The vault was a treasure trove; that was beyond discussion. But what we found inside was not the state treasury of the ancient city of Malyon. While there were certainly the scents of gold and silver in the air, there were no chests of coins or sacks of jewels. What we found was art, carefully displayed with little plaques that presumably held descriptions. And a large part of the collection consisted of statuary, much to Marvan’s chagrin.

  I was only distantly amused. Not because I was disappointed, which I was; gold coins were a much easier way to transport huge amounts of wealth than paintings, sculptures, and statues. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to be either truly amused or disappointed, because of what my eyes had fallen on.

  At the back of the smallish hall that made up the vault, right in the center, so that it would be the first thing you saw as you looked through the open door, was a statue carved from some black, lustrous material. It wasn’t life-size, and I wasn’t close enough to make out a lot of detail, but I knew in my bones that it could only depict one subject.

  Graceful and slender, wings spread and head held high and proud, my father gazed toward us as we passed through the door.

  The door was in the center of the wall, and past a short entrance hall the vault widened; not too much, but enough to fit two straight rows of plinths on each side with room to walk around them, running the sixty foot length of the room. Along the walls were showcases of different shapes and sizes, separated by mosaics and tapestries and what looked like murals that had been cut out from where they had originally been painted and transported here. I barely looked at them.

  As the humans spread out, taking stock of what we’d found, I approached that statue at the back. I had no way of telling how true-to-life it was. Not really. The murals in the destroyed shrine had been very life-like, and Embers had recognized Night on them. The statue resembled the Night on those murals very closely. But that didn’t mean that it was accurate. It might be heavily idealized for all I knew, based on some human criteria; in fact, that seemed likely considering how high esteem this city had held my father in. But accurate or not, I could recognize Night, and some of the sorrow I carried for the loss of the mural abated. At least there still existed one representation of him.

  I couldn’t say why that was so important to me, but it was. For the time my dragon half had known him, the primary emotion it had felt toward him was fear. I remembered nothing of his character. But he’d been my father, and this city had loved him, and Embers had mourned him. Like how you might keep an old, faded photo of a grandparent on your wall, taken when you were so young that printed photos were still a thing, having this statue to remind me what he looked like felt incredibly precious.

  Beside me, someone cleared his throat. When I looked, Marvan of all people stood there. “So, Lady Draka, if you don’t mind me asking,” he said, “how do we get all of this out of the city?”

  “Hmm? Oh, probably not the way you fear. There’s so much of it we’ll need equipment. Cranes and such.”

  “Thank you, Great Lady,” he said, some of the tension leaving him. “I cannot fully express what a relief that is to hear.”

  “Yeah, no worries. And we couldn’t risk taking anything out yet anyway, not with hostile dragons about. I don’t like the idea of you leaving these cellars at all. Especially as long as Behold Her is out there. I embarrassed her, and now my granduncle has done the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d devote some considerable time and effort to trying to kill you, just for the sake of causing me grief.”

  “From how she behaved as we fled here…” Marvan shuddered. “There is no doubt in my mind that you’re right, Great Lady. I pray she never learns just how important my mistress is to you.”

  That thought had occurred to me before, but his words sent a fresh chill up my spine regardless.

  Then Ardek’s voice rang out, loud and excited enough to pull me out of my horrible thoughts. “Boss! Hey, boss! I found something you’re gonna like!”

  “I found it,” Sarina said from the same direction. “You got it open. Don’t be a glory hog!”

  “Fine, we found something you’ll like, boss!”

  Everyone converged on the corner of the vault where Ardek and Sarina had made their find. With them already were Zabra and Tammy, but Mak, Herald, Maglan and Avjilan soon joined them while I took my time navigating between the plinths and the statues on them, exceedingly careful not to knock anything on the floor. My Grace and Stealth Advancements really came in clutch there.

  By the excitement I could hear in everyone’s voices even before Marvan and I reached the group, I knew that Ardek was right. I most definitely would like whatever they’d found. And by the shit-eating grin on his face when I arrived, he knew very well how much he’d been underselling the degree to which I’d like it.

  What he and Sarina had found was a large jeweler’s display case, though there was no glass window in the lid to look inside. Not that it mattered one wit, because the contents set my big, greedy heart ablaze.

