Ace had stopped eating.
Vespera noticed after the third time her sister looked toward the mess-hall entrance. The meal between them had cooled. For a little while, sharing it had made their return from the sky feel like the beginning of something easier.
Apparently, that part was over.
“Are you expecting someone?” Vespera asked.
Ace brought her attention back to the table. “No.”
“Then stop checking the door as though you hope to leave before they arrive.”
Her sister looked down at her plate. Pink electricity moved briefly between two fingers before she pressed them against the wood.
“I was thinking about Lenora and Lewd.”
“They can speak to each other without you supervising them.”
“I know.”
Vespera waited for the rest. Ace gave her nothing.
“You have spent a great deal of time with them,” she said. “Enough that reporting to Seraphine seems to have become something you do after everything else.”
Ace leaned back. Her hammer rested beside the bench, within easy reach.
“I am tired.”
“So am I. That does not explain what you intend to do.”
For a moment, Ace studied her as though deciding whether the small peace they had found could survive an honest answer.
“I am leaving the Seven.”
One of Vespera’s rings stopped turning.
Around them, servants continued clearing dishes. Someone laughed at the far end of the room. The ordinary sounds made the statement feel badly placed, too large for a conversation beside unfinished food.
“You cannot announce that here.”
“I have just told you. I have not stood on the table.”
“Ace.”
“What did you expect? That telling you why I could not go home would make me content to remain where I am?”
Vespera drew her hand away from the hovering ring.
“We are in the World Tree capital. Seraphine is meeting Vaeloria. You have duties, and everyone is watching for a reason to interpret what we do as a threat.”
“I am not walking into the throne room and abandoning my position in the middle of an attack.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That I want to choose what happens after this.”
Black flame caught briefly along Vespera’s fingers. She closed her hand and put it in her lap.
“You make it sound as though the rest of us never choose anything.”
“You came because the Valley sent you.”
“I also came because you are my sister. We have already had that conversation.”
Ace looked away.
Vespera watched her jaw tighten, then ease.
“Yes,” Ace said. “We have. That was unfair.”
The admission kept Vespera from giving the answer she had been preparing.
Ace rested her forearms on the table.
“I want to understand why they stay with him.”
“Lenora and Lewd?”
“They are angry with him. Frightened for him. Sometimes frightened by what he does. They still want to speak to him rather than decide what should be done with him.”
Vespera touched the collar at her throat before making herself lower her hand.
“They have not agreed with every choice he has made.”
“That is what interests me.”
Ace glanced toward the doorway again.
“I have spent so long knowing what an instruction requires that I am no longer sure what I would do without one. They seem to have reasons for staying that do not begin with a position or a duty.”
“Or a contract?”
“They have contracts too. I am not pretending they are different in every way.” Ace met her eyes. “I want to know what remains when the contract stops explaining it.”
Vespera let her gaze fall to the dishes between them.
She could have reminded Ace of Derpy’s orders to the dolls, his attempted escape, or the people now missing from the empire’s offices. None of those facts would answer the question her sister was actually asking.
“What do you expect to find?” she said.
“I do not know. A reason to stay somewhere without needing someone to tell me I belong there.”
Vespera’s anger eased into something more difficult to use.
“You are not the only one trying to understand him.”
Ace studied her.
“You told me the contract happened after his authority rejected you. You did not tell me why you still wanted it.”
Vespera looked toward the window.
The answer brought back the forest more clearly than she wanted.
“I frightened him,” Vespera said.
Ace waited.
“When I came into the clearing, Lenora saw the danger first. She told him to get down, and he did. No argument. No attempt to look powerful because someone was watching.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“It was. I was not expecting sensible.”
Vespera turned one hand palm upward. The skin no longer carried the burn, but she remembered where the bracelets had touched it.
“I saw authority that should have been impossible for him to carry. I thought that made everything else about him less important. What he wanted, whether he understood what was happening, whether I had frightened the people with him.”
Ace’s fingers stopped moving against the table.
“Mia and Sphinx changed when I threatened him. Mia became a three-headed chimera. Heat, frost, and a bite I had no intention of testing carelessly. Sphinx was enormous, with those lantern eyes fixed on me.”
