Only once Unquenchable and Quake had left did Mother speak more than a handful of words for the first time since negotiations began.

  “I did not expect them to accept,” she told me. “Your demands were harsh to the point of being insulting. Coming from you, I was certain they would react with far more anger.”

  “With you standing behind me?” I asked. “They’re young and hungry, but neither strike me as suicidal. If they were, they would have tried to fight you when they first came here, instead of just trying to harass and evade. And they were eager, too much so. They’re almost desperate for a piece of this island.”

  She tilted her head in consideration, and before she could reply I continued. “Thank you, by the way,” I said, hoping that my genuine gratitude came through. “I know that you’re not sure about me. Whether you see me as yours, I mean. I had no right to expect you to support me the way you did when I was giving away what rightfully belongs to your daughter.”

  “I would not have allowed this agreement to happen if they had not sworn solemn oaths to defend you and your territory,” she replied. “You are correct that I am not sure about you. And I am not at all pleased about my daughter’s spirit being trapped inside a human. But if she could be expelled from this body you shared, then she can surely be returned in some way. That is your intention, yes?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, and I truly meant that. “We do not always agree, but I miss her. And I worry about her. She can’t move, as it is. She can speak, but she’s much less talkative than she’s been the past several months. I fear that being trapped the way she is is affecting her mental health.”

  “Mental health?” Mother asked, her face showing equal parts concern and curiosity.

  “Yeah. Like… I’m worried that she’s depressed, or something like that.”

  It turned out that either the terms I was familiar with didn’t translate well, or Embers had never in her long life even heard of the concept. Though when pressed, she did know of dragons who’d grown reclusive and listless for long periods of time, or who simply vanished. When I put it in those very reductive terms, then she understood, and shared my concern.

  “I do not like this,” she stated. “I wish my daughter to be vital and satisfied. She must be returned to her body, so she may live fully again. Have you any thoughts on how to accomplish this?”

  “Nothing solid,” I admitted. “But I’m pretty sure that I need my hoard. Gods, I need it anyway. It’s been… two weeks, I think. I feel it calling, all the time.” I lost myself in that sense of terrible absence that I hadn’t let myself feel for a few days, before coming back to myself and asking, “How can you stand it? It must be… three months at least that you’ve been away from your own hoard. How are you still here?”

  Her expression softened. It wasn’t sympathy, as such; perhaps it simply did her good to see something so draconic in me, no matter what it was. “It becomes easier with time, little one,” she said. “Long absences will sometimes be necessary. You will grow used to them. But I do not deny that the call of my treasures is a constant reminder of what awaits me when I finally do return, nor that I will need to go there before long, for a short visit at least. Even I cannot be away from my hoard forever.”

  For a few moments I saw in her the same longing that I felt. But only for a few moments before she asked, “Is your wing healing?”

  “It is. Far more quickly than it would have naturally, thanks to Kira. If I could keep feeding her Rifts I think it might go even faster, but without my wing…” I huffed. “It will be some time.”

  “Kira is the other very small one, who is not Makanna?” Mother asked. “She has a mate, I believe. Your spymaster.”

  “That’s… yes. That’s right,” I said, and I couldn’t help but huff with surprise and amusement. “I’m sorry, but I honestly didn’t think you were interested enough in most of them to remember things like that. I’m glad to hear that you do!”

  “Do you think so little of me?” she asked, but it was clear from reflected amusement in her eyes that she meant it in jest. “I spent some time with them, did I not? Herald’s mate is Maglan. There is also another mated pair, who defer to Herald. I believe the male is Mar… something or other. And Avjilan is the one with the pleasant voice. I do not know the names of the two new females, but they have the scent of your power all over them.”

  I was honestly impressed. It wasn’t more than most people could have gathered after spending an hour or two with the group, but with them being humans and she being who she was, that she paid attention to any of them except Herald was far more than I would ever have expected.

  Mother had fallen into a thoughtful silence. She broke it by asking, “You believe that further magical healing would speed your recovery?”

  “If Kira had access to Rifts, yes. And if I have plenty of meat.”

  “And that would get you to your hoard faster, and allow you to attempt to set things right with my daughter.”

  “It would let me try. At least it would let me see if I have any options at all. If nothing else, it’s our hoard. It belongs to us together. Bringing her there could only do her good.”

  “Hrrrmm… very well. Bring her out. I shall take her.”

  I just about swallowed my own tongue. “Take her?” I asked, trying very hard to sound calm. I probably failed.

  “Yes. My daughter needs help. You need healing. Your healer needs Rifts. I shall take her to one. Hurry, now. Bring her out.”

  “She’s… sensitive,” I objected, looking pointedly at her massive hands, and the scythe-like claws that extended from them. “I don’t know that—”

  “The sun shall soon set,” Mother said, and her displeasure bore down on me. “I swear that no harm shall come to her. Now. Bring her.”

