save dozens—no, hundreds—of dragons, rescuing them from the Dragon Souls. What can you do?”
“You know why I can’t leave,” he said softly.
“I know why you won’t leave,” she said.
“Henry agrees.”
“Henry.” She shook her head, looking back down at the table.
Jason realized a stack of papers rested in front of her, and couldn’t help but wonder if there was something on them. Perhaps it was something that detailed what had happened to her parents. Or perhaps it was something to do with the ruling of Dragon Haven.
When it came to understanding just what they needed to know about how to lead in Dragon Haven, he didn’t have much of an idea about what was involved. The only thing he knew was that Cherise and Olar had done so effectively for many years.
“Henry feels we’re doing everything that we need to do,” Jason said.
“Henry is doing everything he needs to do. The Dragon Guard are doing everything that they need to do. And what I need is my friend to do everything he can do,” she said.
Jason sighed. “I can send the dragons looking.”
Of course, he had already done that. He’d asked the ice and the iron dragons to search, hunting for signs of Cherise and Olar. There had been nothing. The forest dragon wouldn’t look. She rarely left her forest, and when she did, she wasn’t one to go searching for someone like this. That wasn’t a task he could request of her.
If only his connection to the storm dragon were stronger. The storm dragon might be able to investigate in a way that the other dragons wouldn’t manage quite as effectively. Only, he didn’t know if the storm dragon would even be willing to do so.
What he didn’t want to tell her was his real hesitation. He risked the dragons by sending them out. If anyone from Lorach came upon the misfit dragons, there was a real risk that they would be taken, trained, and forced to serve.
“Sarah…”
He took a step toward her and pulled a chair out from the table, taking a seat next to her. He rested a hand on her arm and she looked up, meeting his eyes. She didn’t bother to hide the tears streaming down her face.
“I just want to find them,” she whispered.
“I understand. I’m willing to do whatever I can to help,” he said.
Even as he said it, he knew that there were limits to what he could do to help, limits to the nature of what he might be able to offer, limits to just how far he could protect her.
She looked at him for a long moment before taking a deep breath and nodding.
“My parents always told me that I would have to lead, but they also believed one day they would be the ones to overthrow the Arnson family.” She shook her head. “We’ve been exiled for so long that it’s hard to imagine a time might eventually come when Lachen could be overthrown.”
“Well, you are royalty.”
She looked up and seemed to miss him teasing her. “Not directly,” Sarah said. “And until we managed to overthrow Lachen, I’m nothing more than an exile. The same as you.”
She was more than him, but Jason wasn’t about to push her on the issue. He had come to Dragon Haven as an outsider, a misfit, and in many ways, he remained that. He might’ve been accepted, at least for the most part, but he didn’t really fit in here.
There were times when Jason wasn’t entirely sure if he fit in anywhere.
His connection to the dragons was different enough that he did not know.
“What do you have there?” he asked, nodding to the pages.
“Movement,” she said.
“What kind of movement?”
“For the most part, it is movement of the people of Lorach. They continue to move along the edge of the forest, though it seems as if your illusions have held.”
Jason smiled tightly. It took considerable effort to place those illusions, so he appreciated that they managed to hold. He worried what would happen if they failed. He doubted he’d be able to replace them very easily.
“I’ve freed as many dragons as I can over the last few days,” he said. “We continue to weaken them. Each dragon we free from them diminishes them.” And saves the dragon, he didn’t need to add. There was a time when Sarah would have been as much an advocate for the dragons as him. With her parents missing, that had changed, like so much else had changed.
She nodded again.