Vespera paused.
“I looked at them and thought about contracts. How the power worked. What authority made them possible. I did not begin by thinking they were protecting someone they loved.”
“And Lenora?”
“She tried to speak to me. I went past the conversation and took hold of him.”
Ace’s expression hardened.
Vespera accepted it.
“I know. I am telling you what I did.”
She closed her hand.
“He froze when I pinned him against me. I remember being irritated by how startled he looked, as though his fear were interfering with a matter more important than he was.”
The words left her quieter than she intended.
“Then the bracelets rejected me.”
“You said they burned you.”
“They did. But afterward, I had to watch the people I had dismissed. Lenora put herself between us. The pets kept watching for another move. And Derpy had enough power to make being afraid everyone else’s problem, yet he did not immediately choose to punish me with it.”
Ace glanced at the ring beside Vespera’s hand.
“He has made other choices since.”
“Yes. I have seen them.”
Vespera looked toward the castle interior, where Vaeloria had taken him.
“I followed because I needed to know how someone carrying that authority had learned to think of himself as a person first. And I needed to understand what Celica intended to make of him.”
“So you were curious.”
“I was concerned.”
“You can be both.”
Vespera gave her a flat look. Ace’s mouth moved toward a smile and stopped before it became teasing.
For a moment, they seemed capable of returning to the quieter conversation.
Then Vespera said, “Queen wanted answers of her own. That is part of why she went back to the Valley.”
Ace stared at her.
“Queen went where?”
Vespera realized too late that she had assumed the message had reached her.
“She went to see the family. She missed them.”
“When?”
“After Seraphine agreed to give her time away.”
“She let her go?”
“Vambasta is covering her protection duties. Vemi went with her.”
Ace looked down at her plate as though it had become difficult to identify.
“She went without telling me.”
“I do not know what arrangements she made to send word.”
“But you knew.”
“I was there when she asked.”
Electricity snapped between Ace’s fingers. A tiny mark appeared in the wood.
Vespera shifted her cup away.
“She wanted to see everyone. Perhaps she can speak to people who have refused to speak to you. Help repair some of what happened.”
“What we broke, you mean.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what you are trying not to say.”
Vespera’s patience thinned.
“Seraphine sent you to help recover Derpy. Queen remained elsewhere with her own duties and her own need to go home. You cannot be surprised that she made a decision while you were gone.”
Ace looked up sharply.
“I am surprised that you think being left behind is easier the second time.”
Vespera’s ring turned once, catching the light.
“I did not leave you behind.”
“No. You arrived with a list of things I should have done differently.”
“And you keep speaking as though you are the only one who has missed anyone.”
A thin black flame moved across Vespera’s knuckles. Ace’s current answered before she deliberately closed her hand around it.
Neither noticed Hina at the entrance.
She had stopped humming before reaching the room.
Sir Reginal remained a short distance behind her. He watched the tables, the exits, and the princess’s hands while she looked at the two dragons.
Ace was leaning forward. Vespera was angry. Neither appeared to be preparing to put the other in a cell.
Hina watched Ace listen to an answer she clearly disliked.
Something tightened behind her smile.
She remembered training until her legs shook. Ace’s hand correcting her shoulder. The command to repeat a movement after Hina had already decided she hated it.
Again. You know how to hold that position.
Sometimes she had laughed because laughing made people less certain what she felt. Sometimes she had cried and hated herself for allowing it to be seen.
Those memories had different endings. The ones that came now all led to the same door.
If you lose control, I will put you back in that cell myself.
Queen had been quieter. Hina could remember how little the younger dragon needed to raise her voice before disappointment filled the space around it.
Behave, Princess.
The title had followed meals, lessons, corrections. She remembered the dragon’s milk and the attention that came with it, the expectation that what they gave her would become something useful if she learned to carry it properly.
At the table, Ace’s voice changed.
Hina could not hear every word. She did not need them to see the effort Ace was making with Vespera. Even angry, she was trying to explain herself.
Hina stepped into the mess hall.
