to guide him. He landed atop the tower, determined to find Jessica. He could feel energy all around him, and he could feel the power that existed, the way she called it to this tower.
He was not surprised to find her standing atop the tower.
Even as he approached, he could feel the power coming off of her.
Off of the tower.
That power was immense. Overwhelming.
And pulled on him.
Jessica wore her familial dragonskin, and she watched Jason, anger flickering through her silver eyes. Her black hair streamed behind her, and power seemed to surround her. She was about his height, and she reminded him of Janeya now that he was near.
Could they have be cousins?
If only David had lived, Jason might have had an opportunity to learn more about how they were family, but maybe it didn’t matter.
They were family.
“You’re trying to drain the power from the dragons,” he said.
She turned to him and energy crackled at him, but filled by the power of the mountains all around them, Jason didn’t struggle with it the same way he had before. He created a barrier around himself.
“It was you who gave me the idea. I would never know about this had it not been for you. I suppose I should be thankful. You gave me the means to stopping Dragon Haven once and for all.” She waved her hands all around her. “When you came here. You drew upon the power of this tower. We knew there was something to it, but we weren’t exactly sure what it was. When you started to draw upon it, we realized there was a way of accessing it and we could use that.”
“You already knew you could use it at that point,” Jason said.
“I suppose that wasn’t the only reason that we knew there was something more,” she said. “And now you’ll all fail. You’ve brought everything here that I wanted. That you are here tells me it has worked.”
“I came here by choice, not because you summoned me.”
“What if that’s what I wanted you to think?”
The power continued to build. Jason felt something within it. It was a summons. The message. It was power. It pushed upon him, which meant it was pushing upon all of the dragons—misfits, freed dragons, those of Dragon Haven, and even the Dragon Soul dragons—flying above him.
She grinned at him.
“I knew I was never going to be able get all the dragons drawn here. We have been trying to do so, but even that wasn’t too subtle. I found a way to summon dragons, but it was slow. The bones are the key, you see. That surprised me. We’ve been collecting them, and now they have powered this as much as I need.”
Like the bones had created an egg.
Was that what would happen with this tower?
It was powerful. Too powerful.
If it fed on the dragons, the Dragon Souls, the people of Dragon Haven, Jason knew what would happen to them. The same as what he’d seen from the dragons outside of Lachen.
“Why would you even want to do that? Won’t it harm the Dragon Souls?”
“Do you think that I care about them?” she snapped. “The only thing I care about is the power they grant me. By drawing upon the energy within them, I can use it to draw this.” She waved her hands at the tower. “My family will be strong enough to use it. I’m going to be strong enough to overwhelm it. And now I can finally end this foolish rebellion. I have uncovered the key to calling the power of the dragons. All of the power of the dragons. And it is here. It has always been here. My family has shown me the way.”
“It’s not going to work. The dragons will continue to fight you.”
“No. They won’t.”
With a sudden surge, the power pushing against Jason began to build.
He could feel it pulsating around him, the energy building and building. It was more powerful than he had felt before. Within him, he recognized how the dragon misfits suffered.
They felt the same power. There was nothing they could do against it.
They tried, straining against it, and Jason added whatever he could in order to try to oppose what he detected, but even as he did, there wasn’t anything within him that could override that power. It was far too much. It was far too powerful.
It was connected to the tower. Jason tried to tap into that same power. He had been here before and he’d been able