For a moment I stood, paralyzed by grief and horror at the loss of my wing. Behind me I heard Behold Her coming closer, not using her breath, just using brute strength to tear through the forest, knocking aside any tree she couldn’t easily go around. Soon she’d be on me, and that would be that.

  Conscience, I whispered into my mind. Did Avjilan get away?

  He’s heading to the palace, the remains of my human side replied, her voice full of honest sympathy. He’s fine. Shaken, but fine. So are the others. You did good, all right?

  Thank you, I said, and even in my mind the words sounded pitiful. But she understood. I wasn’t at all sure that I’d survive this, and I needed to know that it hadn’t been for nothing. Knowing that I’d at least given one of my people a chance, that… it didn’t make the very real possibility of my imminent death any less bitter, but it was a spoonful of sugar to help it go down.

  But just because I was pessimistic didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to use every trick I had left to get out of this. I couldn’t fly, so I couldn’t flee. Not indefinitely. And I certainly couldn’t fight. Fine. I was a dragon of shadow and stealth. It stung my pride, but I’d just bloody well hide and try to sneak away when her back was turned.

  All I needed was a good place to hide, with deep shadows, so I could Shift. I could have shifted right where I was, but I wasn’t going to risk her seeing me do it if I could help it. Much better if she thought I somehow got away, rather than seeing me magically disappear before her eyes. Well, the shrine lay ahead, the door open, the sun behind it. I didn’t have many choices; it was go inside, or continue past and keep going until I hit the trees again. And with how much my whole right side pained me, I wasn’t sure how fast I could push myself to go without collapsing.

  I dragged myself through the door, dipping to the side and Shifting immediately. There was some relief when I did. Not much. I remembered Mak had mentioned a poison or infection in Presence’s wounds, and with any luck Shifting had gotten rid of any that I carried. It also caused a terrifying number of scales to rain to the floor, along with scraps and other remains of dead hide. I hadn’t considered that. A line of shed parts almost the length of my body now clearly marked where I had Shifted. There wasn’t much I could do, though. I drifted to the other side of the door, hoping she wouldn’t notice the shadows moving, and that would have to do.

  Behold Her wasn’t far behind me. Her steps were heavy, and she slowed down as she approached the shrine. Her breathing was one long growl, interrupted only by the occasional deep inhalation. From my position flat against the wall I watched the doorway, but most of my focus was on that growl. I had to be ready to move, in case the growl stopped. That might mean that she’d decided that tearing me apart with her claws was too much work and that she’d rather just fill the whole rotunda with flesh-eating mist, and I couldn’t even guess what that might do to me in my shadow form. I might be immune, or it might just burn me right out of existence. But I didn’t think that she would. I’d gambled that she wouldn’t. I’d looked into her eyes and seen the malice there, and I was sure enough that she’d want to feel my flesh part under her claws that I’d risked going into a building with only one exit.

  Behold Her kept coming, and she kept growling. And then she stopped right outside. She stopped growling, too, but she did so to speak.

  “Little thief,” she said, in that archaic Sareyan of hers. Her voice dripped with venom. “Little Draka. Is it that you think that nothing learned I from your father? Bested him I did not, but fought him three times did I. Hid and struck from the shadows, did he. But far stronger than you, was he, and far younger was I. Try it. Invite you, do I.”

  Then she stalked forward, her heavy breaths replaced by careful snuffling as she scented the air. I prepared to move.

  Then there was a muted Thuck and Behold Her roared in outrage, tearing up a wind as she whirled. “Who?” she screamed furiously. “Who dares?!”

  A voice answered her, and my heart fell. “Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End!” Instinct screamed in Tekereteki, her voice muted by distance but dripping with scorn. “Behold Her And Know The Face Of Cowardice would be better! Hunting a whelp only once her mother is away! I name you craven and weakling!”

  There was another Thuck and another outraged roar from Behold Her. “You dare?!” she said, practically repeating herself, only this time in Tekereteki.

  “Such eloquence!” Instinct replied, followed by a third Thuck which I could only assume was the sound of arrows bouncing off Behold Her’s scales. “You speak three tongues, and twice as many words! I name you dullard and lack-wit! Behold Her And Know That Age Alone Does Not Bring Cunning!”

  I risked peeking around the frame of the door and saw Behold Her there. The ruby dragon was facing southwest, her face locked in a rictus of fury as she scanned the forest there. She kept glancing toward the door where I was, but didn’t seem to see me, immaterial and enveloped by the shadows inside as I was.

  From her right side, two thick wooden shafts protruded. They looked small against her massive frame, but they were stuck in there deep, and no wonder. I thought I recognized Herald’s enchanted broadheads from the shape of the fletchings, and fired by Avjilan, imbued by magic that let them fly with unimaginable force, I had no trouble believing that they’d pierce even this dragon’s hide.

  I saw the fourth arrow coming. This one was a regular, mundane arrow. It ricocheted off Behold Her’s cheek, just below her eye, and she flinched away, tossing her head. This time it was Herald who spoke. A short bark of scornful laughter was followed by her own voice declaring, “No wonder one as small as He Who Darkens The Night drove her off. Look how easily she startles! Pathetic!”

