Dragon Bond

The creature is the size of a barn and older than the language she is thinking in, and it has just looked at her in a way that everybody standing nearby has understood the significance of before she has. Dragon bond is a certification device in which a human and a dragon form a permanent link, and it has become one of the load-bearing structures of romantasy. The bond is usually psychic, usually mutual, and usually irreversible, and its function in a romance is to certify a pairing without either party arguing for it. What the device promises is being chosen by something that cannot be deceived. A dragon is not persuaded, flattered, or manipulated into the bond. It reads her, at depth, and elects her anyway, and the reader receives that as a verdict about her worth delivered by an authority with no reason to be kind. The make-or-break element is whether the dragon is a character. That is the test and it is where most books fall short. A dragon with preferences, opinions, and an agenda of its own is a third party in the story, and its relationship with the rider is frequently the most affecting thing in the book. A dragon that functions as transport with a voice is equipment. The reader can tell within two scenes, and the difference determines whether the bond means anything. The failure mode is the mount. It flies, it fights, it makes approving noises at the love interest, and it wants nothing the rider is not already pursuing. That version has borrowed the iconography of the bond and skipped its content. There is a second failure specific to the romance application, which is the bond as endorsement. The dragon approves of the man, therefore the man is correct, therefore the heroine's doubts are resolved by an external authority. That short-circuits the romance, because a woman whose partner has been pre-approved by an infallible creature has nothing left to decide. The strongest versions let the bond complicate rather than certify. The dragon dislikes him and is not obviously wrong. The link means her partner can feel things she would rather keep private. Two bonded pairs attempting a relationship creates a four-way arrangement in which the animals have opinions about the humans, which is both funny and genuinely thorny. There is a further dimension the best books use, which is mortality. Dragons typically outlive riders or die with them, and a bond that will end in one of two specific ways gives the whole book an undertow. A rider who knows what her death will do to something that has been inside her mind for twenty years is carrying a grief in advance. There is also the question of what the bond costs. A link that is pure advantage is a wish. One that takes something, privacy, autonomy, a piece of the self permanently occupied, is a bargain, and bargains are more interesting than gifts. It looks at her. She has the distinct sense of being read rather than seen, and of having passed something she did not know was being administered. That is the device. Not the dragon, but a verdict delivered by something that cannot be charmed.