A servant moved aside to let her pass. She walked between the benches without rolling, skipping, or greeting anyone.
Vespera saw her first.
The older dragon’s eyes shifted toward her. A question began to form on her face, but Hina had already reached Ace’s side.
She sat down.
Ace remained focused on Vespera for another moment before noticing the small figure beside her.
“Hina?”
The princess rested both hands on the table.
Vespera watched her unmoving smile.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
Hina gave no answer. Her attention stayed on Ace.
“Why are you here?” Ace asked, more carefully.
Hina tilted her head.
“Why do you treat your sister differently from the way you treated me?”
Ace’s fingers twitched. The last spark went out between them.
“What do you mean?”
Hina looked toward Vespera, then back.
“She can shout at you. She can get angry enough for fire to come out of her hands. You keep sitting there.”
“This is a private conversation.”
“Then I would like one too.”
Sir Reginal entered the room behind her.
Ace noticed him and almost spoke. Hina leaned forward before she could.
“When you trained me, you called me unstable. When I cried, you told me to stop being weak.”
Vespera looked at her sister.
Ace’s jaw tightened.
“You were hurting people.”
“That is not what I asked.”
The answer came so quickly that Ace stopped.
Hina rested her chin in her palm. Her smile remained, but the muscles around her eyes had gone taut.
“Did you ever sit beside me like this and tell me why you were upset? Or did you tell me what I had to do before you would stop being upset with me?”
Ace glanced toward the neighboring table. Its occupants had fallen silent.
“We should discuss this somewhere else.”
“Somewhere with a door?”
Vespera’s hand stilled near her ring.
Hina followed the movement and smiled at her before turning back to Ace.
“You taught me where to stand, what to hold, when to stop. You knew how to make me listen when I did not want to. I remember all of that very well.”
“Hina, there were reasons—”
“Did any of them mean you wanted to sit with me afterward?”
Ace looked at the hands resting on the table. They were perfectly still now. She had seen them seconds before a transformation, seconds before a weapon appeared, seconds before someone made the mistake of thinking the princess had calmed down.
Hina noticed her looking.
“There. You are doing it again.”
“I am trying to make sure everyone stays safe.”
“And she gets to make you angry while still being your sister.” Hina’s gaze flicked toward Vespera. “I only get to be your sister when I behave.”
Vespera set both hands flat on the table, drawing the last of the flame away from them.
Ace swallowed.
“You were dangerous.”
Hina giggled.
“I still am.”
The brightness of the answer carried farther than the quieter questions had. A servant stopped beside the doorway with an empty tray.
Then Hina’s smile slipped.
“And you still left.”
Ace had no immediate answer.
The princess stared at her with an expression that was harder to bear than the grin.
“Why does she get your heart,” she asked, “when I only got your leash?”
Sir Reginal reached the table.
He did not take Hina’s shoulder. Vespera noticed that he kept his hands visible instead, lifting them briefly in a small, theatrical gesture that might have passed for mockery if his face had not been so tense.
A warning.
“Lady Ace,” he said quietly, “choose your words with care.”
Hina turned her eyes toward him.
The look held enough contempt that he stopped where he was.
“Now you want her to be careful.”
“I would like this conversation to remain a conversation.”
“Then stop interrupting it.”
She faced Ace again.
Vespera watched her sister with a new unease.
Ace had spoken about being shut out of the Valley. About wanting a place where staying meant something other than fulfilling an instruction. Now the person she had helped raise was asking whether she had ever offered that same place to her.
There was danger at the table. Hina made no effort to hide it.
But danger was not the only thing sitting beside Ace.
Vespera could see how quickly her sister searched for the answer that would prevent a transformation. She could also see Hina waiting to discover whether that was the only answer Ace cared about giving.
Leaving the Seven would not settle this. It might free Ace from duties she no longer wanted. It would not remove the people who remembered her carrying them out.
Ace lowered her hands into her lap.
Hina watched the movement and waited.
This time, there was no demand to play, no question about a grimoire, no sudden laugh offered to let everyone pretend the moment had been a joke.
She had asked for an answer.
Ace still owed her one.