It was hard to say what the mood was after Behold Her attacked Karakan. Our worst case, almost-Doomsday scenario had played out, and the city had survived nearly unscathed. A celebration was in order, and according to what Conscience reported from watching Barro, there was plenty of that going on in the streets. Public sentiment even seemed to be leaning in our favor: word had gotten out that it was their dragon’s mother who had warned them, letting them prepare some kind of defenses, so now the wisdom on the street was that while Tekeretek had a dragon attacking them, they had not one, but two dragons of their own defending them.

  Which was absolutely wrong, of course. Tekeretek had no dragons at all, and neither did Karakan at the moment. Not really. But it did wonders for morale, and that had to count for something.

  At the same time, we had no idea if all the kids were all still alive and unharmed. We put our trust in Barro to find them, but he’d had to prioritize, and the night was only so long. He’d first gone to check on his family, which turned out to be rather large and spread across the city—something I should have known, perhaps. Then he’d made sure that the inn and all the staff there were safe, along with their families. Only when he’d done that did he start checking streetcorners and alleys for Ardek’s kids, and by then it was late enough that he’d never find them. Many but not all of the kids returned to the inn to sleep; the rest were happy enough to take Ardek’s food and coin, but not even he knew where they had their hideaways.

  It would be some time before we knew if everyone was safe. Ardek, irreverent street rat though he might be, was worried sick. And for all that I wanted to get back to my hoard as soon as possible, I could put it off for a few hours longer. A day or two, even. I owed him that.

  Mother returned once more in the evening. She wanted to take Kira to drain one last Rift before night fell, and was none too pleased when only I came up to meet her and explain that Kira was busy tending to her mate. It was one thing when her daughter begged and wheedled her to change her mind; it was something else entirely for her to be told that a human might have something better to do than carry out her will.

  She became a little more understanding when I explained about the situation in Karakan. The fact that I laid it on outrageously thick when I thanked her for the warning, basically giving her full credit for the city’s survival, probably helped with her mood, too.

  “These are not their own young, but they are raising them as though they were, yes?” she asked.

  “More or less,” I agreed, though I silently disputed whether raising was the right word to use. Ardek was trying to be a role model for the kids, that much was true, but from what I’d seen, those kids were far beyond raising. Giving them food, a warm place to sleep, and a way to earn a few bits that mostly kept them out of trouble was the best he and Kira could do most days. If they happened to learn a thing or two by osmosis, that was just a bonus.

  “Then it is understandable that he is excited. No guardian can sit idly by when their charges are threatened. The fact that he is entirely unable to do anything must be intolerable. Still. He is surrounded by allies. Why must his mate be the one to calm him? I know that he is no risk to anyone.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. She’s his mate. He loves her, and her presence comforts him. She knows the children, too. If she were gone, the only humans who know him well enough to talk to him about something like that are Herald and Mak, and I don’t think he’d be as open with them.”

  “He would if you commanded him to, would he not?”

  “Well… yes. But… but…” I sputtered out. How should I finish that? But it would be wrong? But it wouldn’t be real? But I would be overriding his free will, and lately just the thought of that made me feel dirty? I could explain, but I wasn’t sure that Sower of Embers, Reaper of Flame would understand. “It wouldn’t be good for him,” I finished lamely.

  “Then what of the hunter? He is wise, is he not? I saw him speak with the two new females when they were distressed, and they seemed much comforted.”

  Avjilan? Maybe. I knew that they got along well enough, and I’d been told before that Avjilan was not only a good listener, but good at doling out advice, too. But again, I just didn’t think that anyone but Kira could really soothe Ardek. And there was Kira herself to consider, too. She knew those kids. She helped to care for them, and she loved children. And while she wasn’t showing it, being as she was in full take-care-of-everone-but-herself mode, I was sure that she was just as worried as Ardek was.

  No. I wasn’t going to separate them. Not tonight. No matter how my hoard called to me.

  “Please, Mother,” I said. “Leave her until morning. Give my servant in the city time to look for the children, and give Kira and Ardek time to accept the situation. My wing is already healing remarkably fast. It’s all I can do to eat and sleep enough. I’ll be able to fly again soon. Missing one bout of healing will not delay it so much.”

  Slowly, the pressure of her displeasure grew. She wanted me well enough to fly now. She wanted me to take Herald and Instinct to my hoard now, so that I could try to bring Instinct back home, as it were. Failing that, she wanted me ready to go as soon as possible.