  The jewellery inside were pieces of art, there was no denying that. Wrought silver, gold, and what I thought must be platinum by how it somehow smelled even better than gold—sacrilegious as that thought was—sat in a large silk-clad base, their intricately cut and carved settings on display. I’d never seen the like before, at least not in person. There were pendants where slivers of gemstones in different colors had been fitted together like stained glass, creating small scenes inside gold fittings; and there were rings and bracelets and other jewellery fitted with gems and precious stones that had been cut into abstract designs and likenesses of plants, animals, and even people, to such a level of detail that I had no doubt that those people would have been recognizable to someone who knew them. And there were some pieces that were just cut gems set in metal, but whose balance and proportion made them stunning in their simplicity.

  They were art, there was no denying that. But they were equally as undeniably loot: precious metals and precious stones in an easy-to-carry format.

  “Wonderful find,” I told them, a low, approving rumble coloring my words. “Pack it all up. Carefully. We don’t want any of these pieces to get damaged.”

  “We most certainly do not,” Herald agreed as she gently caressed a simple onyx pendant in the shape of a dragon, inlaid with gold that brought out all the details. She looked up at me, her golden eyes bright with desire. “Um… have you— they are not part of your hoard yet, right? So—”

  “Take it,” I told her, still rumbling happily. “In fact, everyone! Take a look and see if there’s a piece you want, for yourself or as a gift. As long as it’s something that can actually be worn without destroying it, you can have it. That goes for all of you, whether you’re mine or not.”

  “This is excessively generous, to the point of foolishness!” Herald grumbled after she’d taken her pendant, and the others crowded in. It took me a confused moment to realize that the voice was not hers, but Instinct’s.

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  “It’s good to hear from you,” I told her, keeping my voice low so only she and Herald would hear over the excited chatter around the jewellery case. “And they’ve been through a lot because of me. They deserve something while I can still let them have it.”

  “Then give them a statue or two!” she replied. “Something with no objective value! Not our gold!”

  “There are dozens of pieces there, in this case alone,” I told her reasonably. “We can afford to part with a few. And gratitude and the hope of more will bind them to us as surely as fear or adoration.”

  Instinct somehow managed an unhappy rumble from Herald’s chest, but she didn’t argue any further, which I took as reluctant acceptance.

  We ended up finding a fair deal more in the way of precious metals; plates, cups, mirrors, all sorts of things, really. What they all had in common was that they were, in some way, art; whether it was their decoration or their sublime design, they all gave an impression of existing to be admired, not used. It was an incredible find.

  It just wasn’t as much as I’d hoped for.

  Mak, ever attentive to my mood, ran her hand along my uninjured side. “You know,” she said, “it may not be gold bars or coin, but I’d bet that every piece in this collection is worth a lot more than its weight in gold. You could pick out a few of the things that really speak to you, and then we can sell the rest. Even the statues! I bet Zabra knows some people who’d be interested if we don’t want to put them up for auction.”

  “It might cost more to transport those south than it’s worth,” I objected weakly. “But I hear you. And it will be some time before I can bring anything to my hoard anyway, with this wing.”

  “We’ll get you healed up, don’t worry.” She kept running her hand over my scales, slow and gentle, over and over. It was wonderfully soothing. “But you have to let us know before your longing for the hoard becomes unbearable, alright? Please? We don’t know how long it’ll take Kira’s healing to restore your wing once she really puts an effort in. I can’t bear the thought of watching you suffer because you’ve been away so long, and you can’t go. It’s been a week already since you last visited.”

  “I know,” I said, craning my neck around to nuzzle her head and getting a happy little hum out of her. “Thank you. For your concern and for cheering me up. I know you don’t have much choice in the matter, but… thank you.”

  “I like to think that I’d do the same anyway. We were becoming friends, weren’t we? Before—” she glanced toward Zabra then shook her head.

  “We were,” I agreed. “And I know that you’re happy. I hope it doesn’t take away from that happiness if I tell you that I wish we’d continued like that.”

  “And I hope that you can accept that I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Everything that we could pack up safely and without damaging them, we did. That mostly meant a lot of jewellery, which all came in very handsome cases, as well as decorative plates, handmirrors, and other flat items that could be stored tightly bound with cloth separating them. No matter how disappointed I may have been, we ended up with pounds and pounds and pounds of gems and precious metals, enough to make every human there a wealthy man or woman if they were getting an equal share. Which they weren’t, but only Maglan was in a position to possibly be disappointed about that, and with how attached Herald was to him I expected he’d be an official member of the family soon enough.

  Until then I figured we should probably give him some kind of share. He and Herald had been somewhat even until I came along. Now he was a rank and file soldier, while she was legitimately rich and getting richer. And while there was an argument to be made that he wasn’t worth her time if he couldn’t handle her being the one with all the money, it honestly wasn’t worth the risk of Herald getting her heart broken.

