The moment my aunt looked at me, the entire room seemed to shrink down until it was only me and her, bound up in coils of emptiness. I felt myself shaking, remembering that night on the Jii’Hssen’s private terrace.

“Issa,” Hssen Zaiia hissed my name, voice saccharine in a way that made my stomach twist and the shadows roil. “It is good that you are returned to us, unfortunate and preventable as your awful childhood was. Would that you had only been discovered whilst living in an orphanage in full view of any who bothered to look.” Her cold, pale blue eyes flicked from me to my sire. “Trauma is, however, no good reason to posture something as other than what it is.”

The retort I had in my mind crumbled away under the weight of her gaze. Nearly the size of my sire and exuding a presence that was almost her match, and in the face of hundreds of eyes…

I swallowed, neck muscles straining not to nod along as I broke away from the terrifying woman’s gaze.

Sire Tyaniis shifted, raising her arm in front of me protectively. “Trauma may, however, serve as substratum and catalyst both, from which courage and kinship may rise triumphant. While our Empire has focused inwards these past peaceful centuries, do we not also know as sisters those who have fought and lived together, who have shared all and survived?”

Zaiia’s eyes flickered and she rose higher, seemingly unperturbed by my sire’s flowery words. “Would you compare a life in the slums, stealing and begging for scraps, to be of equal honor to the battlefield, Sister? Would you equate kss’iir and taaniir?”

I risked a glance at Kyrae. My sister was perhaps the only one I could truly read the emotions of. Fury and hurt warred in her eyes, and her gaze didn’t meet mine, focused instead on Sire and Aunt Zaiia. The elf next to her tensed, fist clenching for a moment before releasing.

“Would you devalue that struggle? Would you or I dare claim to understand what it is like to be kss’iir? To know no love or home or hope or future?” Sire’s voice took on an uncanny sort of calm. “I do not equate the struggles morally, but mentally: each day a battle for survival, and a question of what rules—once held dear—may be discarded for survival.

“Our Empire is not all the shining halls of the Emerald Palace. Or have you forgotten, sister mine?”

“That struggle is not the same, Half-Sister. There is no honor.”

“There is forgiveness.” Tyaniis raised her chin at the word, though its weight seemed to bend her spine. “Atonement. Growth. Surely you know this, or would you remove the hand of any thief, no matter how dire their need?”

Aunt Zaiia’s eyes narrowed, and she bent forward, lips twisted. “You do not speak as yourself, Sister.”

“I have learned, and grown, Sister. Many are the wrongs of my past, and many are the bloodstains on my scales, the lives taken by my fangs. But that is for Jaezotl to judge, or have you forgotten?” Magic seemed to pulse and grow around Sire, like she was one comment away from exploding.

I wasn’t the only one nervously shifting. But no one, it seemed, had any desire to interrupt.

After a deathly silence, Aunt Zaiia hissed, coiling lower like she was ready to strike. “Perhaps there is some of you left, if only in your penchant for violence. Moral failings aside, an ea cannot be hssen. You know this.”

“Laws change.”

“Laws keep our Empire from falling!” Aunt Zaiia snapped.

Tyaniis grinned, the expression mirthless. “Adherence to their intent, rather than their glyphs and scrolls is what keeps our Empire from falling, Zaiia. Failing that, failing to change and adapt and grow will only lead us to ruin—as the humans have so recently shown.”

“Do you think Jaezotl’s intent was to have an ea as hssen? He who created us to rule this Empire?”

“Do you claim to know Jaezotl’s intent?”

“Do you?”

“If I may,” a familiar voice, deep and resounding, broke through from the sidelines. Ussyri Noksi Kosseti, dressed in full Temple regalia, slithered forward, her braids swaying behind her. “I cannot speak directly with the will of Jaezotl, but know that I am here as liaison for the Jii’Ssyri, and that she has voiced no objection to this matter.”