  I hadn’t even bothered to try so far. My membranes were perhaps halfway regrown, and no more. I might be able to flap around, low to the ground and with no control to speak of, but that was it. At the pace we were going, it would be another four days before I’d be back in the air; I hadn’t been exaggerating when I said that missing one round of healing tonight would make no appreciable difference.

  The pressure grew. I was beginning to fear that she’d gone from annoyed to truly angry at my defiance, and I was considering giving in and teaming up with Avjilan to talk to Ardek while Kira was away, when she suddenly released me.

  “That was unworthy of me,” Mother muttered with something akin to embarrassment. “You are merely protecting your treasures. Tomorrow, then. At sunrise. Sleep well, little one.”

  “Sleep well, Mother,” I replied weakly, watching her in surprised stillness as she took off and flew in the direction of Indomitable and Sandstorm’s tree.

  At sunrise the next day Mother was waiting outside the hole. And for another three days the pattern of fly, consume, heal, rest repeated.

  I worried what it might do to Kira. The constant use of magic—the constant cycle of full and empty, full and empty—I had no way of knowing what it might do to a human, body or soul. Hell, I had no idea what something like that would do to me—I’d never tried it, not on the scale of what Mother was putting Kira through. But I didn’t dare try to put a stop to it, not with how insistent Mother was. All I could do was to watch Kira for any sign that it was harming her. I found none. In fact, she insisted that she felt amazing, and that seeing my wing slowly heal made any fatigue she might suffer more than worth it.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The children were all accounted for before the sun set on the day after the attack. Some had hidden. Others had simply not considered that anyone would care, with Ardek and Kira away. But Barro went to the inn early in the morning with the brilliant idea of paying the kids who’d slept there to find the others, with a bounty for every missing kid they brought in, and that did the trick. Set a thief to catch a thief, as they say.

  Behold Her didn’t attack the city of Karakan again, but that didn’t mean that her spite and cruelty were in any way sated. She may not be able to ruin the city, but from what Conscience and I heard through Barro and Onur she had instead turned to laying waste to the countryside. The only mercy was that so much of the rural population had already evacuated to the city; while she could utterly destroy farms and pastures, hopefully few lives would be lost.

  Still, it was painful to sit there in Malyon, unable to do anything while Behold Her preyed on people I’d agreed to protect. Sure, it was Embers I’d promised to protect them from, but I didn’t feel the difference. I doubted those who lost their homes or loved ones would either. And just as bad, in a very different way, was that now that the elation of having survived Behold Her’s attack had started wearing off, some few people were suggesting that perhaps Tekeretek were right. They’d cited the presence of a dragon as their reason to declare war, and here was a dragon laying waste to the countryside. That those two dragons were not, in fact, one and the same didn’t seem to matter. And while the offending dragon had been driven off from the city, it had still done damage, and there was nothing that suggested that the Council had any way of dealing with it.

  Tekeretek had killed their dragons, people whispered, and had been free of them for centuries. If anyone knew how to deal with a marauding dragon, it would be them.

  Such talk was thankfully unpopular, at least for now. But if Behold Her reduced the fertile lands around the city to a wasteland populated only by great billowing clouds of greyish-brown dust, how long would it take before Tekeretek looked like the lesser evil?

  On the morning of the fourth day after Behold Her attacked Karakan, after seven full days of round after round of heal, eat, sleep, my right wing was almost entirely restored. I met Mother outside the ruins as Kira ascended the stairs, which had now been clear of rubble for days, and Mother took one look at me before declaring, “Perhaps we should have you try flying today.”

  “I hoped you might say that,” I replied, rustling my wings with great satisfaction, and a deep, burning excitement. If I could fly, I could finally see my hoard again. I could bring our new finds there and hear the sweet music of gold falling on gold, feel the press of coins against my scales, and let that familiar, intoxicating scent envelop me.

  Gods and Mercies, I needed it.

  When Kira appeared I told her, “Wait here for a while, yeah? With any luck you won’t need to spend half the day in my mother’s hands.”

  “Oh,” she said, with a note of something suspiciously like disappointment. “Are you sure? I truly don’t mind, and your mother has been nothing but gentle and considerate. If you need another day of healing—”

  “I’m glad to hear that you got along with my mother,” I told her fondly. And I really was. If Mother had been less interested in humans, like Indomitable, or entirely dismissive, like Sandstorm’s father, my life would have been a lot more complicated. “For now I’m going to try flying, and see if I think I can make it all the way to my hoard.”

