Most kids get paired to dragons that are just eggs and they grow somewhat ahead of their scaled counterparts. Others are paired to dragons up to ten times their age that watch their foibles with good humor and constant guidance. Me, I got Peony.

The Dragonmaster himself came to my dorm after dinner when most guys were studying or drinking in the pub.

“You’re getting a dragon.”

I looked up. The Dragonmaster and I have always gotten along in a distant way. He doesn’t give me crap, and doesn’t take any.

“All due respect, sir, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

The wiry old man shook his head. “Not mine. The fat man’s.”

I stood. “What dragon would take me?”

The Dragonmaster walked with me down the hall. We were about the same height, but while the master was five and a half feet of corded muscle and bone and lethal grace, I was just bone, and gawkiness.

“It’s not his choice either,” he said. “But the fat man said it was time both of you continued, best thing for the realm, shit like that.”

“And you, sir? What do you believe?”

“You’ll either be good for each other, or eat each other.” He grinned at me with his scarred mouth. “Your choice.”

Peony is about my age, in dragon years. He was thin, more like a greyhound or a snake than a lumbering lizard, and had a strange dark blue, almost black coloring that made him look like a shadow. He glared at me, the dark pupils small against their red background. My head came to just under his shoulder. Like I said, he was smaller than most.

The Dragonmaster strode up to him in the yard and slapped Peony across the shoulder with his heavy gauntleted hand. “This is the lad I told you about.”

The dragon and I looked at each other with no sense of kingship. Neither of us said anything.

“He’ll grow a bit,” the Dragonmaster said, to neither of us in particular. “But I think you’ll like him.”

I told you, I don’t want another human. And he’s scrawny as a chicken besides. Peony had a light, clear tone in my head, like a clarinet. And he obviously didn’t like me.

I looked at the Dragonmaster. “I don’t know that this is going to work out, sir.”

The scarred old man got a look in his eye that I knew from the past boded no good for anyone that got in his way. No doubt he had used that same look on hordes of orcs and vats of vampires. “You’ll work out well together. Peony, this is Kev. Kev, Peony. Peony’s not much to look at—“

I beg your pardon! I am very fine!

“—but he’s the fasted relay flyer we have, and he has experience with partners, so listen to him. And Kev will be able to hear you at the very least. I think the both of you will get along.”

He’ll hear me? That’s a laugh. The dragon laughed, or coughed through its teeth, I couldn’t tell which. Humans never hear a word I say. Partner bonds never take well, you know that old man.

The Dragonmaster smiled. “Ah, but I’m not talking about partner bonds. The boy here’s probably been hearing every word we’ve said. Right, Kev?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly said any words.”

I don’t understand.

It was starting to creep me out when the old man grinned. “Kev is a pan-species telepath. Right, boy? You can hear old Peony there, can’t you?”

Peony glared at me. You can hear me?

“Yeah. Loud and clear. You’re inside my shields.”

The huge black head swung around and tested the area. I’m singing about yellow daffodils. Yellow daffodils are my friends. Now, what am I singing about?

“Your friends the yellow daffodils.”

Wow. That’s cool. Peony looked at the Dragonmaster. That’s cool. He can hear me.  I still don’t want a partner.

“Too bad. We’re doing the partner ceremony right now. And neither of you are going to give me grief about this, or you, Peony will get your high-flies cut, and you, Kev, will have practice with Lord Orthan right before lunch. Are you agreed, my children? Good!” The Dragonmaster took out his long knife and stepped up to the dragon.

The ceremony was short, and then I had a bandage on my palm and a dragon in my head.

Dragon minds are neat and orderly, compared to many magical creatures, but they don’t think the same way human minds do. They flow and think about multiple things at the same time. When they are stuck on the ground, all the brainpower that usually would be spent analysing wind currents, keeping the wings moving well, and holding on to magic, gets rerouted into thinking about the strangest things.

I found the part of my mind leaking into Peony and walled it off, defined it, marked where Kev ended and Peony began, and then went to my first class.