“Has she approved it?” Zaiia asked, her voice reining itself in from the low hiss it had just been. “Explicitly?”

“Jii’Ssyri Lassena values the discretion and autonomy of the Jii’Hssen and her family. As we are all devout of Jaezotl, there is no place for the Temple to object.”

At that, my hearing, heightened by shadows and my rapidly thumping hearts, picked up a noise from the elf next to Kyrae despite his attempts to suppress it. What the meaning was, I couldn’t begin to guess. It was about all I could do to remain standing as the air seemed to grow thicker, the shadows longer.

Would that I were to speak, I wondered if words or a hiss would come out.

Zaiia laughed, the sound haunting as it lilted through various pitches. “Then it seems Jii’Hssen Ssyii has indeed approved of this farce. Without consulting me, or any of the provinces. Was this decision her own to make, Tyaniis?”

“It was, Zaiia,” my sire responded through clenched teeth, her fangs fully extended past pale, strained lips. “Do not dare imply that I would attempt to exert any undue influence over my sister.”

“I would never. I do feel, however, that it is only fair to hear the positions of the other hssen and the ussen on this matter.”

“This is a matter of my family, not a matter of policy.”

“Is it right then that the Jii’Hssen act without guidance or input, deaf to her Empire outside the Palace?”

“My family is not a province, Zaiia. We are not policy.”

“But you may make policy. You may influence the Empire, whether you intend to or not. What do you think this elevation will do to the people of Eanzh’iir, Ae’ean’iir, and Highwater? What of the Coral Coast, Kii’Uzin, or even rural Zalaga’iil?”

The last province name hit my sire hard enough that she swayed. “Do not involve her, Zaiia.” At her words, power seeped into the air through half-formed sigils, and for the first time, Zaiia backed off.

I thought I could see a glimmer of uncertainty—or perhaps even fear—in Zaiia’s cold blue eyes.

Her? Mother?

“I merely refer to the regions with mixed populations, nothing more.”

“You refer to the elves,” a masculine voice cut in, sharp and clean and melodic. It took me a moment to realize it was the elf next to Kyrae who had spoken, as he strode forward, wearing a severe expression. In Lamian, his accent was clipped. “I will not demean the crowd or sour the mood of this joyous occasion further by explaining the motives you wear on your face, Ssyrin Hssen.” He bowed. “You wanted the opinions of the provinces on this matter? House Sunstrike—Ussent Sunstrike if it pleases you—gives their full support to Hssen Kyrae Ssyri’Jiilits. While I still wish to speak with her further, she is clearly an erudite and deft young woman with a family that cares for her deeply.

“I also trust Jii’Hssen Ssyii’s judgment on this matter.”

I knew the man from my lessons: Andriel Sunstrike, who’d been ussen of Eanzh’iir for well over a century. Him on our side would be an immense boon.

I didn’t miss the faint smile that flashed across my sire’s features. Lost, I shared a look with Ssiina. She was pale, and I wished I was close enough to take her hand… like the ussent with her was doing. A pang went through my hearts.

To the side, now alone, Kyrae locked eyes with me. Weariness was the dominant emotion now, but pride warred with it. And she still had the same unshakeable determination that kept us going at our worst. I pulled my spine into a gentler, more proper curve and took a big breath in—just in time to hiss it out as a new, dangerous, person voiced their opinion into the stunned silence.

“It is understandable you would have such an opinion, given the benefits to you.” Her voice was smooth and touched by faux-warmth. A long ke’lania slithered forth, wearing a dress of vibrant blues and soft whites, gold jewelry glittering in the light of the braziers above. Scales of a familiar blue-green color faded into almost mud-toned skin, cut across by the tip of a single long, black braid.

