Simon

I nibbled on my lip in thought. Enola had confirmed most of what Katerina's note had told us... but there was still one detail I wanted to confirm. And I finally had the opening to ask it. "What if you took a rider?"

Enola grew very still for a moment. She clasped shut the pouch on her saddle, then turned to look back at me. I had the same feeling I got when I knew a mage was around – I was suddenly in danger. "What?"

"If you had a rider bond. Would that get around the magedebt?" I saw Enola's claws start to curl into the dirt beneath her, and I tried to think of a way to ask the question that wouldn't anger Enola more. "If it was with a mage? Would you owe magic back to that mage, or could their magic go towards clearing your debt without creating more?"

The pink dragon relaxed a little, though I could tell she was not happy with the topic. "A rider bond is not some cheap decision we make to get out of a problem. It is only something we do after careful deliberation, when we are ready to begin a family. It can only be done once, and then never again. Taking a rider just so I could have magic back would be even more shameful and foolish than having lost all my magic in the first place."

I thought back to the story Enola had told me of her past. Of the feelings her younger self had for Cess, and of how the blue dragon I had seen on occasion still clearly enjoyed seeing her. And... Cess had been the only dragon who had come to see her. In the months I had been here, no other dragons had come by to visit her. Given Enola's attitude towards me any time I tried to help, that probably meant she had driven away every other dragon.

Every other dragon but Cess.

He hadn't let her drive him away, like she must have done with the other dragons. He clearly cared about her a great deal if he kept coming to check on her, and kept trying to find ways to help with her magedebt. And she clearly had feelings for him, even if they might be buried deep down inside her.

If it hadn't been for the magedebt draining her magic, I was certain that the two of them would have been a family by now. "Even if you are ready to begin a family, and getting your magic back let you do it?"

The feeling of immediate danger sent goosebumps up my arm as it returned. I tried very hard not to look at Enola, and stared out at the lake instead.

It was several long moments before Enola spoke again. Her voice was cold with anger, and I knew I was prying too deeply. This was not a subject the pink dragon wanted to think about. "A rider bond erases any favors owed. Rider and dragon are considered one creature as far as any magedebt is concerned. Any favor done to the rider is counted as a favor to the dragon." She was quiet for a long second before continuing. "Any resource the rider has can be used to repay a magedebt. Even magic. Magic would flow across the bond as the rider generated it, and be drained by the debt, until the debt was fully repaid."

I nodded slowly. That tracked with what we had pieced together from Katerina's letter – as a rider, the dragon had access to her magic. Everything in the letter had been true. The dragons were legit. They hadn't enslaved Katerina in order to create the rock cliff at the coast, but had just gained her power when they had taken her as a rider. Which... could still be seen as trapping her, sure, but it meant that taking her magic hadn't necessarily been the original intention. It meant the dragons weren't playing some convoluted game to try and trap more of us. It was all on the up-and-up. I could tell the other Wellsprings what I had learned, and they could decide for themselves if they wanted to take the dragons' offer of protection or not.

There was nothing else I needed from Enola.

"Enola..." I hesitated, watching the still water of the lake. "The humans who helped you. What if they weren't mages?"

Some of the feeling of danger faded as I changed the subject away from Enola's relationship, though I still felt like I was discussing a sensitive topic. "What else could they have been? Nothing about a normal human would have built up such a large debt. They must have been mages of some kind."

"But they didn't use any spells to help you. Couldn't a mage have burned the ropes from far away, like you had been trying to do, without having to risk the naga catching him?" I looked back at Enola to see what she thought of that.

She just shrugged. "It would not be the first time I have known humans to do something foolish. There is one I know who is determined to annoy me, despite how sharp my teeth are."

I smiled a little at her reference to me, thankful that her mood was starting to improve enough to make her usual sideways comments about me. "Maybe they didn't use spells because they couldn't. They had a lot of magic, but weren't able to use any of it."

Enola frowned for a moment, then shook her head. "You mean a Wellspring? Those are myths. I read about them, but if they ever existed in the first place, they all died out long ago."

Either she didn't know... or she was protecting our secret.

Enola had just shared an important secret with me. A dragon was a powerful creature, but without magic they were vulnerable. Mages would jump at the chance to enslave one, almost as quickly as they would jump at the chance to enslave a Wellspring. It had been a huge act of trust for Enola to admit she couldn't cast any spells. And it must have been very hard for her to speak about her past.

I lowered the shields that hid my magic and reached over to rest my hand on Enola's arm.

