“Haha,” Mak laughed nervously, her eyes flicking between me and Herald. “What?”

  I started to say, “Woah, did I just—” But at the same time, Herald tried to say something, and all that came out of her mouth was a garbled mess. I quickly withdrew, her perspective of me and Mak vanishing from my senses as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Oh, that was weird,” I said, this time with my own mouth. Much weirder than when I watched through Mak as I slept. Then it had been like I was fully there; now, I’d seen through Herald’s eyes and heard through her ears, but that was it. And that had been at the same time as I still had my own senses; not overlapping, but sort of parallel.

  Yeah. “Weird” felt about right to describe that.

  But I wasn’t the only one who’d been surprised by what just happened. “Are you all right, Herald?” I asked. “Did you know that might happen?”

  “Not… not quite like that, no,” Herald said. But she didn’t look or sound upset or worried. Astonished was probably a better description. She looked at me with wonder and continued, “But I am fine. It… the choice I made, it had me inseparable from you. I would bring you with me anywhere I might go, and speak with your voice. I just did not expect the second part to be quite so literal.”

  “What just happened?” Mak asked. “No, let me rephrase that: did what I think just happened, happen?”

  “If you think that some of my consciousness just moved to Herald, and that I spoke through her,” I said, “then, yeah. That definitely happened.”

  “Oh. Oh, Mercies!” Mak said, and covered her lower face with her hands. For a moment I thought her horrified, but her eyes were smiling. “That’s beyond amazing! Herald, when she spoke through you, you had her… her presence! Like I could see her looking out from your eyes!”

  “There was something else, too,” Herald said, almost a little shyly. “The things I saw when I made my choice… sometimes I stood in front of you, speaking for you, but mostly I saw myself seated on your back, safe and secure as we flew. I am not actually sure what that meant, though it is part of why I chose the Advancement.”

  “Seated, eh?” I said, thinking about it. “Sounds dangerous with nothing to hold on to.”

  “Perhaps it sounds that way,” Herald said dismissively, “but that was not the sense I got.”

  I dropped it. It was her vision, and she knew best what she’d seen and felt in it. For all I knew it was entirely metaphorical. Besides, my attention was quickly pulled to my smaller, older sister, who’d been slowly looking me over from tail to snout.

  “Mercies, Mistress,” Mak said reverentially, too overcome with admiration to care about what I preferred to be called, and not at all worried about what she called me in front of Herald. “You should see yourself now!”

  “I just did,” I pointed out.

  “Well, then you should do it again, and really look!”

  You really should, came Conscience’s voice in my head. I was watching through Mak just now. All senses, too, not just sight and hearing like you did with Herald. We’re huge!

  Conscience had been watching through Mak’s eyes. We were all awake, and Conscience, independent of me, had been watching through Mak’s eyes. I let that sink in for a moment.

  All senses, too, she’d said. I wondered if I could do that.

  Instinct, what’s Tammy doing right now? I thought, picking Tammy because she was the one person whose privacy I felt least bad about invading.

  It didn’t matter, though. “Sleeping,” Instinct replied. “I can feel her, but I cannot go to her.”

  “Feel her,” she said. And I could, too, direction-wise at least. But I remembered what I’d done in the dream when I threw my senses into Mak and tried to do that now, but with Tammy. I focused on her, the way I would when I wished to enter her dreams, and… not nothing. Like Instinct had said, I couldn’t connect. All I got was a momentary jumble of chaotic images and sounds, impossible to make any sense of, and then it was over.

  Then I tried Mak, and I was just there. I was looking at her, and she was looking at me, and I could see both of us at once. If I swayed a little, it was because I’d just woken up, and not at all because seeing the world from two perspectives at once was a bit like patting your own head and juggling at the same time. Then I sort of… pushed, and my own senses faded, while hers bloomed in my awareness. So it was possible! There weren’t a whole lot of uses I could see for full senses like that over just sight and sound, but it was still an exciting possibility.

  And, yes, quite a bit less disorienting.

  It did, however, come with one rather large drawback. I tried to speak, and… nothing. I could see my body lying there, neck turned to look at myself — or at Mak, rather. That was going to take some getting used to. But I couldn’t make it do anything. My body breathed, and everything stayed where I’d left it. But when Mak moved, my eyes didn’t track her. It was all very, “lights on, but nobody’s home.”

  With a small effort of will I pulled back, so that I could still see and hear, but nothing else. When I did, all my own senses returned, including the odd sense of double vision. I was only glad that we were close enough that I didn’t have to deal with hearing everything twice with a tiny delay.

  “Let me up,” I told my sisters. The words came from myself rather than Mak, but I’d expected that with how Herald had described her own Advancement. They obediently got to their feet and stepped back. I rose, then stretched, then stepped out into the passage. The ceiling, I noted, was getting uncomfortably close to my head.

  “Mak,” I said. “Bring the lightstone and come here, would you?”

