We gathered Herald’s things, packing the copied primer as deeply and safely as possible among her clothes in the center of her pack, inside a leather folder for extra protection. Together with it was a simple sheet of paper, covered in Old Mallinean. Herald thought it might be a list of rules for the library or something similarly boring, but what mattered was that it was something she could practice translating, once she got that far. And there had been many copies of it, so if it disintegrated when she got too far from the library, it wasn’t too great a loss.

  Her copy of the primer, though? That would be unfortunate. But it was written on paper, and with ink, that we’d found in that same library. Herald was resigned to the possibility of losing it. “If it does not survive,” she said, trying to put on a brave face, “I will just have to return with my own materials and copy the thing all over again.”

  Packing was a quick affair; Herald always kept an orderly camp, with nothing out that didn’t see a lot of use. It was a matter of minutes. A hasty goodbye, a promise that I would indeed return the day after tomorrow, and an ominous assurance from my mother that she would fetch me if I did not, and then we were on our way.

  The energy in the air slowly faded as the distance from the city grew. Ambient magic! I hadn’t been aware of it before, but now that Embers had pointed it out, it was impossible to miss.

  The flight was smooth. I couldn’t tell how Grace worked, not exactly, but it felt like my reflexes when dealing with things like sudden updrafts or gusts of wind had been supercharged, letting me compensate and correct long before I knew I was doing it. It was so smooth that Herald, somehow that I couldn’t fathom, slept most of the way. For the first time in a while I was almost a little mad at her. She knew how boring and awful these flights in the rain were, and this one took three hours!

  I was almost mad. Not quite — how could I possibly be mad at her? Besides, it was still her birthday.

  I woke her on our approach to Karakan, giving her a few minutes to wake up. Mak already had the cellar door open as I set down, feather light, in the yard, and she goggled at the size of me. Herald vaulted off me and ran inside, squealing in protest as her much smaller sister picked her up by the legs and twirled her around. I Shifted and followed her, the warm-and-fuzzies inside me letting me ignore the annoyance of the rain passing through my form.

  “You picked a good one!” Mak, still holding a protesting Herald, exclaimed happily as I reformed. I bumped my head on the ceiling as I straightened. Getting too big for this place, I thought. It was a sad thought, but it couldn’t affect me with all the good feelings I was surrounded by.

  “Let me down!” Herald shrieked. “Why do you even care? I’m eighteen, so what?”

  “It’s important to Draka, so it’s important!” Mak declared, but she did set Herald back down before turning back to me. “Mercies, Draka, did you know? Did you know what your new Advancement would do for me?”

  I grinned. “I had my hopes. Wasn’t sure that it would double up, but from your reaction…”

  “Double up? Gods, I don’t think that’s even close. And with the strength, I—”

  She didn’t bother trying to explain. She moved. One moment she was standing with us just inside the doors, the next she was halfway to the stairs. What happened next wasn’t so much acrobatics as ignoring gravity. In an impossibly smooth movement she pushed off, did a half back-flip, and somehow hooked her toes over one of the steps, her head barely an inch above the stone floor.

  Then she ran up the stairs. Backwards, upside down, and beneath them. At the top she dropped, righting herself like a cat, and kicked against the wall, turning the fall into a sprint back toward us that ended with her perfectly still where she’d started. There was something wild in her eyes, a feral joy at the simple freedom of moving, that resonated with me. Hell, if I’d still been human, I might have fallen in love, just a little. Which would have been wildly problematic considering the power I had over her, so good thing I didn’t.

  Herald wasn’t unaffected, either. She was laughing, clapping her hands with delight, completely unrestrained in her praise and congratulations toward her sister, or what it made her feel toward me. “Draka,” she said. “If you were worried about not getting me anything for my birthday, this is it. Seeing Mak this happy… this is it.”

  “I love you too, Kitten,” Mak said, giving Herald a proper, non-lifting hug. “Happy birthday, whether you care or not.”

  “...care a little,” Herald mumbled, hugging back.

  Tam was halfway down the stairs, followed by Val, when he asked, “If that’s Draka’s present, does that mean the other thing can be just from Val and me?” He stopped for a second, muttered, “Gods, you’re big,” then finished, “I’m quite proud of it. Spent all day getting it done.”

  “It was a tricky task,” Val intoned from behind him, “but my love was insistent on what he wanted.”

