The room inside was nice. Nicer than Jake had expected. Two beds. A window that looked out over the town’s eastern quarter. A small table with chairs. Everything was clean and well-maintained in a way that said this was a good establishment that charged appropriate prices.

Ankerita closed the door behind them and locked it.

"We wait here for Maudlina," she said.

Jake sat down in one of the chairs because his legs had informed him that standing was no longer a service they were interested in providing. His ribs sent in their report. His chest sent in a different report about the place the cauldron had drained from. The system was quiet but present. Stabilized. Waiting.

He looked at Ankerita.

"How long do we wait?" he asked.

"As long as it takes," she said.

She sat in the other chair, and they waited.

The first hour passed in near silence.

Jake sat in his chair and tried to make his brain work properly. It wasn’t cooperating. Every time he tried to think about what had happened—the cauldron, the dragons, the running, the shadow copies he’d made like that was just a normal thing people did—his thoughts would slide sideways into something that felt more like static than actual thinking.

Ankerita sat across from him and watched the door.

The second hour was when Jake’s stomach started making sounds.

Loud sounds.

Aggressive sounds that suggested it had opinions about the recent lack of food and those opinions were becoming increasingly hostile.

Ankerita glanced at him.

"When did you last eat?" she asked.

Jake had to think about it. "The rest stop. Before the—" he gestured vaguely at everything. "—before all of that."

"That was yesterday afternoon."

"Was it?" Time had stopped making sense somewhere around the point where he’d pulled shadows across an entire forest canopy. "It feels like it was last week."

Ankerita stood up and walked to a small cabinet near the window. She opened it and pulled out a wrapped bundle. Bread, it looked like. And some kind of dried meat. She brought it back to the table and set it down between them.

"Eat," she said.

Jake didn’t need to be told twice. The bread was good—dense and nutty in the way that said someone had actually put effort into making it instead of just producing generic bread-shaped objects. The meat was salty and chewy, and his body responded to it like he’d just discovered food was a thing that existed.

Ankerita took some for herself and ate more slowly. She was still watching the door.

Jake swallowed a mouthful of bread. "You’re worried about her."

"Of course I’m worried about her." Ankerita’s voice was flat. "She stayed behind to fight three dragons so we could run. That’s not a small thing."

"She seemed confident."

"Maudlina is always confident. It’s one of her more irritating qualities." Ankerita tore off a piece of bread and looked at it instead of eating it. "She’s also usually right to be confident, which makes it even more irritating."

"Older sister?" Jake guessed.

"By six years." Ankerita finally ate the bread. "She taught me how to use my talent. Taught me how to fight. Taught me most of what I know about not dying in stupid situations."

"Sounds like a good teacher."

"She’s the best." Ankerita’s jaw tightened.

"Which is why I keep telling myself she’s fine. She knows what she’s doing. She wouldn’t have stayed behind if she didn’t think she could handle it."

Jake ate more of the dried meat.

"Can I ask you something?" Jake said.

Ankerita looked at him. "You’re going to anyway."

"The shadow thing. The copies I made. You didn’t seem surprised."

"I was surprised," Ankerita said. "I just didn’t show it because we were busy running for our lives and surprise is not a useful emotion when dragons are trying to herd you into a trap."

"But you’ve seen shadow magic before."

"I’ve seen a lot of magic before. Shadow manipulation isn’t common, but it’s not unheard of."

She paused. "Making four separate copies that moved independently while we were running? That’s unusual. Most shadow workers can barely manage one decoy and they need to be standing still to do it."

Jake thought about the cost it had taken. About the place in his chest that the cauldron had drained and how pulling the Shadow Mirror ability had felt like scooping water from a well that was already running low.

"It hurt," he said.

"It must be because you still haven’t been healed."

Ankerita finished her bread. "Or you get used to the hurting. I’m not actually sure which."

"Encouraging."

"I’m not here to encourage you. I’m here to make sure you don’t die." She looked at him directly now. Her eyes were sharp. "The bloodline you awakened, what kind of abilities does it have?"

Jake nodded. "It’s all mixed together now. The Shadow Monarch stuff and other abilities may have belonged to my mother. I can feel that those two are getting used to each other.

"How many techniques can you wield now?"

Jake pulled up the ledger in his mind. It was still there, still organized into sections he was starting to recognize. "There are abilities I haven’t looked at yet. Things that got added."

"Don’t," Ankerita said immediately.

"Don’t what?"

"Don’t try new abilities without supervision. Not until you know what they cost." Her voice had gone sharp in a way that made Jake pay attention.

"Blood magic especially—it takes from you. It always takes from you. And you’ve already been drained once today. If you try something new and it costs more than you have left, you’ll damage yourself. Possibly permanently."

Jake thought about the Shadow Mirror. About how he’d made four copies when three would have been safer. About how he’d done the math on whether he had enough and the math had been unclear and he’d just gone ahead and done it anyway because running from dragons didn’t leave a lot of time for careful planning.

"Right," he said. "No experimenting with untested magic while already running on empty. Got it."

"I’m serious, Jake."

"I know you are." And he did know. He could hear it in her voice.

"I won’t do anything stupid. Or—I’ll try not to. I’ll try to only do the regular amount of stupid that any given situation requires."

Ankerita looked at him for a long moment.

Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.

Just enough that Jake saw it before it disappeared again.

"You’re handling this better than I expected," she said.

