Chapter 20 The Shape Of It
We sit in the cold restricted archive for a long time after that and neither of us tries to fill the silence with anything, because there isn't anything adequate to fill it with.
My mother and his father.
Bonded. Twenty years ago. At this school. In this archive, probably, reading files not entirely unlike the ones we're sitting with right now.
I stare at the case file and my brain keeps running the logic and the logic keeps arriving at the same place.
"Your father is dragon-natured," I say eventually.
"I didn't know that," Rhydan says quietly. "I knew about my own dragon nature. I didn't know where it came from specifically."
"It came from him," I say. "Which means he wasn't just dragon-natured, he bonded with a tamer and the bond reached stage three." I look at the file. "Which would mean my mother was carrying part of that bond when she left."
"And when the bond broke," Rhydan says.
"Did it break?" I ask. "Or did it just go unmanaged?"
He looks at me.
"Bidirectional," I say quietly. "If my mother left and the bond was never formally ended, then both of them have been carrying an unresolved stage-three bond for twenty years."
The implications of that land one at a time, each one heavier than the last.
"Your father's dragon nature," I say. "Is it stable?"
Rhydan is very quiet for a moment. "No," he says finally. "It hasn't been for as long as I can remember. He manages it. Barely." He pauses. "I thought it was just his nature. I didn't know about a bond."
"And my mother," I say. "Leaving Northveil mid-documentation. Withdrawing from the academy. She didn't just leave school."
"She ran," Rhydan says.
"From the bond," I add. "Or from what the bond connected her to." I think about that. "Or from someone who wanted to interfere with the bond."
He looks at me sharply. "The Binding Circle."
The Vance family. Twelve years ago, Rhydan's grandfather made an arrangement with them. But my mother's file is twenty years old. Which means the arrangement predates Rhydan's dragon nature presenting. Which means Elder Valecrest was already connected to the Vance family before Rhydan.
"Your grandfather knew about your father's bond with my mother," I say slowly.
Rhydan's jaw is very tight. "He must have."
"And he still made an arrangement with the Binding Circle," I say. "After. For you."
"Because he didn't want it to happen twice," Rhydan says, and the flatness of his voice is the specific flatness of someone keeping very careful control of something very large.
I close my mother's file gently.
Put my hand flat on the cover.
My palm burns steady and warm against it.
"We need to tell Corvyn what we found," I say.
"Yes," he agrees.
"And we need to find out where my mother is," I say. "Because if she's been carrying an unresolved stage-three bond for twenty years and nobody has been monitoring it..." I stop.
"She might not be okay," Rhydan says quietly.
"She might not be okay," I confirm.
I look at him across the reading table, at the tight jaw and the complicated eyes and the bruise still sitting along his cheekbone from the game last night, and I think about how two weeks ago he looked at me in a coffee shop and called me a placeholder, and I think about sitting here now in a cold restricted archive finding out that our parents were bonded before we were born and that their unfinished story might be the reason we're sitting here at all.
"This is a lot," I say.
"Yes," he agrees.
"I want to say something funny about it," I tell him. "I genuinely do. But I can't find the angle yet."
He looks at me and something in his expression does that thing, the almost-arrival, the almost-smile, and this time it makes it slightly further than usual before he pulls it back.
"When you find it," he says, "let me know."
"You'll be the first," I promise.
We gather the files carefully and lock the restricted panel behind us and carry the key back to Corvyn's office and knock and find her still at her desk like she's been there the whole time, which she probably has.
She looks at our faces.
"You found the Calladine file," she says.
"We found the Calladine file," I confirm. "And the VAL case reference."
She's quiet for a moment.
"How much did you know?" Rhydan asks her directly. "About our parents."
Corvyn folds her hands.
"Everything," she says simply.
The fire crackles in the grate.
"Then you're going to tell us all of it," I say. "Today. Right now."
She looks at me for a long moment with those sharp composed eyes and I look back steadily and don't move.
"Yes," she says finally. "I suppose I am."