  “I’ll be right here,” she said, bowing her head respectfully to my mother before backing off into the shade of a piece of the palace’s wall which still stood.

  I couldn’t help but think that she didn’t sound particularly excited about me potentially getting my flight back and her being done with over a week of exhausting repetition, but I dismissed it as her being tired and didn’t worry any more about it. I was going to try my wings!

  I’d already given them a few experimental flaps as the days passed and the membranes grew back. Of course I had! I hadn’t been able to fly for weeks, and I longed to get back in the sky almost as much as I longed to return to my hoard. From the first day that I’d known the freedom of the open air, nothing had been the same. Flight became a necessity, as essential to life as food, water, and oxygen, and I could only be so patient. So I’d stretched my wings, and I’d seen how much resistance I felt when I beat with the right one, and every day that resistance had increased just a bit. Now I felt strong, ready, and bursting with energy.

  I gave my wings a flap, feeling the weight on my feet drop by a healthy bit. Then I focused on how my right wing felt—if there was any lingering sting or burning or anything else that might indicate that the newly healed membranes might have stretched too much, or even torn. But there was nothing. The wing felt healthy, if a little weak from underuse. So I gave it a harder flap, and checked again. Then I pushed myself until my feet left the ground and I was hovering unsteadily in the air. It was trickier than it had been before my injury, probably because there was still less area to my right wing than my left one, but after some practice I got the hang of it.

  “You are doing well, little one,” Mother rumbled approvingly. “How does your wing feel?”

  “Like it belongs to a slightly smaller dragon,” I told her frankly, “but I think it will serve!”

  I settled on the ground. My wing still felt perfectly fine, but I asked Kira to inspect it just in case. And she was as thorough as I could have possibly wished, going over every spare inch before declaring that she couldn’t find anything resembling damage.

  “Alright!” I said eagerly. “In that case…”

  I took a few excited steps away from Kira and leaped into the air, my wings gripping it greedily as I climbed. I had trouble keeping a straight line at first, just like I’d had with hovering steadily, but I got that sorted out quick enough. First I took a lap around the palace grounds, then around the high city, and when I felt no pain or exhaustion I felt brave enough to go for a full circuit of the city. Behold Her was far away, after all, and Unquenchable and Quake were, at least nominally, allies now. I had nothing to fear but my own failure, and I was far too excited to consider that a possibility.

  Flying again was no less than amazing. Even with me keeping one nervous eye on the ground and the other on the horizon, just in case, I felt like I’d had my life handed back to me. Things I hadn’t even known I’d been feeling bubbled to the surface only because I no longer felt them: the sense of being trapped, of being small, weak, and helpless. Of being less than a dragon. All that fell away as I flew, reveling in it as though it was my first time all over again.

  Gods and Mercies. Flying; there was nothing like it. I didn’t even pretend that the tears streaming behind me were from the wind. I was free again.

  I didn’t leave for the south immediately. Mother didn’t insist that I do so and Herald needed to get ready, but more importantly, I needed to cuddle the everliving hell out of Kira to fully show just how much I appreciated what she’d done for me through a week of constant hard work. And I didn’t care that Mother was watching; I fell on Kira the moment she’d examined my wings and declared them entirely undamaged.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to the laughing healer as I wrapped myself around her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Words can’t express how grateful I am for you giving me my wing back.”

  “You know you don’t need to thank me,” she said demurely after she got her laughter under control. “Healing is my calling. And it was your mother who insisted.”

  “Still. I’d be stuck here until we worked up the courage to walk home if not for you, and then it’d take ages. And gods only know how long it would take to heal, even once I could sleep on my hoard. For all we know, I might have woken weeks or even months later, just skin and bone, out of my mind with hunger and ready to eat the first warm thing I saw. No, you deserve all my gratitude, and you have it. Is there anything you want? Anything I can give you?”

  “Draka, no!” she giggled, then pressed her cheek against my neck. “No,” she said more seriously. “I’m a healer. It’s my purpose and my greatest joy in life, and you’ve been letting me use my magic for good instead of… you know. But if you really want to do something for me, take me to a Rift. I admit that I feel a little wrung out, and I don’t like knowing that I can’t perform at my best if something happens.”

  “Sure!” I agreed immediately. I didn’t hesitate for a moment. It was just so Kira; she accepted my gratitude, and used it to help everyone else. Gods and Mercies, I didn’t deserve her.

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