"Handling what? The dragons? The running? The finding out my bloodline is apparently made of several different magical traditions that don’t usually go together?"

"All of it." Ankerita leaned back in her chair.

"Most people would be having a breakdown right about now. Or demanding answers. Or trying to blame someone for the situation they’re in."

Jake thought about it. "I mean, I am going to demand answers eventually. Just maybe after some sleep. And food that isn’t dried meat."

He paused. "And possibly after I try to figure out of my parents’ identities fully."

"That’s fair."

They sat there.

The third hour was when Jake started dozing.

He didn’t mean to. His body just made executive decisions about consciousness and decided it was optional.

He’d jerk awake every few minutes. Look around. See Ankerita still watching the door. Feel embarrassed about falling asleep when she was staying vigilant.

Then he’d doze off again.

On the fourth time this happened, Ankerita spoke without looking at him.

"Just sleep," she said.

"I’ll wake you if something happens."

"I’m fine," Jake lied.

"You’re falling asleep sitting up. That’s not fine. That’s your body shutting down whether you want it to or not." She finally looked at him.

"Go lie down on one of the beds. Get actual sleep. I’m not going to judge you for being human."

Jake wanted to argue. His brain was preparing several excellent arguments about why he should stay awake and alert.

His body vetoed all of them and stood up without permission.

He made it to the nearest bed. Sat down on the edge. Fully intended to just rest for a moment.

He woke up three hours later to the sound of the door opening and Maudlina walking in like she owned the place.

*

The sun rose over the sky, bringing the morning light to shine over the town.

Jake watched it through the window. The grey sunlight had turned into gold slowly. The streets below filled with people going about their normal lives. Market sounds drifted up. Someone was cooking something that smelled good, and Jake’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since before the rest stop, and the rest stop felt like it had happened in a different lifetime.

Ankerita sat across from him and didn’t talk much. She was watching the door. Waiting with the kind of patient, focused waiting that said she would keep doing it for however long it needed to happen. She had been restless ever since they had left her sister back in the forest.

Jake dozed a few times without meaning to. His body would just shut down for a few minutes and then jerk him awake again. Each time he woke up Ankerita was in the same position. Still watching the door.

Morning became afternoon.

Nobody came.

Jake’s anxiety was doing something complicated in his chest. He didn’t know Maudlina well. He’d met her last night at a campfire before dragons had appeared and chased them through a forest. But she was Ankerita’s sister, and she had stayed behind to hold off three dragons so the rest of them could run, and that was the kind of thing that you didn’t forget easily.

He wanted to ask Ankerita if she was worried.

He looked at her face and decided the question was stupid. Of course she was worried. She was just better at sitting with worry than most people.

She didn’t talk much, just the worry written all over her face.

The afternoon light was going orange and low when the door opened.

Neither of them had heard footsteps in the hall.

Neither of them had heard the lock being worked.

The door just opened, and as it opened, they saw a woman standing right behind the door, staring directly at Jake.

An older woman, perhaps in her thirties or late thirties. She had dark hair tied back in a practical way and she was wearing the kind of clothes you wore when you spent time on dragonback. Leather and fitted fabric and everything secured so it wouldn’t catch wind at high altitude.

Jake recognized her.

She was one of the riders from last night. One of the women on the dragons who had chased them through the forest while Jake’s shadow copies had run in four different directions.

Ankerita was on her feet instantly as she thought they had come to attack. The blue light gathered around her hands before she’d finished standing. She racked her brain, trying to understand how they’d been found so quickly. Their escape was carefully carried out and it was night; they shouldn’t have been able to find them so quickly, not to mention they had come straight to their room.

Jake pushed himself up from the chair with his hand going to where his sword would have been if he hadn’t left it somewhere in the chaos of the last day and a half. He didn’t have much energy right now as he still felt like he was recovering from using the shadow magic. The system hadn’t restored yet.

The woman in the doorway didn’t move.

She didn’t raise her hands. Didn’t reach for a weapon. She just stood there and looked at Jake with an expression that was complicated in ways he couldn’t immediately read.

Then another woman appeared behind her in the hallway. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Then another.

Then three more.

Six of them total. All of them were older women. All dressed for riding. All with the same complicated expression on their faces as they looked past Ankerita and directly at Jake.

The first woman stepped into the room.

Ankerita’s talent flared brighter.

"Don’t," she said.

The woman ignored her completely.

She walked three steps into the room and stopped right before Jake.

Then she dropped to one knee. Both hands came together in front of her chest in a gesture that Jake didn’t recognize but that looked formal and old and like it meant something specific in whatever culture these women came from.

She looked at the floor.

The other five women came into the room behind her and did the exact same thing. One knee down. Hands together. Eyes on the floor.

All six of them were kneeling in a line in front of Jake while Ankerita stood to the side with her talons still gathered and her face wearing the expression of someone who had been prepared for several different versions of this situation and this was not any of them.

Jake stared at them.

He stared at the six women kneeling in front of him in a hotel room in a town whose name he didn’t know after being chased through a forest by dragons that some of these same women had been riding eight hours ago.

His brain tried to process this. It tried several different approaches to processing it. None of them worked.

"What," he said slowly, "is happening."

The first woman raised her eyes from the floor. She looked at him directly now. There were tears in her eyes but her voice was steady when she spoke.

"Young master," she said.

"We’ve been searching for you for so long."