  “What is it?” Herald asked. Birthdays may not have meant much here, besides the sixteenth, but she was getting into it now. She held Mak tight, rocking her left and right in her excitement. “Can I see it? Show me!”

  “Nope!” Tam said, grinning.

  Val followed him immediately. “A small party is being arranged. The others are hard at work, and we’ll return to help them in a moment. You shall have it then.”

  Eyes still twinkling, Herald huffed out a long, put-upon breath. “Fine. Fine! I guess you all do not get to see my treasure until then, either.”

  “A sacrifice we will have to make,” Val agreed gravely.

  “So, I’m guessing no more trouble?” I asked the room after a short silence. “No attempted kidnappings in the day I’ve been away?”

  “Everything’s been calm,” Mak said, still holding Herald. “The guards are back. I can only guess the Council got worried about something happening to us and you reacting… unfavorably. The guards haven’t been any trouble either. Some of them come in for a drink or a meal at shift changes. We’ve been giving them a discount, chatting, Kira healing little scrapes… All friendly.”

  “All right. That’s fine, I guess. Can’t say I’m as happy about it as before, with how things stand between me and the Council, but no point in making a fuss. Next point of order: can we get in touch with Scholar Ramban easily?”

  “Easily enough,” Tam said. “We could get a message to him, or ask Barro to talk to him. He usually stops in once a day, for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.”

  “Try to go through Barro, then. I’d like Ramban and Herald to talk, if that’s all right with you, Herald?”

  “Oh, yes!” Herald said. “I would like that.”

  “Great. Final thing I’d like to get out of the way, so we can give Herald all the attention she deserves tonight—”

  Herald beamed. She might not care about birthdays, but my prideful little dragon did love the attention.

  “Vestel. The guy who organized the attack. Where do we stand?”

  “Ardek’s had some kids keeping an eye on some of his places, and Sari’s been a lot more helpful since you talked to her,” Mak said. “We know where to find him.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, eager for an outlet for the anger I’d been keeping bottled up since the previous day. I could feel it, at the back of my mind, silently bubbling away. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow. But…” Mak released Herald to face me more fully. I nodded her along. “Perhaps you stay in the background?”

  “Really? Why?”

  Speaking thoughtfully, she said, “The way I see it, he attacked our family. Our House. We have to retaliate, there is no question about that. But we also want to discourage future attacks. There’s a reasonable chance that they’ll happen. Do you agree?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There must be some out there who know that this is your home in the city, and that number is going to grow steadily now that you’re being more open with your movements. And a dragon in the cellar should make most people think twice. But you can’t always be here.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “True enough,” I said, trying not to let my disappointment show. Her point was clear enough. “It’s not enough that they’re scared of me.”

  “It’s not enough that they’re scared of you,” Mak agreed, and Tam and Val nodded. They must have talked this through. “I suggest that we four hit Vestel. We take out the man himself, but we let most of his people go to spread the word. That way other underworld figures, and Sari’s adventurer friends, will know just how dangerous it is to antagonize us. Besides, only killing who we must should mollify the lady justice somewhat, once she inevitably hears of what we’ve done.”

  “Right. Yeah. I like it. But I want to be there, just in case. It’s not that I don’t trust you to pull it off, but… you know.”

  Mak smiled and nodded, and Herald said, “You worry.”

  “I worry,” I agreed. I also wanted to live out my violent fantasies, if only vicariously through them. “But, all right. Mak, tomorrow, during the day, I’ll take you and Kira to refill your Hearts. I should have done that already. And then, in the evening, I’ll… hang back, I suppose.”

  They all left. Mak, Tam and Val to help with the final preparations for our little celebration, Herald to talk to the people she hadn’t seen for a few days. By the sounds leaking down from above and the scattered thumping on the ceiling, the crowd was small tonight, but there were some guests up there, and I knew Herald had friends among the regulars. People I’d never met, and who I may well never meet. Perhaps it was better that way. I didn’t like sharing Herald. I tolerated it, but I didn’t like it.

  I found that I was too big to easily walk through the door that led to the improvised cell and the strongroom. I still fit in the short corridor itself, but if I kept growing I wouldn’t be able to use the strongroom for a nest for much longer. Getting too damn big, I thought again and returned to the main cellar, curling up on the floor.

