Once Herald brought up enthralling her again—intentionally this time—it was best not to even think about it. The idea was painfully attractive. I wouldn’t even need to feel guilty, or so a quiet little voice in the back of my mind told me. As did one that wasn’t so little, or so quiet; Instinct was all for it, and quite indignant that I wouldn’t let Herald even ask.

  “If it is her wish, why do you hesitate?” she grumbled. “She might change her mind about staying with us. This is our chance to ensure she does not!”

  Because she’s a recovering addict right now, I replied tiredly. Herald was still right there by my head, silently thoughtful as she scratched my horn. I can’t trust anything she says that she wants when it comes to me, and I can’t trust myself if she asks me to do something. Please, Instinct. Leave off it. Then, to drown out anything else my headmate might have to say on the subject, I told Herald, “I’m awfully hungry. How about we head up and see if Mother’s around?”

  Hopefully that would get Herald’s mind off it as well, because I really didn’t know how long I could hold out if she brought up me enthralling her again.

  “She would be,” Herald replied. “But even if she was not, she left a deer up there. It is… well, I gutted it and got rid of the foul bits, so it is not as bad as it might be, but it has been lying around for a day and a half now.”

  “Oh,” I replied. I took a moment to lament that I was taking after Sandstorm before continuing, “How long was I out?”

  “Two days. I suppose it must be approaching evening now.” Her fingers stopped for a moment before she said, “Draka, you should know that I spoke with your mother. I had gone up for some sun, and she passed by and saw me.”

  “How did that go?” I asked cautiously.

  “Well enough, I suppose. She was polite, as much as she ever is to a human, but I cannot help but feel that she resents me. She noticed right away that I… that you have freed me. Apparently, I no longer ‘smell of your power.’”

  That was taking us dangerously close to something I’d rather not think about, but even if it hadn’t been, I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Oh.” So instead I asked, “But there’s meat up here?”

  “Yes, Draka,” she said, with the faintest of smiles. “There is meat up there. Shall we?”

  I laboriously got my feet under me and rose, the hunger making me unpleasantly floaty, but froze when first my wings and then my head touched something cold and hard. Not hard enough to hurt, thankfully, but it was quite a surprise. I could only barely stretch my legs completely; arching my back to get a good stretch there was right out.

  “Herald,” I said, “how big am I?”

  “Gods and Mercies, sister, you must have gained another foot!” she replied, looking up with a kind of awe that I hadn’t seen from her in a long time.

  I stretched my wings experimentally, finding I could barely extend them halfway. “I feel like it,” I said with a kind of premature nostalgia. I liked this place, but at the rate I was growing I’d soon be unable to even squeeze into my nest. “This place is getting cramped.”

  “I— Tam mentioned how discomfiting it could be to see you after a growth spurt,” she said pensively. “I understood what he meant intellectually, but I could never feel it. You getting larger and more powerful could only ever be an entirely wonderful thing, you know? Now… I do not fear you. Please do not think that I do. But I can see now how you can easily be seen as frightening. I am very much aware of how much more powerful you are than me, and what that could, theoretically mean for my wellbeing. It is… humbling.”

  She wasn’t being entirely honest about not fearing me. At the very least, she was feeling some level of fear. I could smell it on her, as easy as anything. Although… either she wasn’t conscious of it, or she was doing a top job hiding it, because there were none of the usual signs that gave her away when she lied; none of the general shiftiness, or the way she’d begin to sweat more than normal. Really, it was a lot like how she’d been right after our escape from Tarkarran and Zabra’s prison—she’d been aware that she should be angry and afraid, and I’d been able to smell both emotions on her, but she hadn’t expressed them.

  What that meant for her and our relationship wasn’t something I could think about just then. Again, it was too close to thinking about enthralling her again. So I just told her, “Well, I hope you know that you will never have anything to fear from me. I love you as much as ever. Honestly, I can’t feel any difference from before, so never you fear! Now. I wasn’t kidding about being hungry, and it’s a bit of a walk to the ledge, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, still looking up at me with some measure of awe. “Gods, you are long, too,” she added before turning to face up the passage. “Up we go, then.”