  That was the beginning of four uninterrupted days of Kira being run ragged. For the next four days, she repeated a single pattern. Mother would bring her to a Rift—seeing her in Mother’s massive talons was terrifying, but by Kira’s account she was as gentle as she’d promised. Kira would absorb the Rift, then return and heal me. Then she’d rest as little as I’d let her get away with, and do it all over again. Sometimes she’d remember to eat. She kept this up for four days, with her only extended periods of rest being between sunset and sunrise.

  I felt terrible. And Kira, despite her chronic exhaustion, looked more satisfied than she had in weeks.

  I, meanwhile, was on a strict regime of eat, sleep, repeat. I had to, because with the amount of healing that Kira was pumping into me I would have gone mad if I tried to do anything else. I barely even mind-hopped, only checking on Jekrie and Barro once or twice each in all that time. Food was constantly on my mind, and I was provided with as much as I could eat. While Kira rested, if I didn’t have a half-eaten animal lying around, Mother would go and bring me something; a deer, a boar, a giant bird of some kind. By the end of those four days I must have eaten, without exaggerating, five or six hundred pounds of meat.

  It seemed ridiculous that I’d need so much to heal a little bit of skin. I could only assume that I was burning it all for energy, which then made me wonder how I wasn’t cooking myself alive.

  I dismissed it as magical bullshit and left it there. I was too tired.

  Perhaps it was good that I was either eating or sleeping for so much of those days. When I was awake it was too hard not to think about why we were doing this. About my hoard, which called to me louder and louder with every passing day, and which awaited only a few hours flight away; so close, and yet without my wings it might as well have been on the other side of the world. I’d been able to ignore its call well enough until then, but ever since bringing it up to Mother it was constantly on my mind.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Gods and Mercies, it would be good to see it again.

  I spent most of those four days in the chamber just below the surface, only clambering out to eat, drink, and take care of other needs. From there I could see the sky through the ceiling and feel the sun on my scales for a few hours every day, and be close to the humans as they spend time on the surface. They did so to the delight of Sandstorm, who’d become a near-permanent resident of the palace ruins. Her early dismissiveness of humans was long gone; Herald had been her gateway drug, and by afternoon of the first day she was demanding stories, anecdotes, or just interesting facts about humans and their society from anyone who grabbed her attention. It was equal parts endearing and worrying to hear her voice rolling down through the hole in the roof as she demanded that Avjilan describe in detail all the places he’d visited. Endearing, worrying, and annoying; I just wanted to sleep, and she didn’t make it easy.

  By the second day Mak had taken it upon herself to help me rest. She led my cousin off somewhere so that the humans could all trade off on running dragon story time, and I could sleep in peace.

  Despite Sandstorm’s enthusiasm for everything human, those four days were peaceful. At least for everyone except Kira. Our biggest concern was that Behold Her might show up faster than Indomitable or Mother could intercept or warn us, but she never did. From what my elders told me, she never so much as showed herself on the horizon.

  The reason for that became clear on the fourth day. Late in the afternoon of that day, Behold Her attacked Karakan.

  I was dozing, my belly full of pork but not quite asleep, when Conscience’s presence grew to full prominence in my mind. She was frantic, telling me, She’s there! The monster’s there! She’s attacking!

  I was fully awake in moments. I didn’t need to ask who, or where. All I asked was Barro or Onur?

  Onur, she replied. He’s in the thick of it. The Lord Merchant was caught in the open, and now he wants to watch, the bloody idiot!

  I’m going to check on him. Let everyone know, and if Embers returns while I’m out, tell her as well! I don’t know if she’ll do anything, but it’s worth asking.

  Conscience sputtered something. I couldn’t blame her for protesting; fronting literally made her ill, and she hated it. And I didn’t actually know if either of my headmates could take control while I was out, though I saw no reason why they wouldn’t. But by the time she got the first coherent syllable out I was gone, diving into Onur to see what the hell was happening in my city.

  It was chaos. With a dragon attacking, I would have been shocked at anything else. But it wasn’t the absolute carnage that I’d feared. Karakan, it seemed, had taken my mother’s warning seriously.

  Onur was on one of the walls—the western one, since the mountains were clearly visible. He was arguing, his voice low and furious, with the lord mercantile Parvion. Onur was insisting that his lord get off the wall and to safety; Lord Parvion dismissed his fears, saying that nowhere was safer than anywhere else when a dragon attacked, and that he might as well see how well the defenses worked.

  The answer to that was: not perfectly, but well enough. I watched in mute, helpless horror as Behold Her approached at terrible speed from the south, letting out her awful, shrieking roar as she dove and laid down a cloud of red mist along a street. But as she did, a dark haze rose from the ground, converging on her; arrows, I quickly realized, fired by archers on rooftops. Through Onur’s eyes I couldn’t see if any of them were magical, but even if they weren’t the dozens or even hundreds of arrows must have been unpleasant. Behold Her aborted her attack, climbing sharply with a savage shriek. She turned, searching for another target, some place where the fleeing people were at their densest, no doubt. Her turn carried her close to the wall, and there was an odd noise from the distance; a kind of Tchrunck that I couldn’t place. Then Behold Her came toward Onur and Parvion and the small group with them, and Onur did something unexpected: he turned away from her, to look at something behind him.