  That was as far as Behold Her’s patience and ability to remain rational stretched. With a roar she tore her attention entirely from the rotunda, bunched her legs, and prepared to charge. I couldn’t let her. I imagined she’d simply hose down the entire forest, if that was what it took to kill the one who’d insulted her, and Herald and Instinct’s chances of escape were slim if that happened. So, I used the one trick I had left. I invaded Behold Her’s own shadow.

  I had no idea what it might do against a dragon, especially one so invested with magic as Behold Her, but I had to try. I surged forward, piercing the ruby dragon’s shadow with my golden tendrils and driving it to an abyssal darkness as I wrapped it around her, focusing on her head and especially her eyes. At the same time I squeezed with all my might, hoping that it would do something, anything. And it did.

  Behold Her reared up on her hind legs, pawing at her face. She didn’t roar. She shrieked. It wasn’t quite a scream of fear, and she certainly didn't smell of it, but it was a sound of startled surprise, of confusion and agitation. She wasn’t afraid, but she couldn’t see, she didn’t know what was happening, and she hated it.

  Seeing that I was actually hurting her in some small way, I squeezed harder. I poured everything I had into Behold Her’s shadow, making it as dark as her heart. And then, when I couldn’t possibly do more, I set it in place.

  With an undignified noise that I could only call a yelp, Behold Her fled. Sher uncoiled her mighty legs and took off running, her long, loping strides taking her east, toward the palace.

  Fear for my humans spiked in me again, but Conscience was there almost immediately. They have found a way around the mist, she told me in that sharply controlled tone that people get when they really want to fall apart, but know that at least one person has to keep it together. Mak is leading them to the opened side entrance. If Behold Her gets there at all, they’ll be inside by the time she does.

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  Okay. Okay, great. Yeah. Okay, I babbled. I was exhausted. I’d poured… I couldn’t say how much power went into that shadow binding, but it was enough that I had a hard time staying Shifted. That hadn’t happened to me for ages.

  You need to go, Conscience told me. Go to Herald and Scaley. I know you want to go to the palace, but we can’t expect Behold Her to stay blind, and she might just start hosing the forest down. Get Herald, and get into the tunnels. You’ll be safe to rest there.

  And Herald? I asked. How safe will she be, with all that background magic?

  I don’t know, Conscience said guiltily. But I’d bet she’ll be safer there than up here, and if she starts glowing you can take the extra out of her, yeah?

  Right, I said, grateful for an excuse to go hide somewhere and defaulting. Sure, okay. Yeah.

  I made it to the edge of the rotunda’s shadow before I had to Shift back. I’d thought that being Shifted only helped somewhat with the pain, but I’d been wrong. Once I had to carry my weight on all four limbs, the pain shot right up again.

  Herald waited at the edge of the trees, and I went straight to her. The pain and horror on her face told her all I needed to know about how I looked.

  “Oh, Draka!” she said, and it was Herald, not Instinct, speaking. “What has she done to you, sweet sister?”

  “Later,” I groaned. “No time. We need to get in the tunnels.”

  Herald nodded, and we turned in that direction. As we walked her voice changed, and Instinct said, “That was impressive, Little Ghost. You did well.”

  “Yeah?” I thought about it, and yeah, I’d sent a grown dragon running. That was pretty damn impressive!

  “Yes,” she said gravely. “Father would have been proud. I am sure of it. As will Mother, once she comes to her senses.”

  Mother. Right. I thought about Embers and Indomitable and Sandstorm and all the others. They must have seen us in the air. They must have heard Behold Her roaring as she came to kill me. And no one, not even my own mother, had come to our aid. They’d abandoned us, leaving us to our fate.

  For all that I had Herald beside me, her head reaching no higher than my chest, I felt incredibly small and alone in that moment. But for myself I only felt pity; for Instinct, my heart broke. She adored our mother. I couldn’t imagine how she felt when Embers left and didn’t return, even to save our lives.

  At least at the moment she seemed to be either optimistic, or in denial. Both were better than giving up. And hey! Maybe she’d be proven right. I could only hope.

  Herald kept throwing horrified glances at my wing and side, but we barely spoke. I only broke the silence when Conscience reported in, which she did regularly, to tell Herald what Conscience told me. The other humans had made it into the palace. Even the poor mules were accounted for. Sarina had led them to a door that took them to the lower floors, and they were trying to convince the mules to go down the stairs. And then Behold Her arrived.

  The first thing I heard of it wasn’t from Conscience. We were at the stairs into the tunnels. I was gathering my strength to Shift, and I’d started wondering about Conscience’s long silence, when Herald and I both started at a terrible noise of stone collapsing onto stone in a continuous, drawn out rumble from the east. I was working myself into a panic when Conscience returned.

