“What did he say?”
“He told me that the Dragon is not a blood bond. It is a line of worth, of strength and wisdom. It is a responsibility, a bond to an ideal. It is a gift of awareness and skill. It is unwavering dedication to goodness, to the use of strength for right.”
“Then I’ve failed in that duty,” Lucius said, feeling his world fall away like the sand at his feet upon a wave-churned beach.
But Antonia shook her head and reached out to him. “No. You haven’t. To be so chosen is to feel and experience this life more acutely than any other mortal. Not only the joys, and the great victories upon the battlefield, but also the pain and sadness that this life has to offer, the trials or ‘ponos’ as Diodorus and your grandfather used to discuss.”
“Diodorus did speak to me of such things,”