  The party was a small affair. Most of the evening staff, Reben’s family, came by to offer their congratulations and well wishes, but otherwise we were the core group — the family plus Kira and Ardek. Our Wolves were on a constant schedule of patrols, barely returning to the city except to resupply, and while the others had established a somewhat cordial relationship with Avjilan, there was no friendship there. In the best case things would warm up over weeks and months, but to Herald he was still the guy who almost made her fall to her death. Having him at her birthday wasn’t happening.

  It was still a wonderful time. We were all good at letting our worries go and just enjoying ourselves, and that was what we did. We ate, they drank — a lot — and by silent agreement we talked about anything except the problems we currently faced. And when we talked about the future we did so with the assumption that we’d all be there, richer and healthier than ever, with the war won and the city strong and prosperous.

  “I have been looking at properties,” Mak said as they settled into their dessert, something sweet and fruity that smelled of alcohol and tasted absolutely bland and pointless to my predator’s senses. “A real home. I like it here, and it’s familiar, but in the future, once everything settles…”

  “Something in the upper city, with a view?” Herald suggested.

  Val nodded. “With good light and a balcony.”

  “And a garden. Always wanted a garden,” Tam said, to the agreement of the others.

  “All things I’ve considered. With a large servants’ quarters, so we can give the kids somewhere proper to stay, and connected to something like a warehouse or a large stables that we can convert for Draka.” Mak gave me an appraising look, then turned to Herald. “You’ve spent time with her mother. How big?”

  “Thirty foot roof, at least. But we could dig the floor out, make more room that way.”

  I huffed at them. “My mother is seven hundred years old or something, with a hoard to rival a whole civilization. I don’t think you need to worry that much.”

  Mak shrugged. “If we’re planning for the future, let’s plan long-term. Maybe we look outside the city? Build an estate in the mountains somewhere.”

  “You already know where, in that case.”

  “Only one choice, really,” Mak agreed, then shrank almost imperceptibly, a sliver of uncertainty slipping in. “I’ve… contacted a surveyor. To see if it’s feasible.”

  “I like it,” I told her. “The pit in front of the gate will be flooded until we drain it, so no worries there. And Jekrie and the villagers can put them up for however long it takes.”

  I couldn’t tell if anyone else saw how relieved her smile was when I told her that. I couldn’t put a claw on what it was exactly; it was no different from any other satisfied smile she might wear. But it was clear to me. Maybe that was because our bond went both ways to some degree, or maybe I was reading into it because I knew how much she craved my approval.

  In the end it didn’t matter. My words made her happy. That was all I needed to know.

  Dessert was over, but the night wasn’t. They were all sipping wine, picking at grapes and leftovers, when Herald spoke up. “So! There was supposed to be a present?”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about,” Tam said, stone faced.

  “Tam!” Herald exclaimed with mock outrage. “Present!”

  “There’s two, actually,” Mak said, “and since I know what theirs is I’m going first. This—” Mak produced a folded piece of paper, “is the name and address of an enchanter I’ve been in contact with. He sometimes teaches at the academy and is very well regarded, and I have offered him a ridiculous amount of money to tutor you in the theory and practice of enchanting.”

  Herald squealed and almost knocked Mak out of her chair with a flying hug.

  “There were some caveats about you being years off and… whatever.” Mak’s voice was muffled, her face pressed into Herald’s shoulder. “Happy birthday, Herald!”

  Once Herald released Mak and got back in her chair, she raised her cup.

  “To Mak, and I love you all!” She drained the cup in one go. “Next present!”

  “Claws in, this time, Kitten,” Tam said, climbing to his feet. He was only a little unsteady. From somewhere he produced a small wooden box, about the size of a deck of cards. “Now, we spent a lot of time searching, but we didn’t actually find what we were looking for. But we did find someone willing to make it, and in time! Picked it up late today.”

  He placed the box in front of Herald with great care, adjusting it so it was square with the edge of the table. “Happy birthday, Kitten. Open it!”

  As soon as her brother’s hands were clear, Herald snatched the box off the table and did just that. Her eyes widened, the gold of her irises burning brighter at what she saw inside, and she gasped in open-mouthed delight.

  “Oh, Mercies! Mercies, Tam! Val! Draka! It’s gorgeous! Absolutely gorgeous!”

  As soon as the box had opened I had smelled gold, but now she turned the box around, showing everyone what was inside.