  As she did, I closed my own eyes, watching only through hers. She approached, looking up at me, really looking up, and I couldn’t help but be in awe of myself. I was bloody huge! I was three, three-and-a-half feet taller than Mak, at the shoulder! I had another four or so feet of neck on top of that, plus my actual head! Then Herald came and stood by my side, and I got an even better idea of just how big I’d gotten. Herald was, as has been established, tall. Not just for an eighteen year old girl, but for anyone, on Earth or Mallin, at a little over six feet. I had at least two feet on her now — and she was loving it. She grinned with absolute delight as she looked up at me, reaching up to run her hand along my neck almost as though to show herself how she couldn’t reach very far anymore.

  “Mak, take a walk around me, would you?” I said. “I’m looking through your eyes. I’d like to see myself.”

  The gasp she took would have been too soft to hear if I hadn’t been in her head. Her vision got a little misty as she started slowly circling me and said, “You can see what I do?”

  “Yeah. It’s… wow. This is how I look to you?”

  “I think you have been cheated, though,” Herald said, looking at me critically. “I have been trying to match your growth to that of your hoard, and I am certain that it has slowed down. You should be at least another foot taller.”

  When it came to numbers, I was just going to trust her. Herald and Mak had been able to predict fairly well when I’d hit my threshold, so if Herald said I should be taller, she was probably right. “Yeah, that makes sense, though,” I told her. “Look at Mother. Imagine how large her hoard must be after such a long life. She’d be the size of a mountain if the growth just kept going at the same rate.”

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  “I suppose. I just… you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. It was terribly sweet how embarrassed it made her to admit that she liked feeling small, and I felt no need to voice that. Especially not in front of the smallest member of our family.

  Mak was still circling, taking her time and giving me a good, detailed look at myself. “So, this is your new Advancement?” she asked.

  “Looks like,” I confirmed. “I could do it in my sleep, too. Like when I’ve visited your dreams, except there’s no… interaction, I guess? Can you feel me at all, Mak?”

  “I always feel you. Always,” she said, and her vision blurred until she blinked it away. “But I can’t feel you watching. Not like Herald said that she could.”

  “Is that… are you okay with that?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes!” she answered quickly. “I’m— Herald, I do envy you a little. I would love to feel Draka’s presence like that. But if I can’t have it, then I’m glad that my sister can.”

  “And the whole thing, with me seeing what you do? That’s all right with you?” I already knew what she’d say, but I felt I should at least ask. And her answer wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. “I should tell you that I can do more than just see and hear. If I want, I can feel everything you do; touch, smell, everything. Is that okay?”

  “Knowing that you can always see what I do? That you can always know what is happening to me? Draka… I’ve never felt so safe,” she said. And though her being upset about anything to do with me wasn’t really a possibility, hearing her put it that way salved my conscience somewhat.

  Mak finished her circuit. I’d seen myself in all my glory, and I had seen that it was good. “Can you do this with anyone?” she asked.

  “Any of my— anyone under my influence,” I said. Inwardly, I scowled at myself. I’d almost said “Any of my victims,” like Conscience had called them, but it was too real for me to be comfortable saying out loud. And it seemed demeaning to Herald and Mak; they were both among those victims, intentionally or not, but there was so much more to them than the power I held over them. “And,” I added, “Instinct and Conscience can both do the same, without me getting involved. Conscience was watching through you before, Mak, right after we woke.”

  “Huh,” Mak said. “That sounds useful!”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “I mean, I get you being okay with me being in your head, but… they’re not me.”

  That turned out to be a far more controversial statement than I’d expected. Mak froze. Her jaw moved a little, her lips parting as though to speak, but nothing came out. Her eyes seeked mine, and when I met them there was a pleading there that I’d never expected.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, bending down to put me head level with hers. Honestly, the way my statement had affected her was freaking me out.

  “I—” she said, but again she was completely at a loss for words.

  Herald came to her rescue. “What she is trying to say, I think, is that Instinct and Conscience are inseparable parts of you. They may not be you, as such, but we love them no less.”

  A dumbfounded, “Oh,” was all I managed for a long while. I… had not considered that as a possibility. I was me. I shared my head with the two others that I’d sprung from, and there was some overlap between us, both in what we felt and what we knew, but to me, we were separate people. The idea that Herald, or anyone else, might not see it that way had never entered my mind. What I knew was that Herald and Mak were mine. They were my friends, my sisters, my confidants and advisors. Mine. Not Conscience’s, and not Instinct’s. Mine. And I’d never even considered that they might see things differently.

  And now I’d gone and put Mak in a damn uncomfortable situation. Clearly, it didn’t bother her if one of my companions looked through her eyes instead of me. But just as clearly, I expected it to. Now she was stuck between telling me a truth that risked disappointing or even hurting me, or trying to avoid answering the question entirely, which was only marginally less impossible than lying.

  “All right. Yeah,” I said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “It’s a good thing you’ve got so much love to give, then.” I cast about for anything to change the subject and settled on, “So, Mak, how much extra did you add to my hoard to get me past the threshold?”

  That didn’t make her any less uncomfortable. She knew that I disapproved and looked away like a scolded child, all but cringing under my gaze. Which was not at all what I’d wanted, but at least it was a question she could easily answer. “Ten dragons,” she said, and my relief was strong enough that she could look me in the face again. “We added them five at a time until I felt joy and triumph from you, and then we hoped and figured that had done it.”

