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fire.
    Tan stared, unable to look away until it was nothing more than ash.
    Amia came from behind him and touched his arm. He shook her off as he turned away and staggered from the courtyard, ignoring the stares he knew followed him.

4
    The Bond and the Hunt
    A great flapping of wings whipped the air around him. Tan shouldn’t have been surprised that Asboel would search for him after what happened but still felt relief that he had. The shadow of the draasin loomed large, heat steaming from its massive sides. Long spikes protruded from his neck, one broken off and not restored when Tan had healed it following the battle with the king. Sharp talons gripped the earth as it landed, and Tan felt the weight of the draasin gaze, though he no longer knew how much of that came from its presence within his mind.
    Tan looked over at Asboel. I’m sorry.
    The draasin snorted. A gust of flames came from his nostrils. You apologize for our bond now, Maelen? You have never abused it.
    I presumed to use your power.
    You thought to heal Twisted Fire. I am not certain such a thing can be done.
    Tan couldn’t shake the image of the lisincend burning itself to death, or the joy it had felt as it happened. There has to be a reason. No shaper would embrace that willingly.
    There are always reasons, Maelen. You simply must ask the right question.
    Tan sat cross-legged on the ground, a rocky outcropping nearly a league from the city. He hadn’t mastered his connection to the wind like his mother, but he’d learned enough to basically toss himself into the air, careening in a deadly fall toward the ground. At least he could escape the accusation he’d seen in the eyes of the shapers.
    Sitting here, with the sun descending over the copse of trees, some unnamed stream bubbling behind him, he could almost feel like he was back home in Galen rather than lost in a city that would never—could never—be his home.
    Only, Nor was gone. The rest of Galen was changed. Everything he knew had been destroyed. The only home he had remaining was with Amia, and she was different since learning that the First Mother betrayed the Aeta.
    Asboel settled to the ground, lowering his massive head down so he could meet Tan’s eyes. Do you feel them?
    Tan frowned at the suddenness of the change. Feel what?
    Asboel grunted. Feel the power you have restored.
    Tan shook his head. I have restored nothing.
    No? Then why does Enya fly so easily? Why does Sashari soar through the skies?
    Tan had known Enya’s name. Standing in the pool of spirit, he’d learned her name as he freed her from the twisted shaping the archivists had used on her. But he hadn’t known the name of the other draasin, Asboel’s mate.
    You shared her name, he said.
    Names were important to the draasin. They gave a certain level of power over them. Not like sharing the bond that Tan and Asboel shared, but enough that he recognized the hesitance to use their names. Even the first time Asboel had shared his name, he had done so cautiously.
    If you are to share the bond fully, Maelen, then you are to know our rightful names.
    Why do the draasin have names but the other elementals do not?
    Asboel snorted. Are you so certain they do not?
    He hadn’t really considered. The nymid had seemed to be much the same, but when he’d first met them, one had been more connected to him than the others. And with ara, weren’t there faces hidden with the wind? Tan never really saw golud, only felt the powerful earth elemental.
    No. But something is different about the draasin.
    We are more powerful.
    Asboel didn’t say it to boast. He said it matter of fact, as if there would be no arguing. From what Tan had seen, the draasin might be more powerful than other elementals. More powerful than ara? More powerful than golud?
    In these lands and in this time, we are.
    Tan thought the comment strange. Why is that?
    Asboel cocked his head and blinked, yellowish gold eyes seeming to glow. All are born from fire.
    Even