Ace had not answered when the pulse passed through the floor.
Most of the people in the mess hall did not notice it. A servant paused with a stack of plates, glanced toward a lamp, then continued. Vespera felt enough of the disturbance to look away from the table for an instant.
Hina saw a number.
It appeared behind her eyes, clear and unwelcome.
01:00.
She blinked, but it remained.
Far beneath the World Tree, the repair cycle had entered its final minute. Hina knew nothing of the chamber or the bodies sealed inside it. What reached her carried only the certainty that something was approaching completion.
She pushed back from the table and stood.
Sir Reginal shifted closer. He kept his hands at his sides.
Ace watched Hina's face. The careful smile had disappeared, leaving her with no familiar performance to answer.
“Was I only a princess you had to keep on a leash?” Hina asked.
“Hina, I was responsible for you.”
“Because Mother ordered it.”
“That was how it began.”
The answer hurt her before Ace could add anything else.
Hina's mouth tightened. She looked toward Vespera, then back at the woman who had trained her, fed her, corrected her, and left.
“Did you think I was frail? Was making me stronger supposed to be enough?”
Ace rose slowly.
“I do not want to answer you carelessly.”
“You never needed this long to tell me what was wrong with me.”
Vespera moved her hand away from her ring. It was a small decision, but Reginal noticed it and stopped advancing.
Hina's eyes filled.
She looked furious about that too.
“Why did you love your real sister more than me?”
The last words became a shout. Conversations ceased across the room. Ace's wings twitched, and Hina saw the movement as readily as she had seen every other sign of alarm.
Now everyone was watching for what she would do.
That was the part they always understood.
Her nails caught against her cheek. Ace reached toward her, then hesitated. Hina dragged her hand away, leaving thin red marks beneath the tears.
“I hate you,” she said.
“Hina, put your hand down.”
The instruction made her flinch.
Ace heard herself too late.
“I hate you!”
Crimson light spread beneath Hina's feet.
The first vines tore through the floor beside the table.
A bench overturned as the people nearest them scrambled away. Plates struck stone. Reginal moved toward Hina and found his route cut off by a rising wall of thorns.
Vespera stood.
A vine caught her across the body and drove her back against the wall before she could extend her wings. Her rings rattled against the tightening growth, trying to find space to turn.
“Hina!” Ace shouted.
More vines closed around her arms.
She reached for the hammer, but the growth twisted between her hand and its grip, pulling her away from the bench. Electricity flashed along her fingers. The current burned one tendril and vanished into the mass replacing it.
Hina drew her closer.
The princess was crying openly now. She made no attempt to wipe her face or rebuild the smile.
Ace stopped trying to reach the hammer.
“Look at me,” she said. “You have my attention.”
Hina stared at her.
“I wanted it before I had to do this.”
The vines tightened.
Vespera pulled against the growth holding her, but every effort disturbed the thorns near Ace. She went still, breathing hard through her nose.
Sir Reginal called for the room to be cleared. His voice reached Ace from farther away than it should have.
Hina leaned close.
“When you wake up,” she whispered, “you are going to show me the love you gave your sister.”
Something moved through the vines into Ace.
Her next breath caught. The mess hall remained in front of her, yet another space began to appear beneath it, each surface failing to stay where she expected.
She tried to say Hina's name.
The word came out without enough air.
Hina stepped back.
The vines held Ace upright as her head lowered. Vespera called to her, the sound pulling at a part of her that could no longer find the room.
By the time Hina turned away from the table, Ace was seeing someone else.
Her mother stood beneath three revolving rings.
One hung above each wing. The third circled above her horns, its slow movement making the air around it seem painfully orderly.
Drakorya.
Ace knew her before she could remember where she was standing.
Black electricity moved across her mother's body. Shadow chains extended from her, shifting with a life of their own while she remained still. She was powerful enough that even her quiet carried the expectation of obedience.
Ace tried to move backward.
Her balance was wrong.
She looked down and found smaller hands, smaller feet, clothing she had not worn for years.