She continued, slithering into the fore, between my sire and Aunt Zaiia, and facing Ussent Sunstrike. “Kii’Hssiil province, however, suffers all the pains of allowing foreigners into our lands. Indeed, much is self-inflicted, but radical actions beyond our control present dangerously sudden difficulties. On matter of principle alone, I would contest this adoption, as the Jii’Hssen should have consulted the provinces.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Kii’Hssiil. Not Kii’Ssiil—that was split from the province ages ago when the port of Ess’Siijiil grew apart from the inner heartland. I had to use a history lesson of Phaeliisthia’s to keep the provinces straight. She must be Ussen Ezyna Ssyt! The name bubbled up from lessons and recent discussions both: the matriarch of the Ssyt family.

I took another look at her, from the shadows. Before I could see anything, before I could even snap my awareness back, my power touched something and her dark gray eyes flicked my way. Within them there was a cold malice, pushed forth so clearly that the muscles in my lower body prepared to carry me away.

Her face had some of the same structure as Ussen Ysta Ssyt, but to compare the two was to compare a doll to a person. Aunt Zaiia had a sort of burning fanaticism to her. Anqi Ziilant had a warm current of desire.

There was no warmth in Ussen Ezyna Ssyt’s gray eyes. Only darkness.

My breath caught in my throat, choking out a scream of warning. Even in the light, I felt foreign shadows crawling up my spine like a trail of disembodied fingers. The shadows! This is her doing!

She smiled, and the murmur of hushed conversation filtered in over her words as she spoke, eyes locked with mine. “However, I am glad to see young Sseti, Issa I suppose I should call her, returned to us. That she was held in my demesne is a well-deserved stain on my reputation. I believe ʸsͦhͧe ͪhͣaͮsͤ great potential.”

Ussen Ezyna broke the stare, and I could breathe. All I could do was cough as she turned to Sire and bowed.

“I apologize, Hssen Tyaniis.”

My sire narrowed her eyes, and I watched, blinking away the tears as she spoke. “If you mean to draw out an accusation on the night of my daughters’ ceremony, I will not give you the satisfaction.” Her words had the sort of cold tone I’d only heard when she was furious and had had time to think, and the words still had ten times the warmth of Ussen Eznya’s moments ago. “As such, I will presume your sincerity and accept your apology as conditional upon such.”

What? Part of me understood why, but the rest of me raged. This woman was probably the one who’d sent assassins after Ysta. She was probably the one who hired Nyss to get me to do that same job half a decade earlier. She was rotten, and I ached to sink my fangs into her.

But I couldn’t touch her. Not just for decorum. Not just for the disaster an “unprovoked” attack would cause. She had the same powers as I did, and she could take my control from me. That was what she’d been showing me, and her comment about potential even now made me sick.

Well, more sick. I regretted eating at all.

“Shall we hear more opinions?” Aunt Zaiia said smugly, and I watched her hands settle by where her flesh met scales, pinching in the folds of her emerald dress. Her gaze panned across the crowd, blue and piercing.

Tyaniis practically growled, glaring at Ussen Ezyna as she bowed “apologetically” and slithered behind Zaiia, opposite Ussent Andriel. Two sides forming.

Sire pushed herself taller. “Since you seem so keen on doing so anyway, despite the lack of need or precedent for such an action, fine. Let’s. But let us keep to at least a façade of decency and decorum, if only for the sake of those for whom this event is supposed to be a celebration.”

Aunt Zaiia surprised me by nodding sharply. “Acceptable, Sister.” She turned to the assembled crowd, all attention clearly on the “debate.” “Anyone?”

I snuck a glance at my sisters to find them both looking back. Ssiina’s magic touched me, warm and comforting, and I leaned into it, watching her hands twitch behind her back. The ussent looked between us and smiled a sort of half smile whose meaning evaded me.

Kyrae, meanwhile, mouthed in Elven “Are you okay?”

I licked my lips and tried to remember how to hold them for my reply—Elven was a strange language that forced their use. After a moment, and just as the next ussen was slithering forward, I glanced at Ussen Ezyna, who was thankfully looking away, and mouthed “Like me.”

