark future. If there were any escape for them, she couldn't see it.

He didn't take kindly to being held, oblivious to the turn of her thoughts, and squirmed to escape, accidentally wrapping the lead around her neck as he scrambled about. She unwrapped it quickly, scolded him for his carelessness, and they resumed the walk toward the building. She ignored the little tugs as he tried to run off in this direction or that, allowing him to wander as far as the lead reached, but not changing her direction.

Her own destiny was bound the same way, led inexorably by another’s will to a destination she didn’t know.

She very nearly let go. Azendandor wasn’t fully bound to her yet. He could still fly away, escape, go into the wild. Then at least one of them could be free.

At the last moment, common sense overcame her. He was far too small and vulnerable to be set loose. Wild dragons, bickering over space, would tear him apart.

There was no escape. Not for either of them.

Not yet.