  I’d gotten big enough now that making my way back up was a chore. I constantly had to Shift to fit through gaps where I’d been able to go through on my way down, and that sense of expectant nostalgia I’d felt returned with full force. It had been pushed far to the side by the here-and-now misery of what I’d had no choice but to do, but now that I was Shifting back and forth every minute, it was impossible not to think about. I needed to start planning for how to move my treasures out of here to some place I was unlikely to outgrow; finding somewhere like that which was as safe as these caverns, though, would be tricky.

  It would have been much easier to just Shift and stay Shifted until I reached the top, but I didn’t want to do that. Every moment with Herald was precious; even with her reassurances, a small, desperately fearful part of me couldn’t shake the idea that she might disappear at any moment. That she’d just been lulling me into a false sense of security, so that I wouldn’t try to stop her when she made a break for it. Which was absolutely insane, of course, but since when had I ever been rational when it came to Herald?

  One thing I found to feel good about was that her eyes shone. She’d been moving without hesitation since the moment she first left me, so I knew that she could see in the dark, but I had to ask. “Your magic,” I said, broaching the subject carefully, “is it… all right?”

  “It is unaffected,” she said, her voice full of relief. “I can see, and Shift, and I have made sure that the shadows answer me as readily as they ever have. Thank you for asking.”

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  “And your other Advancement?”

  This time her reply was more uncertain. “I cannot say. You would not expect me to try and sit on you while you slept, would you?”

  “You might do,” I replied with rather anemic levity. “Or maybe not, now.”

  “I might,” she said, trying to respond in kind, but it fell slightly flat. Things were different now. Maybe we just needed to recalibrate and things would go back to normal, or maybe they wouldn’t. If we could at least be as close as I was with Tam and Val, I’d take it. Hell, as long as she’d still look at me and speak with me, I’d take it. If it took me a decade to bring us back to anywhere near where we’d been, I could wait. Her not hating me was the important thing. Going for joyrides and flying to mountaintops to watch the sunset could wait.

  I can’t possess her, if that helps, Conscience said. I just tried. And I’ll bet you anything Scaly’s tried, too.

  “I have,” my other companion grumbled. “I cannot.”

  “The other two just said that they can’t ride along with you,” I told Herald. “So I obviously can’t speak through you. That’s one part of your Advancement that’s not going to do anything. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “That is all right,” she said, but her tone said that it wasn’t. Not really. “I will forgive you if you let me try the other part once we get up there. Assuming Embers is not up there, that is.”

  “Just let me know, and we’ll give it a try,” I replied eagerly. “She’ll understand as long as there are no other dragons around.”

  “I would really be more comfortable if she were not around when we tried it,” she insisted, and I gave in without further argument.

  When we arrived at the top, the first thing I wanted to see was Herald’s eyes. They were still gold, and it brought me an unwarranted level of comfort. But I didn’t have much time to reflect on that, because I was hungry, and while Mother wasn’t there the promised deer was. There was a fair bit missing, which Herald had either grilled and eaten or dried using the stash of firewood we kept there, but all the best bits were still there and I tucked in with gusto. And then, remembering myself, I let Instinct take over. The poor girl hadn’t eaten for ages.

  We finished off that entire deer, and after even the bones were gone, chewed as easily as the meat thanks to our newly enhanced teeth, Instinct contentedly withdrew. It was a testament to just how big we’d gotten that we didn’t even go into torpor. I did go and lie down on the ledge afterward, enjoying the stillness and the view of the forest and the distant sea, but it was with a pleasant fullness, not the oppressive heaviness that I’d experienced so often.

  “I get the feeling that now would not be the time to climb on your back,” Herald said, smiling wryly as she sat with her back against the lonely little tree that grew on the ledge.

  “You can get on, just don’t expect me to move anywhere,” I replied placidly. “I’m great right where I am.”

  “It probably would not make a very good test, then,” she said. She didn’t seem too put out; she’d had quite a bit of dried venison while Instinct ate, and looked as pleasantly full as I felt.

  “Ah, it’s a moot point, anyway.” I pushed myself up so I was lying in a somewhat dignified manner rather than sprawling. “Mother’s coming.”

  I’d seen a speck far off as we spoke, glinting like fire in the late afternoon sun, and now I could see it getting larger. It had been long enough now that I could recognize that glint anywhere, though there was a risk that I might confuse Sandstorm for Mother with nothing to judge distance by. This, though, was very clearly Mother, and she was approaching fast.