Kyrae’s eyes went wide, and I felt a small hand on my back. Immediately, tensed muscles uncoiled and I sprang up a few handsbreadths, scales rasped against each other.

“Sorry!” Ussen Nistala whispered. “I… this must be hard for you—I wanted to ask if you were alright.”

“Fine.” I hissed back without even bothering to finish the whole word.

“O-okay,” Nistala whispered, and I felt her draw away again.

At least she didn’t try to apologize again.

“My partner and I agree with Ussen Ssyt,” a breezy voice spoke up.

Behind me, I barely caught Nistala whispering “Oh no…”

I looked around Zaiia to find the speaker: a well-dressed lania’el woman wearing loose, but fashionable clothes of warm yellow-green and brown, accented with emerald. Her jewelry was modest, and her brown eyes and scales both shone. “The Ssyt family worries for the Empire’s stability against a flood of foreigners and foreign wares, and my primary concern is that the precedent set by today’s events will decrease the voice of the provinces in external affairs. While the Jii’Ssyri could do much to mitigate a flood of foreigners in need of what we cannot provide, Kii’Ssiil province’s farmlands and growing population, as well as its central location, would be forced to bear the brunt of any immigration, particularly those trying to enter Ess’Sylantziis.

“Thank you, Ussen Gyontael,” a masculine voice, high and reedy, spoke from the nearby crowd. The lania’el man who emerged wore an outfit of royal emerald streaked through with similar yellows and browns. “I am glad to see my families are both in agreement.” He slithered closer, and Aunt Zaiia took his hand in hers for a moment.

Her husband, an ussent from Kii’Ssiil. Hssent Iksan Ssyri’jiilits. There are too many names!

More importantly, Gyontael.

“Sorry!” Nistala squeaked behind me.

“Don’t apologize!” I hissed back, almost too loudly.

“Well it’s just…”

“That said,” Ussen Gyontael continued, “in our present empire, I believe it is important to maintain the equality of ea and lania, and to move more toward where it is lacking.” Next to the larger ke’lania, Hssent Iksan in his shinier clothing seemed to wilt. “Furthermore, I believe family matters to be deeply personal. As such, my stance on the matter is thus: I disagree that a decision of this magnitude was made in secret, but I do not believe it to require approval of those outside the Jii’Hssen’s immediate family. Consider Kii’Ssiil province to be neutral.”

Behind me, Nistala exhaled dramatically. “S-see? We’re not bad, really. She’s just… Mother likes dramatics and… words.”

Like a certain serpent dragon I know. For a moment, I wished Phaeliisthia were here.

“If you’re done, I stand with Hssen Tyaniis and the Jii’Hssen on this matter. Like Ussen Gyontael said, it’s her family we’re talking about, not giving full citizenship to human refugees as soon as they get off the boat.” This new voice was crisp and clear and quite low, and it belonged to perhaps the only ke’lania I’d ever seen larger than Ussyri Noksi slithered part-way out of the crowd. Her attire was loose and… revealing, and she wore a big lamian smile under loose-cut, unusually pale-brown hair and dark skin. Her scales were the color of river mud streaked with sand, and they were a little on the dull side.

“Ussen Liinya Lajiir, of Kii’Lajiil, for those young-uns amongst us who might not have had the chance to meet me with all this commotion.” Her voice pitched dangerously tight for a second before her easy smile returned. “Consider me as unoriginal as my family’s naming conventions, but we’re going to put our lot with the Jii’Hssen blessed by Jaezotl and the woman who cares enough about her daughter’s non-blood sister to adopt her.” It took her a few moments, but she coiled up next to Sire.

Jaezotl she’s probably almost as big as Sire! I caught Ssiina and the ussent next to her whispering, and I noticed he had the same hair color. Is he Lajiir, too?