  There, on the wall, was one of those giant crossbows that many naval vessels here carried; the same kind that had pissed off my ex Alex so much when we’d watched Game of Thrones together. Three men manned the thing, turning it to track the swooping dragon as a fourth herded the councilman and his people away.

  The man doing the aiming barked, “Hold! Hold! NOW!” A second man heaved on a lever, and the whole massive contraption tried to leap forward as the string was released, sending a spear that must have been as long as Herald was tall and an inch or more thick arcing through the air toward Behold Her.

  If I’d been in my body I think my heart would have stopped. I was sure that Onur and Lord Parvion, along with everyone else on that section of wall, were about to be reduced to dry bone. All Behold Her needed to do was to turn her head, and exhale.

  Behold Her didn’t even notice. The spear missed. But it didn’t miss by much, and with how fast that spear had been moving I couldn’t imagine even an adult dragon being completely immune. If nothing else, it would surely bruise like an absolute bastard.

  The ruby monster made two more abortive attacks. On each she laid down a streak of lethal mist, but each one met with a rising storm of arrows that forced her to climb again. And after the third attempt, as she was rising toward the northern wall, the man aiming the nearby crossbow threw his fist in the air and cried, “They got it! Didn’t bloody stick for long, but the number four ballista got the bastard!” Then he blanched as he realized in just whose presence he’d just cursed, but no one cared. No one paid him any mind. Because after that third attempt, Behold Her had enough.

  I doubted that it was any real fear that motivated her, but I knew how unpleasant it was to get an arrow through the wing, and I’d seen her flinch when one of Herald’s arrows came too close to her eye. And the man hadn’t said that the spear didn’t stick; he’d said that it didn’t stick for long. Behold Her didn’t like pain. She imagined herself invincible and didn’t like to be proven wrong. In the end, I figured it was frustration and wounded pride that drove her away.

  I didn’t want to imagine the aftermath. Her attacks had been aborted, but she’d still covered hundreds of feet of streets in killing fog. Not only that, but all those arrows would have come down somewhere in the city. I could only hope that no one had been hit, and that the only casualties to friendly fire was some of the omnipresent laundry drying on roofs and between buildings. And gods only knew how Behold Her would take out her frustration.

  Despite all those things, it was a victory for the humans of Karakan. My impression of Behold Her’s character had been right; she was malicious, petty, and spiteful, and when she couldn’t touch me she’d gone to a place she knew was important to me. She’d wanted to lay it to waste. She’d failed. This time, at least. And no matter how many poor souls had perished, and would perish in the countryside, it could have been so much worse if they hadn’t driven her away as quickly as they had.

  “Well!” Lord Parvion exclaimed, turning toward the crew manning the ballista, as the one man had called it. “That was rather successful, I think. Time well spent, hauling the ballistae up here from the ships. Well done, soldiers!”

  There was a murmured chorus of Thank you, my lords from the ballista crew as Parvion walked away followed by Onur and his other guards, and that was where I left them.

  I returned to my own body to find myself in the passenger seat.

  “—so there’s no way to know when she’ll be back, is there?” Conscience was saying. She was speaking in that quick way she had with Herald, like she wanted to get what she had to say out and then pull back again. “But no wukkas. They had some huge bloody crossbows up on the walls, and that Parvion fella was talking about archers all over the city. They’re as ready as can be. And thank God, here she is!”

  She pulled back so suddenly that it took a moment before I reasserted control, leaving our body still and silent, staring past the group of worried humans before us. Could have given me a warning! I chided her.

  Be glad I got out before I made us spew, she countered, sending waves of relief my way. What happened?

  Listen and find out, I replied, then told the humans what had happened.

  “So… which streets?” Ardek asked after I finished. “You said she hit three streets.”

  “Yeah. And I’m not sure, honestly. One near the south docks, probably the market street there, and two in the north. One was somewhere close to Her Grace, but I know it wasn’t in the Mercantile Quarter. She hit more to the west. The other was on the hill.” I looked at Zabra and added emphatically, “Lower than your house. Kesra should be safe.”

  While Zabra nodded her thanks, Kira was trying to calm Ardek, who was still vibrating with worried energy. “Barro will check on them,” she whispered. “He knows where they are. He will check on them.”

  “The kids?” I asked softly.

  “The kids,” Kira confirmed as Ardek just nodded jerkily. He wasn’t a nervous wreck or anything. He wasn’t crying, or biting his nails, or anything else one might associate with extreme worry. Instead it was like he couldn’t stand still. Like if I let him, he’d try to run all the way back to Karakan right now, not stopping until he was sure that the kids he’d taken under his wing were all safe.

  “I’ll ask Conscience to check on Barro, alright?” I told him, and that calmed him a little.

  “Thanks, boss,” he said, his voice tight but earnest, before Kira led him off to sit down and talk through what he was feeling.

  I didn’t even have to ask Conscience. She was gone almost as soon as I’d spoken the words.

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