  First, nobody’s hurt, all right? she said quickly, as soon as she was back with me. And I’m sorry for delaying. I didn’t want to risk you straining yourself and putting yourself in danger when there was nothing you could do. And I know how patronizing that sounds, but we both know you. So, ah, Behold Her got to the palace. In a bloody rage, too. She must have gone by smell, following them or the loot they were carrying or something, because she knew that Kira and everyone were in there. She was roaring about how she was going to make them suffer for what you’d done to her. Anyway, that got the mules moving, and they all shut themselves in the basement before… I mean, I can only assume she brought the whole damn place down from the noise. I went with Mak when she checked on the stairs and some of that red shit was leaking in, so they all took off deeper. That’s where they are now. All safe, but trapped and worried all to hell about you and Herald.

  Right about as Conscience finished, Behold Her’s voice carried from the east. There were no words, just a roar of murderous wrath so loud that Indomitable and Sandstorm must have heard it, down in the southeast of the city.

  “We should get below,” Herald said hoarsely. “You need rest, and we should see if we can get to the palace via the tunnels.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I was still tired, but I didn’t doubt that Behold Her would come looking for us once she got her eyesight back. And between the resistance to magic that I suspected all dragons had, and the huge amount of magic she carried within her, I knew in my bones that she would. It was only a question of if she already had, or if it would happen in the next few minutes or, should we be so lucky, hours.

  So I Shifted, and we descended the stairs. The ropes were still there in the collapsed corridor, and Herald was still energized enough from the Rift that she didn’t have much trouble climbing despite her long convalescence. We didn’t waste any time in the main chamber. We crossed immediately to the open gate across the spiral stairwell from us, weaving between desiccated bodies and giving the stairwell itself wide berth. I could sense Mak and Tammy in the direction the gate led, and had every hope that it would take us to the palace.

  We both saw quickly that it would not be so easy. The gate led to a tunnel, as we’d known from before. And after far too short a distance, on the order of fifty yards, that tunnel ended in a smooth wall. Herald could see the same tiny chips and other marks as on the gate to the control room, but this was as dead as that one had been.

  We stood before it for a long moment, her in front of me as I filled the width of the tunnel with my bulk, just watching the stone. Then Herald heaved a tired sigh, and I thought I heard a careful sniff before she said, “All right. That is fine. No worries. We will simply rest for a while, then Shift and make our way to the palace through the ruins. Then we will find some way inside. It was a palace, right? There must be dozens of ways in! Whatever Behold Her did to the ruin, she can’t have collapsed the whole thing, surely. There must be at least one way into the lower levels.”

  “Sure, yeah,” I said, trying to sound confident despite the pain, and the fatigue, and the general fear and anxiety that I’d felt ever since Embers had confronted and then abandoned us. “Or I’ll find a way to open this gate, magic or no. Or they’ll break through from the other side. Mak and Tammy can sense where I am just as well as I can them. It’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice shuddering. She sniffed again, louder this time. “It’ll be fine. It’ll be just fine.”

  Gods, in just one day everything had gone so wrong. Behold Her’s attack on Presence and Grace. The arrival of Indomitable and Sandstorm, bringing the number of dragons on the island to ten, which would have been unfathomable to me and everyone else not so long ago. Then Embers’ rejection, and Behold Her’s opportunistic attack on us.

  It was beyond fortunate that no one I truly cared for had been hurt. I still knew that I’d carry this day with me for the rest of my life, however long that may be.

  It was a huge relief to us, in the hours that followed, that Conscience and I could cast ourselves into any of most of the other humans. At least that way we knew that they were all together. They had light, in the form of our lightstones, and they had food for a few days, though the poor mules would have to fast. They’d even found a source of water — whatever ancient enchantment or mechanism kept the fountains flowing also kept a cistern deep under the palace circulating with drinkable water. So though we were separated from our friends, we knew that they could hold out for some time, while we worked things out. And whatever else happened, we had each other. Can you tell Scaly that I’m glad she’s still around? Conscience asked me during one of the long silences as we rested. I know I give her—and you; you don’t need to say it—a lot of shit. But I really hated the idea that she might be gone gone.

  Sure, I replied, though really I would have preferred if she’d just stayed silent. I was trying to nap, so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain for a while. But why not tell her yourself? More meaningful that way, yeah? And I can’t remember the last time you spoke aloud.

  Yeah, nah, that’s all right, she said. It’s… you remember that time back in the tunnels? Months and months ago, when Scaly stopped filtering everything?

  I suppressed a shudder. It had been a profoundly unpleasant experience, like every description of body dysphoria I’d ever heard cranked up to eleven. Not likely to forget that, yeah, I told her.

  Yeah, that’s what it’s been like for me every time I ever got even close to being in control. And while I can get a few prepared words out, I don’t think it’ll do anyone any good if the dragon has a panic attack all of a sudden.

  Right. No, I get that. I’ll tell her once Herald wakes up.

  To my left, Herald slept fitfully. She’d been avoiding my right side, since even a glance of my ruined wing and peeling scales were enough to break her composure and bring the tears back. Inside her, I assumed that Instinct slept as well, since she couldn’t leave.

  Mercies, what an impossible little group we made. Me and Conscience; Herald and Instinct. Two bodies, four souls. A human trapped in a dragon, and a dragon trapped in a human. If it wasn’t my own life, I might’ve laughed.

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