  Herald was on her feet and behind me, just inside the opening into the mountain, by the time Mother arrived. Like she had the first time we came here together, Mother perched on the edge like some enormous bird, relaxed and graceful despite her huge bulk. She didn’t even use her wings once she’d found her balance.

  Unlike with the meat, this time Instinct didn’t hesitate to force her way to the front. But I’d been expecting it, so neither did I even try to stop her. “Mother!” she exclaimed, happily trotting forward. “I am restored, and I have grown!”

  “So you are, and so you have,” Mother said, looking down on us with a fondness that I hadn’t seen since she forced us to confess. Honestly, it hurt a little. Instinct was as guilty as I was of lying to and keeping things from her; hell, considering how much of the time Instinct had been in charge whenever we were with Mother, Instinct was probably more guilty than I was. But that didn’t matter to her, because in that moment, Sower of Embers, Reaper of Flame was unequivocally looking at her daughter. There was none of the doubt that I could see whenever we spoke, and that hurt.

  It was probably stupid. I’d only known her for about three months—probably a bit less, really. And Instinct was literally more her daughter than I was; there was a round, curly haired woman with the most loving brown eyes out there, in another world, who shared the title. But that didn’t make Embers feel any less like my mum, and having her doubt that, only to look at us—me—entirely differently as soon as my headmate took over, well… it didn’t feel great.

  “I spoke with your Herald,” Mother continued, her eyes flicking to where our sister stood. And it might have been my imagination, but it seemed that she nodded her head in acknowledgement just a tad. “She told me that… I am not certain how to speak of this. That one of the two with whom you share your body, the half-human who most would know as Draka, found a way to restore you, but that it required her to somehow withdraw your power from Herald. That Herald is no longer yours. I have never had reason to doubt Herald, but I must ask: is this true?”

  “I think so.”

  It is, I told her solemnly.

  “She says that it is,” Instinct said a moment later.

  “That is fascinating and disturbing,” Mother mused. “To have a human leave your flock seems unnatural to me, far more so when that human is bonded. That it is even possible to sever the bond, which normally occurs so rarely, is disturbing. But I cannot help but notice that Herald is still here.” Her attention went again to our sister, and she said, “Tell me, Herald: Could you have left while my daughter slept?”

  “I think so, Great Lady,” Herald replied with consummate politeness. I couldn’t actually see her, with Instinct as focused on Mother as she was, but I imagined she might have bowed as she spoke. “Though my magic was made available to me as a choice due to my association with your daughter, my ability to use it is unchanged. I imagine it would have greatly improved my chances at descending the cliff face, should I have felt the need to leave unaided.”

  “But you did not,” Mother noted.

  “No, Great Lady, I did not. I will not insult you by claiming that my feelings for your daughter are unchanged, but as I explained to her earlier, the change is in how intensely I feel them, not in the feelings themselves. I have in no way left her flock. I still love her, as a friend and, if you will forgive me the presumption, as a sister. But I do not adore her unquestioningly anymore.”

  “Understand, both of you, that I do not approve of keeping an unbonded human so close. Even those who are bonded are normally not invited to their mistress’ hoard, or allowed to watch over her as she sleeps. But I have also come to understand that it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to separate you. That leaves me only with only two options: to accept that you, Herald, can be trusted, or to destroy you. And I find myself far more inclined toward the first.”

  There was a pause as Herald digested that before replying, “I imagine you know how much I appreciate that, Great Lady.”

  “I admit a certain fondness for you,” Mother replied. “And bond or no, I believe it would distress my daughter terribly. Is that not so, daughter?”

  “You would be forced to kill me first,” Instinct replied with such conviction that Mother’s nostrils flared with surprise. Instinct truly meant what she said. She absolutely adored our mother, but she was willing and prepared to put herself between her and our sister if that was what it took. And if she hadn’t been, we would have had a problem, because I damn well would have died protecting Herald if Instinct wouldn’t.

  Herald was still the most important person in the world. Whether she had a piece of my soul inside her didn’t change that. I couldn’t let it change that. Who would I be if I let something like that dictate who I loved, and how much I loved them?

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