A child's breath moved in her chest.
The memory continued without asking whether she wanted to remember it.
Queen was nearby, much younger, her black dress already disordered by the energy she brought to every room. Her hair refused to stay in place. She moved before an instruction had finished, then looked back as though the rest of the world were taking an unreasonable amount of time to follow.
Vespera stood farther away.
Fourteen. Shorter hair. Rings hovering close, responding with a precision that already made adults expect too much of her. She held herself carefully beneath their attention.
Ace wanted to call to her.
The memory shifted before she could.
Penny stood where there had been open space.
The Dragon Queen's presence changed the room without needing a display. Ace felt her younger body respond: shoulders drawing in, chin adjusting, a breath held while she waited to learn what had brought that attention toward them.
She remembered the hierarchy before she remembered any words.
Mother. Queen. Sisters. Her own place among them, never as secure as she wanted it to be.
Hina had not sent her to sleep.
She had put her back inside a memory that still knew how to make her small.
In the throne room, the silver guardian shifted closer to Derpy's neck.
The violet construct remained on his other shoulder, facing Seraphine and the artifact beside her hand.
The queens had resumed speaking. Neither seemed willing to let the appearance of the small dragons end an argument she believed she was winning.
Derpy heard them through the pressure gathering inside his head.
We need to fix this.
Sinister's voice was familiar enough to distinguish now. It came without the earlier teasing, close to his own thoughts and using the same exhausted impatience.
You can sit here waiting, or you can take control.
Another presence pressed alongside it.
Phantasm.
Derpy felt the grimoire's power answer as the violet guardian adjusted its wings. The cold whisper he had been trying to identify had become harder to separate from Sinister's encouragement. One offered the decision. The other made the room seem less permanent around him.
The collar remained solid against his throat.
Everything else began to feel changeable.
Riven needs what Seraphine is holding.
His fingers tightened around the armrest.
The need to repair her remained sharp even while the string carried its distant pull beneath the palace. He could not follow every part of what was happening below. The artifact in front of him gave him something immediate to want, something he could reach if the room stopped telling him he could not move.
Celica's voice came from his left.
“Derpy, stay with me. Do not follow the pressure.”
He turned his eyes slightly toward the silver dragon.
For a moment, he understood the instruction.
Then Seraphine raised her voice.
“You have five calamity bearers in this empire, and you do not even understand what you have gathered!”
Vaeloria rose partway from her throne.
“They are here because of Derpy. The Elven Kingdom holds Eco. The others were brought into this situation with him.”
Lieam stepped backward.
Derpy saw the movement.
The name Eco stayed in his thoughts, joining the artifact, the collar, and the voices urging him to change the arrangement around him.
He did not clearly choose which thought became magic first.
Vemi caught the change in his eyes.
It was not a transformation she could name. His attention seemed to settle on something, lose it, and return with a different intent behind it.
She leaned toward Vambasta.
“He is there, and then he is not. Watch his face.”
“I am watching everything.”
Vambasta's gaze moved from the guardians to the hand on the armrest.
“Those little dragons have been studying the room as carefully as we have.”
A pale line emerged from the shadow near the dais.
Vemi saw it reach Lieam's shoe.
“Move!”
Lieam looked down.
The ice had already closed around her ankles.
She lifted her hands, reaching for Eco, but the frozen layer climbed faster than she could finish the movement. It passed her knees and locked across her waist, pulling her back against the position she had occupied when the spell found her.
“Mother!”
Vaeloria turned.
Ice rose to Lieam's chest and stopped, holding her with her arms caught too close to her sides. Her face remained uncovered. She could breathe, but the effort to move only made the enclosure creak around her.
Vambasta stepped forward.
Vemi did not catch her wrist this time. She moved with her, watching the nearest guards and the shadow beneath Seraphine's chair.
That shadow had begun to shift.
Vaeloria's staff flared pink.
Seraphine drew the artifact closer to herself, her attention no longer divided between the queen and the argument.
Derpy's breathing slowed.
A laugh tried to leave his throat.
