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provide more than a snack. The others would fear me as they should.
    But I remember when you were nothing more than a hatchling.
    That is because you are Maelen.
    That doesn’t make sense.
    Asgar snorted. It does to me.
    “Go on. You wanted proof that I speak to him.”
    Up close, the boy trembled slightly. The bravado that he’d been showing, likely for the others, faded. He shook his head.
    Fasha stepped forward. “I will.”
    Tan waved the boy away and turned to Fasha. “You need to sit between the spikes on his back. Then you can ride.”
    With that, she bowed to Asgar, who regarded her with a hint of amusement in his massive eyes, and then grabbed the spikes on his side as she climbed on, settling onto his back between two. She gripped them tightly, something that would not be possible if she had no ability with fire.
    This one is bold.
    Perhaps too bold, Tan agreed.
    We will see.
    “How do I make him fly?” Fasha asked.
    “You will not. I will ask for you.”
    Asgar? I think a circle around the city is enough.
    With a small snort and flap of wings, Asgar took to the sky. Fasha gasped, and through his connection to the draasin, he noted how she grasped tightly to his spikes.
    Tan remembered his first flight, but it had been made out of necessity so that he could help Elle. Tan hadn’t even been certain that Asboel would help. All he knew was that he could speak to the draasin before he ever learned that he could bond to him, and what it meant that he did.
    The others in the garden all took steps back as Asgar lifted from the clearing carrying Fasha. As he had been speaking to them, they had been creeping forward, their initial fears wearing off as they became increasingly comfortable with the idea that Tan had summoned the draasin.
    When Asgar had climbed above the tower, he turned his attention back to the children. “The bonds you once had formed will be no more,” he said. “The can be no more.” He made his way around the group, drawing their attention back to him. He wasn’t certain that he would be able to pull their eyes back to him after they had seen Asgar, but slowly they did. Most looked at him differently. Tan didn’t know whether it was a sense of respect or fear. He would rather have the former. The prior Utu Tonah had ruled through fear, and he would not repeat that if he could help it. “You all have the potential to reach the power of the elements without the elementals. That is why you have been brought here. Some of you already have shown the beginnings of what you might be capable of doing.” Like Fasha. Had her connection to saa truly given her that much strength already?
    A few of the children murmured. They wanted to know what they would be asked to do, and what it meant for them that the Utu Tonah had come to them.
    Using spirit, Tan sensed their mood. Most were nervous, more than he had expected, but there remained a level of fear.
    He probed more deeply and realized the source of that fear was him, and what he might ask them to do. Tan shifted the direction of the spirit sensing, reaching Tolman as he stood near the wall of the tower, and realized that fear bubbled within him as well, though a different type of fear.
    Tan couldn’t force these children to go to the university, he realized.
    They would go. He didn’t doubt the fact that they would do what he asked, but they would do so out of fear, not out of a desire to learn and understand. For them to learn, and understand, and to believe , they needed to learn from a different place.
    “Tolman,” Tan said.
    Tolman came forward, hands gripping the cloth of his robe. “My Utu Tonah?”
    “Do you think you can find these children boarding within the tower?”
    Tolman blinked. “The tower?”
    What are you doing, Tan?
    I can’t send them to the university like this. It will delay our plans.
    You do not have to apologize. I see what must be done as well as you.
    Amia might not admit to it, but Tan sensed her