to draw on that connection.
Gradually, it came to him.
Earth.
The earth dragon had chosen to connect to him in a way that he hadn’t before.
It was different than what he experienced with other dragons. In this case, he felt the way that power was there, the surge of the energy, and the burst of power that exploded between them. Could he find something similar with the mist dragons and the smoke dragons?
They all watched, the energy swirling around him, the power filling him. Jason held onto that, focusing on what he could make out and on the power that was there. It came to him slowly, but it built all around him.
“Why?”
“Because it’s needed,” the earth dragon rumbled.
The dragon queen turned to him, stepping toward him. Power began to swirl away from her. “What did you do?”
Jason shook his head. “It’s nothing that I did. The dragon chose to let me connect to him.”
“He wouldn’t have chosen. You did this. You forced this.”
Jason shook his head and held that connection through him, feeling it rumbling deep beneath his feet. What would it mean if the earth dragon granted him power?
How could he use that against Lorach?
He’d already seen the way that Lorren had used that power, but Jason had no interest in doing something similar. He refused to attack in the same way as Lorren.
“It seems your dragon wanted me to connect to his power, so…”
What would happen if I were to mix it with the power of the other dragons?
He had seen what happened when he added the energy of the other dragons together, and had noticed the connections and that power, the way that they had worked together, but he didn’t know if there was anything that he could do differently with that power if he were to mingle it.
“Why?” she snapped, turning to the earth dragon. “Why would you betray me like that?”
“I was there,” the dragon said, a heavy rumbling coming from him.
“You were where?” she demanded.
“I was there when he helped the dragons.”
“I know you were there. You were there when he killed Lorren.”
“Not Father?” Jason asked.
“He had her call him Father,” the earth dragon said.
That was strange. Why would Lorren have done that if he wasn’t her father?
“Lorren killed other dragons. He left me no choice,” Jason said.
She turned to him. Anger clouded her face, but it was not only anger on her face. It was in the power she held onto, drawing from the other dragons. Only, even as she drew on that power, he had a sense of something different. It seemed to him that the earth dragon pushed against her connection, which he resisted.
The earth dragon didn’t want her to use his power against Jason.
Interesting.
From what he’d seen, especially with the forest dragon, the dragons had control over who used their power. Jason couldn’t imagine the other dragons willingly allowing Lorren to use their power, to draw upon it and steal that energy, harming other dragons, but what he had seen suggested that they had.
Unless they hadn’t known.
“You didn’t know the dragons could be freed,” Jason said to the earth dragon.
The dragon rumbled again.
“Have you been controlled, yourself?”
The dragon rumbled, and within it, Jason heard a hint of a message, something that suggested the energy of the dragon, though he wasn’t able to tell anything from it. The only thing he could determine from the way the dragon communicated with him was that there was some energy.
“I didn’t know,” the dragon said.
“Had you known, would you have allowed him to use you?”
The dragon rumbled again. “No,” he said.
Jason nodded. It was different than the Dragon Soul dragons. With those dragons, they didn’t have much choice as to how they were used. They were forced to serve, forced to work with the other dragons, and they didn’t have any choice in the matter.
In the case of these dragons, they loaned their energy intentionally. They gave it freely. And they could withdraw it just as freely.
By holding onto that energy, Jason could feel the power coming off the dragon, and he was aware of how it could wax and wane, how the energy between himself and the dragon connected, but it was something the dragon controlled; there was a way that the dragon could strip that power back from him once again. It was the same thing he had experienced with the iron dragon
“The dragons can be saved?” the dragon queen asked. “We don’t have to run from Lorach?”
Jason looked over at her. For