  I quietly, in English, told Mak to take care of it. I left the amount to her discretion. She knew him and the economic realities of being a human in Karakan far better than I did.

  We’d worked well into the night, according to my internal clock, and everybody got to sleep pretty quickly once we’d moved our loot back to the dorm where we’d camped out.

  Well, Sarina and Marvan didn’t, but considering how they snuck off when they thought no one else was still awake — and how they smelled when they returned — I was pretty sure that having trouble sleeping had nothing to do with it. They’d been pretty handsy with each other after we got into the vault.

  Early the next morning those still asleep were woken by the distant crashing of stone on stone.

  “Herald, Mak, with me” I said as people began moving, dressing and arming themselves. “Everyone else, get ready, but stay here and don’t pack up the camp. If we need you, you’ll hear.”

  Maglan, Sarina, and Marvan all looked to Herald for confirmation. She nodded, and while they didn’t look happy about it, the married couple accepted her decision without argument. Maglan, though, needed some cajoling. He really didn’t want Herald potentially going into danger at all, and very much wanted to be with her if she did. It took her pointing out that his skill at archery was unlikely to help in the fairly short corridors of the lower levels, along with a demonstration of her shadow form, to convince him to stay.

  It was tempting to treat his insistence as some kind of chauvinistic delusion that he’d be better able to keep Herald safe than… well, any of the three of us, really. But I really didn’t think so. Maglan might not be as well read as some others in our little band—his ability to read and write at all was limited—but he wasn’t stupid. He knew full well how capable Herald was, and in a scrap she might be as far behind Mak as Mak was behind me. And I’d never once seen any sign of him treating any woman as being weak; the closest he’d come was to offer to help Tammy with things she couldn’t easily do with her new hand still only being half-formed. No, I was convinced that it came down entirely to the fear that Herald might get hurt while they were apart. He loved her. It was apparent in every glance, every touch, and every word they shared. And while it was extremely unlikely that he thought he’d be able to protect her where Mak or I couldn’t, I could understand the thought that he might at least be able to do something.

  In fairness to Mag, it’s not impossible that he might have been if what we’d be facing wasn’t almost entirely certain to be a dragon. But we were, and none of us were actually going to be fighting. Even Mak was only there because she somewhat knew the layout of the cellars, and the only question was whether it was Indomitable, whom we’d greet with gratitude, or Behold Her, in which case we’d need to find a way to shut ourselves away somewhere her mist couldn’t get to us.

  Leaving an unhappy Mag behind, we snuck through the corridors, heading in the direction of the sound. Mak could be incredibly stealthy when necessary, but Herald and I could be almost entirely invisible, especially in the dark. In fact, we were Shifted as we followed her; me out of practical necessity, and Herald because she sounded like a drunk tap dancer beside her older sisters.

  Mak led us toward the stairs first. That seemed like the logical place to start, after all. But when we arrived, Mak said that they looked as they had after Behold Her collapsed the palace on top of them, and rocks tumbled down the stairwell all the way to the lower level where we were. There was no sign that anyone was breaking in there—not so much as a haze of dust in the air.

  Despite that it soon became apparent that we were in the right place. The room at the base of the stairs was large enough for me to comfortably Shift back, and as we were having a hushed discussion about what to do next there came another muted sound of stones crashing and grinding, along with a faint, low growling that might have been Draconic, and might just have been an annoyed dragon.

  Someone was digging around upstairs, and we needed to know who. I sent Mak back to the others; she went reluctantly. Then Herald and I settled in to wait.

  We had to wait for some time. The sounds of shifting stone were constant and frequently mixed with indistinct growls and hisses, but it took well over an hour before we saw the first breath of dust right at the top of the stones blocking the stairwell. It took another agonizingly long time before the first stone actually shifted, and was then removed, letting in a trickle of what looked suspiciously like daylight. Which on its face made no sense, with us being two levels below the ground and the only way up being a set of stairs that, on the floor above, should lead away from us. When I considered that there was clearly a dragon up there, though, on what was the first level of the cellars, it made a lot more sense. There was no way that whoever it was had made it down the stairs. Either the stairs were gone, or the cellar had a fancy new skylight.

  Herald and I had stopped speaking long ago. When that first stone shifted, so did we, merging into the shadows in anticipation of whoever it was sticking their head in for a look. That took yet another wait, keeping us on edge for long minutes as we wondered who might be up there, digging into our hiding place. But after a time that probably felt an order of magnitude longer than it was, whoever it was had opened up a fairly large hole by the ceiling, and we got our answer.

  and get 8 chapters early of both Draka and , as well as anything else I’m trying out.

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