A look of confusion came over the dragon's expression as she stared down at my hand. I waited, remembering how she had told me her mage senses were dulled from being without magic for so long... then her eyes widened in sudden surprise and understanding. "You are a Wellspring." She frowned and looked down at the bloody dagger lying in the dirt. "That was why you recognized the magic-draining spell on the dagger."

I nodded slowly. "Yes. That symbol is one I've learned to avoid."

"So your kind really do exist... then... that explains why my magedebt is so large. One of them must have been a Wellspring, like you. But... Why tell me?" Enola's large eye shifted upwards to stare back at me. "The stories I heard of Wellsprings were all of how human mages enslaved them for power, and then used that power to cast spells of incredible power. And incredible cruelty. You must have kept the existence of your kind a secret, for even dragons to believe you had died out. Why reveal it now?"

"Do you know about the cliff by the ocean? The one that came out of nowhere a few months ago?" I took my hand away from Enola's scales and focused on putting my shields back in place.

"Oh." Enola frowned again and looked back towards the water. "Yes, Cess told me about it. He left the Sea Guard because of that – with it in place, there's not as much need for a large number of dragons patrolling the coast for naga. They mostly just need scouts to keep an eye out for problems in the wall and summon help if there is such a problem, rather than groups of dragons prepared to push back a wave of naga. So now he flies around looking for bandits to brawl with." A hint of disdain entered Enola's tone, making it clear how she felt about Cess doing that. "I didn't ask him how the cliff came about, but a Wellspring would explain it. If we had the magic lying around to do something like that, we would have done it long before now."

I nodded. "Our secret is already out. A Wellspring – Katerina – wrote us a letter telling us she had been kidnapped after rescuing a dragon, and that the dragon had been determined to pay her back for her help and wouldn't let her go. The dragon eventually tricked her into becoming a rider, and when he did, he gained access to her magic." I paused, looking back out over the lake and remembering back to her letters. "She told us the dragons were offering us safety. But... we couldn't be sure we could trust what she told us. The dragons could have cast spells on her, and been using her to trap more of us."

"Which is why you started bothering me. To find out if that other human had told you the truth." Enola's voice grew quieter. "I was right. You were just trying to get something out of me after all."

"...yeah." I nodded again. She wasn't wrong – I had only sought her out to try and get answers.

"You still have not answered my question, though." The pink dragon paused to look back at me. "You did not need to tell me that you were a Wellspring. You could have gotten your answers and left, and I would have never known why you were here, or why you had left. You are potentially in danger now, if it turns out dragons are trying to trap your kind. So why did you share that with me?"

I shrugged. "Everything you've told me matches what Katerina said. I think we can trust you." I glanced back at the bandage covering Enola's side. "And... you trusted me with something that could put you in danger. It didn't seem right to keep it hidden after that. Especially since it might help you. Now that you know why your magedebt is so large, you might be able to do something more about it."

Enola grew quiet again. Several minutes passed in silence, while I watched a duck paddle aimlessly around out in the water.

"You are a threat to me." Enola's voice was low, but it didn't seem dangerous. She was just stating a fact.

"What do you mean?"

"I already owe a magedebt to a Wellspring. Maybe two. It may be decades before I regain my magic, if I ever do at all. If something else happens and you help, I may end up owing one to you, too."

I was fairly certain Enola's debt was only to one Wellspring – as rare as we were, and as dangerous as our secret was, it was highly unlikely that two Wellsprings would have been together for any length of time – but I just nodded. "That's a possibility. I've learned everything I needed to know. I can go back to the others and tell them Katerina was telling the truth, and then go to the dragon town. You'll have to find someone else to help you with delivering the crystals to the king, but it doesn't have to be me. You won't have to run that risk. If that's what you want?"

Enola was quiet for another moment... then she rose to her feet. She stretched her pink wings out above me and gave them a short flap, ruffling my clothes with the downdraft. "Ask me tomorrow."

She turned back to the hill of her lair, but paused for a moment to look back at me. "I am going to send a message to Cess to let him know what happened. He would be very upset to learn I had been attacked and did not think to tell him. He will probably be here sometime tomorrow. We can talk about it more then." She hesitated... then shook her head and turned away.

The pink dragon took a few steps away from me, flapped her wings again, and jumped up into the air. Her wings beat heavily at the air as she climbed slowly upwards – a sign of the effort it took her without any magic, now that I knew to look for it – and I watched as she fled back to the safety of the solitude of her underground tunnels.