The collar caught part of it, distorting the sound. His mouth curved anyway, and the word that followed forced its way into the room in a low, strained voice.
“Queens.”
Unfinished circles appeared across the floor.
Some formed only an outer rim before breaking apart. Others held long enough for symbols to gather inside them, then trembled as if waiting for the thought that would complete them.
Vambasta stopped short of the nearest marking.
She had wanted a clear moment to act. Instead, the danger had become the person she wanted to reach, surrounded by magic she could not safely cross without knowing what it would do.
Derpy lifted one hand to the side of his face.
“Shh,” he murmured. “Just—shh.”
Vemi could not tell whom he was trying to quiet.
The ice around Lieam thickened.
Celica's silver guardian climbed higher on Derpy's shoulder.
Her voice had been reaching him in fragments. He knew she was speaking. He knew he should listen. The problem was the increasing ease with which the other voices made listening feel like another kind of surrender.
You could end the argument.
A circle steadied near the foot of the dais.
You could make them listen.
Vaeloria brought her staff toward him.
The violet guardian turned to follow it.
“DERPY.”
Celica's voice struck through the pressure.
He flinched.
For one clear instant, he saw Lieam inside the ice.
He saw Vemi and Vambasta beyond a ring of incomplete magic, both leaning toward him without knowing how to cross. He saw the staff Vaeloria held and the way Seraphine had moved her chair clear of the table.
His hand stopped against his face.
The circles stuttered.
One collapsed into sparks. Another remained drawn across the floor, incomplete and waiting. The ice stopped growing, but it did not release Lieam.
Derpy pulled in a breath too quickly.
He could not remember deciding to put her there.
Celica stayed close to his ear.
“Stay here. Look at what is in front of you.”
The command did not resolve anything. The voices remained. The collar remained. Lieam was still frightened, and everyone who had been arguing about Derpy now had a new reason to fear what he could do.
But his hand lowered by an inch.
The room held on to that inch.
Far from the World Tree, Penny looked up from the Valley of Dragons.
Something had changed beyond the kingdom's borders.
A pressure moved through her awareness, unfamiliar in its shape but carrying enough dragon authority to demand attention. It was new, or newly expressed. She could not place it among the powers she expected to feel in the world.
Her wings shifted.
Then she saw the approaching dragon.
Recognition made the distant disturbance secondary.
Queen was returning.
Penny launched before anyone nearby could ask what she had sensed.
The distance closed with violent speed. Queen saw her coming and changed her flight, but not quickly enough to avoid the interception. Penny struck her out of the air and drove her down toward the valley floor.
The impact threw dust across the landing ground.
Queen folded her wings close instead of trying to rise beneath her attacker.
Penny stood over her. Power gathered along one hand, extending the shape of a claw.
“I mean no harm,” Queen said quickly.
Penny did not withdraw it.
Queen kept her hands where they could be seen.
“I came to visit. I miss everyone. I wanted to speak before anyone decided what my return meant.”
“You crossed into the Valley without waiting to be received.”
“I was trying to reach someone who could receive me.”
The claw sharpened.
Queen lowered her head. The submission came easily enough that it should have made another strike unnecessary.
Penny continued gathering power.
A second set of wings struck the air above them.
Kimpy landed beside her sister and hit the back of Penny's head with an open hand.
“What are you doing?”
Penny turned on her.
“She returned.”
“I can see her.”
Kimpy looked down at Queen, taking in the folded wings, the exposed hands, and the marks left by the landing.
“Has she attacked anyone?”
Penny's silence supplied the answer.
Queen remained still.
“I only wanted to see my family,” she said. “And talk about what happened.”
Kimpy studied her without offering a welcome.
“Then we will hear why this outcast has come back before you make a decision neither of you can undo.”
Penny's claw stopped lengthening.
It did not disappear.
Queen lifted her eyes toward the sister who had interrupted the attack. Kimpy had not invited her home. She had bought her the chance to explain why she wanted to be there.
For now, Queen would have to make that enough.