A quick procession of names and families and provinces followed, but I was too anxious and tired to keep up with them. Unsurprisingly, the only other elf provincial leader present—something Moondance—had sided with Sire. The split seemed pretty even between Sire and Aunt Zaiia’s sides. With the latest “vote” and how the crowd had shifted, the opinions seemed to be splitting along party lines, with the provincials (decentralists, mostly) against, and the imperials for.

Sort’ve. Maybe. I didn’t pay all that much attention to politics, just names and “good” or “bad” for me. The shadows pulsing in time with my growing headache made it all even harder to keep track of.

“You don’t expect to really hold this to a vote, do you, Zaiia?” Tyaniis asked coldly.

“I merely wish to show that such decisions should not be made without council.”

“That is not an answer!” At her words, I saw a distantly familiar ussen lania’el slither forth behind Aunt Zaiia, gold-brown-scaled and wearing her hair in gold-capped braids, but Tyaniis cut Ussen Anqi Ziilant off just as her mouth opened. Another enemy, but a familiar one this time—I remembered my mistake in Phaeliisthia’s library clearly. “Do not interrupt me and change the subject. Do you truly wish to call into question the authority of the Jii’Hssen.”

“I wish to call into question her judgment, and if she is sound of mind.”

Tyaniis drew in a breath and raised her chin. “You speak of sedition, Sister.”

At Sire’s words, a hush fell over the crowd. The implied jabs had been serious, the barbs pointed, but even I caught on that no truly severe accusation had directly been levied until now. Around us, the shadows began to creep longer, out of my control, and I felt their tension was about to boil over even as I could read nothing from Ussen Ezyna.

Before I could shout a warning, yet another voice rose above the crowd. This time, everyone knew the speaker.

“Enough!” Jii’Hssen Ssyii’s voice carried the weight of magic with it, and I felt my body lock up around me. Including my mouth.

Staring at Ussen Ezyna, I saw her eyes twitch despite the command, and I tried desperately to scream, to get the shadows to obey me and let me give the warning I should have given many times already.

The doors where my sisters and I had entered slammed open, and the Jii’Hssen stood at the top, wreathed in glowing green sigils. They floated around her and her head of madly hissing snakes like a glowing cloud and shone from the scales of her lower body like countless tattoos.

“This is not a political forum. The matter of my nieces’ status is not one of public debate!” Jii’Hssen Ssyii slithered lower down the ramp, and I saw not the almost-timid woman I knew as my aunt, by the Jii’Hssen, resplendent and blessed.

As she neared Ussen Ezyna, I saw the cold woman’s hands move, unseen in the crowd. In the invisible shadows, sigils formed. Hundreds apon hundreds of symbols that hurt my mind to observe. The pressure built like it was going to explode, and I was trapped in the same spell as everyone, helpless to watch as even Tyaniis either couldn’t or didn’t fight the bonds.

No.

“For those of you who decry my decision, would you do any different for your family? Must my role preclude me from my mortality—my family? To do so would remove my empathy for my own people!” She slithered lower, her hair calming into a susurration of hisses, and the shadows pulsed, a hairsbreadth from breaking loose. “One personal decision made behind closed doors does not mean I will not hear and weigh the opinions of the provinces.”

I watched a horrifying mockery of a smile cross Ussen Ezyna’s face, and my hearts beat again. Buoyed by the impending tide of darkness that threatened to sweep the room away, the Jii’Hssen’s command over me broke with a sickening, awful feeling of wrongness.

I had moments—if that much time.

“The shadows!” My voice was hoarse and frantic and loud and it echoed in the quiet room unnaturally, but I kept going, praying Sire and the Jii’Hssen understood. “Ezyna! She’s—"

The dam broke.

Like a silent flood from below, frigid, inky blackness surged forth, filling the room corner-to-corner. I lunged through it for my sisters, feeling a small hand already in mine, then a larger one, then a pair of arms as the light was swallowed and the current of darkness swept us up like a malevolent tide.

Sire Tyaniis and and Aunt Ssyii shone like two bright, burning lights, flickering for a moment before the darkness took all sight.