  It was better than I’d hoped. Months ago, when Herald’s eyes had just changed, a drunken Tam had suggested getting her something beautiful to match them. That had made me think of earrings or similar jewelry — Herald usually wore several, all up the side of her left ear to the lower part of her helix. The day before, when I’d been on my way to leave and Tam had told me that it was her birthday today, I’d remembered those old thoughts, and I’d suggested it to him, but I hadn’t gone into detail. Something large and golden, something beautiful that would match her eyes, while conveying wealth and status to tickle her pride — that was as far as I’d gotten. I left it to Tam and Val, whose taste I trusted, to take care of the particulars. And they’d delivered beyond critique.

  It was a golden dragon, its wings subtly flared, neck and body curved so that it would crouch over the helix, covering much of the upper ear. The tail was subtly hinged and made of some kind of golden mesh, so it could dangle freely along the outside. And the proportions looked suspiciously familiar.

  “It’s you!” Herald squealed, grinning maniacally. “It’s you, Draka! Tam, how did you manage this?”

  “This beautiful soul here—” Tam put both arms around Val, who was still seated, “has plenty of sketches of our scaly sister. We found a goldsmith with the time and skill to do the job, she and Val drew up the design, and we paid what it cost. Easy as!”

  “I love it. Oh, I love it, I love it, I— how do I wear it?” She took it out of the box and tried a few placements on her ear. “Oh, but I don’t have—”

  “The box shall provide,” Val said calmly, and Herald looked first at him, then back in the box. She withdrew a long, very thick, and very sharp-looking needle. About the right thickness for the bar on the back of the golden dragon, I guessed.

  “Right,” Herald said, “Let’s do this.” She stared silently at the needle for a long moment. “I’m going to need more wine.”

  “Ah! Gods an’ Mercies an’ goddamn Sorrows!”

  “Oh, be quiet.” Mak withdrew the thick needle she’d just shoved through Herald’s cartilage, sliding one end of the golden bar through after it.

  Herald hissed. “Little gremlin!”

  A little pulse of magic, and Herald stopped hissing.

  “There. That’s one. Kira, hold?” Mak held the golden dragon for Kira to take, then placed the thick cork at the forward arch of Herald’s ear.

  “Wait, ‘snot done!?”

  “Halfway, Kitten. Now sit still. I’ll count down from three, okay? Three, two—”

  Mak shoved the needle through, and Herald yelped again. She didn’t move, though that probably had more to do with Val and Ardek holding her shoulders, and Mak sitting in her lap, legs locked around her midsection and the back of the chair.

  “And there we are!” Quickly and efficiently, Mak slid the other end of the bar through the new hole, healed the new piercing, wiped the blood off both ends with a wet rag, and fixed the ornament in place.

  A tiny golden me crouched on Herald’s ear, bright against her black hair. Big enough to be impossible to miss, and somehow either light or balanced well enough that her ear didn’t simply flop over, which had been a real concern. Herald lifted her hand, stroking it along the dragon’s back, and grinned. “All right, lemme up! I gotta find a mirror.”

  “Tam’s bringing one,” Mak said. She got up from Herald’s lap and offered her hand. Herald took it, and even using Mak for stability she stumbled a bit. “Gotta say, it looks great.”

  “‘Course it does.” Herald backed up a few steps and struck a pose, catching a few stray hairs and putting them behind the ornament. “‘s a statement!”

  “And what does it state?” Val asked. He tried to look serious, but he was just so damned pleased with how his design had worked out that he couldn’t keep his face straight.

  Herald pointed at me dramatically. “States: you fuck with me you fuck with her! An’ you fuck with her, you fuck with me!”

  “It states that you’re a young lady with a fascination for dragons and fantastic taste in jewelry,” Tam said as he came down the stairs carrying a polished silver mirror the size of a dinner plate. He barely slurred his words at all; once Herald started drinking seriously, the others had stopped to fully enjoy the aftermath. “An’ I know I’m one of the ones gave it to you, but you should maybe not wear it everywhere, all the time.”

  “Try an’ stop me!” Herald said, melting into the shadows and continuing in her echoing, faraway voice. “Anyone gimme trouble I’ll jus’—”

  I very carefully did not follow her with my eyes as she flitted over next to Tam and remerged pinching his cheek.

  “‘cept with a knife,” she finished, her smile as sweet as could be.

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