The Dragon School doesn’t just teach prospective dragon riders, children from wealthy homes and military backgrounds. It also takes the freaks of the magical world, the telepaths, telekinetics and random kids the working dragon riders drag in because they want to get them off the street. We tend to die young or try to destroy the world.

A guy named Varny offered me a spot because I saved his life. I’m still not sure if I should be grateful or not.

My first class on Tuesdays is geography, a subject which I find shallow and unimaginative, mainly because I spent half my life as an itinerant scavenger. I’ve been to that country, and that city, and I know where to hole up when it gets cold, and where to avoid, and I really could care less where the official border markers are. It’s really only when they get to the far northern kingdoms, or places that only dragons can get to, that I perk up my interest.

Today was Vathia City. Good hot dogs, nasty cops. I leaned back and tried to pay attention.

You’ve seriously been there?

I’m good at listening, not so much at talking back. So I muttered under my breath and hoped the teacher wouldn’t notice. “Yeah.”

But that’s half a day’s flight from here.

“So?”

You’re interesting, did you know that? I mean, I’ve had partners before, they were better built, but you’re the only one that could actually hear me. I mean, you can hear my right now, can’t you?

“Yeah.”

The last guy, I could catch his thoughts sometimes, through the partner-bond, but it was never this clear. And he was a complete moron, by the way, but whatever. Your mind has such fascinating stuff in it.

I felt the dragon’s mind shift against the border I’d formed, like a bank of fairy mist hovering at the edge. It began to ooze over with its questing fingers. Something inside myself clenched as the foreign thoughts, foreign minds, began creeping inside me where no one else should go. “Please get out of my head.”

You have a really good memory. Like, almost dragon quality. I can almost SEE and TASTE the city from your bidimensional, limited color range viewpoint. This is amazing.

“Pull back out of my head.”

The questing threads ignored me and slid deeper. In my imagination, my mind has layers, classified as colors, and as depth. A questing thread of dragon mist dipped into something dark that always floats close to the surface but has roots deep inside where nothing else should go.

“Get out NOW!”

I was standing in the middle of class, hands shaking, and everyone was staring at me. The teacher had her hand poised over the large map of Vathia City, ready with the chalk to make a marking of some sort.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Varney-Ward?” she said.

I bowed jerkily. “Excuse me, Maestra.” Left the desk and strode to the dragon pens.

Peony was waiting at the edge of the fence that separates the humans from the dragons.

I vaulted over the fence and hit him as hard as I could on the nose with my fist.

Every bone in my hand felt like it had snapped, but Peony jerked his sensitive nose out of reach and snarled at me.

What the HELL was that for?

I was panting. “You stay the fuck out of my head, do you understand me? I don’t care how much you play peeping tom with my brain but the second you start to dig for shit again I’m going to come down here and see how you like it, do you understand me?”

I don’t know what you’re getting all in a snit about.

“That’s my brain, you two bit pile of scales. Memories, hopes, dreams, and horror buried in the brain should not be dug up by people. Everybody’s got bad spots, like rot, and if you push it squishes out and gets all over your shoes and that’s not fun for anyone, you got it?”

The dragon sneered. You don’t scare me.

I stepped up until we were nose to nose. “You dig in my head, I’ll dig in yours, and you don’t want that.”

The thin lips pulled up off his long, jagged teeth. You don’t scare me.

The fog of the dragon’s mind surged forward and into the dark depths of what I was and what I never wanted to be again.

And I tipped my head back and the darkness moved up to meet him.

I remembered staring at bad man on a dark night and thinking about taking what he offered. I remember watching the blood drip down the walls and listening as the world went wrong. I remember not being able to cry because there was too much ash in my face.

Peony saw falling from the sky, a jagged spear he knew very well much too close to his heart. A face leaving him in darkness. His wings broken and too painfilled to fly, but trying anyway.

And then we were apart from one another and he was shivering like a terrified dog and I was bleeding where my fingernails had pushed into my palms.

“Stay outside my head,” I said. “And I’ll stay out of yours.”

And then I went back to my room to shake.