  “It was my idea, and it was me who did it,” Herald added, jumping to our sister’s defense. “Mak never even touched the coins.”

  “Because you knew I’d be unhappy about you spending your own money on me again?” I asked.

  “Because I can, sometimes, if I really push myself, go against your wishes for your own good,” Herald replied, unrepentant. “And I am glad that I did. Not only did it work, but only a few minutes later I was so overcome with fatigue that I had to lay down, and then I passed my own threshold. I do not see how any of us could call that a coincidence.”

  “Nah, yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe you were close and this pushed you over, but like you say, it’s no coincidence. I still wish you hadn’t, though.”

  “And we love the part of you that feels that way,” Herald said fondly. “If it helps, I doubt we will get another opportunity anytime soon. By my estimation your hoard will need to grow by something like nine pounds of gold for you to reach your next threshold.”

  “Nine pounds, eh?” I said, immediately distracted. I looked at my hoard, and imagined it several hundred gold dragons bigger. Yeah. I liked that idea.

  “Nine pounds,” Herald confirmed. “Besides, done is done. We both know those coins are not leaving your hoard, so there is no point in arguing.”

  And she was absolutely right. Those coins weren’t going anywhere. And while I truly wished they hadn’t spent their own gold on me, I couldn’t argue with the results. So, instead of debating any further, we returned to Lady’s Rest.

  It was late in the morning, and the small village was fully awake when we arrived. The work was mostly split between building a fifth cabin and tending to the garden; that work of course stopped entirely as soon as I got there, and it took a moment to convince everybody that I’d rather have them tend to what needed doing rather than fawning over me. South of the village, House Drakonum had set up a small training field, having cleared away the smaller trees, rocks, and bushes. There they were sparring, and Herald and Mak joined them; or rather, most of them were sparring. Kira was helping look after the smaller kids in the village, and Ardek was gamely getting knocked around by whoever he got matched against. He knew how to hold and swing a sword, but fighting was not, and had never been, his forté.

  To his great credit, he never once complained or gave up in the hour or so that I spent watching them, and it was impossible not to respect that. It felt like every time I actually paid him any attention, I became more satisfied with my decision to spare his life. At one time I’d been planning to get rid of him, but Herald begging me not to changed that. And he did have that Advancement — or a pair of them, rather — that made people like him, which I knew very well that I wasn’t immune to. That notwithstanding, I knew him well enough by then that I was sure I would have liked him anyway. He was a good, dependable guy, simple as that. Very flexible when it came to following the law, too, which was useful and, despite my upbringing, had never been a big minus in my book.

  They were never all sparring at the same time, so I always had someone to talk to, but it wasn’t until they decided to call it quits for the morning that I asked them to gather around. In a break with how I’d handled my earlier Major Advancements, I simply told them everything I knew.

  Most of them were either my or Herald’s chosen servants. Only Tam and Val weren’t, but there were precious few people I could trust in this world, and they had proven time and time again that they deserved my trust and my honesty. Hell, one day I even planned to tell them about how I’d been human once, and about my two constant companions, things only Herald and Mak knew. But not yet. Dragons they could handle. Souls travelling between worlds… I wasn’t entirely comfortable with going there just yet.

  For now I told them about how, asleep or awake, I could see and feel through others. They were amazed, and they were a little disturbed, and they were open about that.

  “There is great opportunity for misuse, or embarrassment,” Val said solemnly. “I hope that you will think carefully before using this ability.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “This is for your sake, too,” Tam said. “I know you’re some kind of reptile, so I don’t know if people taking care of needs or getting intimate bothers you, but it would be a hell of a way to find out.”

  “No, I… I’d rather avoid that,” I said, glancing at Kira and Ardek. By their faces, they knew exactly who Tam had been thinking of when he said that.

  Other than that, they all took it well. Of course, my servants pretty much couldn’t mind, but even the four who weren’t under my direct influence seemed all right with the concept. As Tam put it, “I don’t say anything behind your back that I wouldn’t say to your face anyway. So what difference does it make if you’re listening in while I’m talking to Ardek? If you hear anything embarrassing, that’s your problem.”

  Mercies, but it was refreshing to talk to someone like Tam sometimes. Someone who cared enough about me to be honest and take my feelings into consideration, but not so much — and importantly, who didn’t fear me so much — that he couldn’t be irreverent.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that he was hiding his true feelings on the matter from me. I couldn’t imagine that he truly didn’t have any concerns at all. All I’d need to do was ask Mak, and she’d tell me.

  I considered it for a moment, but I didn’t need Conscience’s disapproval to drop the idea. I wouldn’t ask Mak to snitch on her brother, especially when she couldn’t refuse. No, I’d chosen to trust Tam, and I was going to stick to it. He deserved that and more, for all he’d done.

  On a sudden impulse, I told him, “I really appreciate you, you know that?”

  “I mean, thanks, and right back at you,” he said with a slight blush and a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Oh, nowhere. Just thought it needed saying.”

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