The night was calm, but it wasn’t still. A gentle breeze blew in from across the surface of the estate’s glass-like tarn, lending a slight chill to the summer night. Hinssa’s family estate was dark, and the stars overhead shone bright and large, casting long shadows from squat trees.

Tyaniis slithered silently through the garden, her thoughts far away back in Ess’Sylantziis. She would be Jii’Hssen soon. Already, many were against it, and she had swayed few. Her beloved, Hinssa, was their issue.

With a heretical name as structured, and a background with the elves of Aa’ean’iir Province, she won no favors with those who biased lamian power over ea. Tyaniis had once been amongst them, and the thought now sickened her.

Hinssa’s home estate was tucked away in the wildlands of the Emerald Mountains, far enough southwest to be away from the mines. To the north, the rain fell into the Hssyri, and to the south the Greatriver. Though the Spring of All Life was close over the mountains to the northwest, the jungle here was calm and primordial.

Close as it was to the literal center of the Empire, the region was as far from the Jii’Kalagan heartland as anywhere in the mainland Empire in spirit. Home to the ea, Jaezotl was to most here just one god amongst many.

Yet, Tyaniis thought of the region as a second home to her. This dry season was far from her and the family’s first time visiting, though it would be the first time for Sseti, their youngest.

Soon, however, she would no longer be able to visit as she pleased. The Jii’Hssen could not show such favor toward a single region outside of Ess’Sylantziis, particularly a border region not known to favor lamian settlement.

If she could, she’d change that—and she just might be able to. The blessing granted upon ascending the position was well known, and perhaps the greatest sign of Jaezotl’s favor to any outside the Temple. It was also a significant boost to power—both magical and physical.

The Jii’Hssen ruled not just by the acknowledgement of others, but by might. Though, that mattered far less these days than in centuries past.

Tyaniis clenched a fist and looked up at the moon above, just a sliver in the sky. She was already immensely strong, even for a kelaniel and ra’zhii. Becoming Jii’Hssen would likely put her beyond anyone in the Empire—except perhaps the Jii’Ssyri when it came to magic.

But, she had to balance the direction she wanted to steer the Empire with the reality of her limited power in the face of the Temple, and with something far more important: a good life for her family.

Hinssa always helped to calm Tyaniis, to get her to show and let out her emotions that she always kept potted up. She completed her, and would no doubt help ensure that Tyaniis never leaned too radical with her reforms—even if they were for Hinssa’s sake.

Tonight, Tyaniis wanted to try on her own—like Hinssa had suggested. Try to think things through and relax. Her family were all snugly asleep, and she wanted to be able to join them in the morning with a clear head and a warm smile.

If only her thoughts would clear up like the day’s clouds had.

Tyaniis heard a rustling behind her and tensed. Expecting the worst, she had to frantically alter her sigils when her oldest slithered out from the bushes. Magic bloomed between the pair into twin serpents of light that wound around young Ssiina, making her giggle as they tickled her scales before flying off up toward the moon.

“Daughter mine, you should be asleep—there is a chill wind down from the mountains tonight.”

“Don’t wanna without you, Sire!” Ssiina shook her head and slithered closer.

Tyaniis picked her daughter up, wrapping her lower body around under Ssiina’s to keep her off the cold stones. Her oldest suppressed a shiver and leaned into her.

“You’ll catch cold, you know,” Tyaniis whispered.

“Hssss,” Ssiina hissed softly. “I’m worried about you, Sire. Mother and Sseti too. Do you have to become Jii’Hssen?”

“I do, Daughter mine,” Tyaniis answered.

Ssiina scrunched her face up and hissed again, the sound turning into a jaw-popping yawn. “Come back to bed though… you’re warm…”

Tyaniis smiled as her daughter’s breathing slowed, Ssiina drifting off to sleep. No matter what, her family would see her through this, and Tyaniis would protect them in turn.

She cast a long look out over the small lake, watching minute waves roll in down by the shore she hadn’t reached. The latest chill gust caught her, and Ssiina curled tighter against her sire, head pressing into her chest and lower body curling around her own.

Slightly hobbled, but very well cheered up, Tyaniis turned and made her way back toward the home where Hinssa and Sseti slept.

No sooner had she turned, than a raw, terrified scream pierced the night.

Hinssa.

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Tyaniis rushed forward, and Ssiina stirred in her arms. She pulled her daughter close, and as she began to weave sigils, the vivid clarity of the dream around her fell apart into swatches of color and echoes of sound.

She remembered blood—so much blood—and signs of a struggle. Dyni had lain outside, bleeding heavily from a single stab wound, and barely breathing. Hinssa had lain brutalized on the floor just inside, and her youngest daughter had gone missing. She remembered chasing after sounds, motion, and a trail of blood. She had never caught the figure before, even as the dream had warped over the years.

Each time, the sigilist who took her youngest had gotten away into the night despite Tyaniis’s best efforts. This time, however, she caught her daughter’s kidnapper, grasping their wrist with a crushing grip.

For a brief, frozen moment, the dream regained clarity as she spun the kidnapper around. In place of anything she expected, Issa’s face emerged from the shadows to meet hers and Tyaniis woke with a start.

Above her, fine silks draped over the bed of cushions she slept in. Reflexively, she reached for Hinssa, only to remember that she wasn’t there. She hadn’t been there for over a dozen years.

Tyaniis closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath. Her muscles ached from being coiled so tightly, and the kelaniel relaxed, watching ruefully as a few destroyed pillows slipped out from between her coils.

No morning light drifted in from the wooden shutters to her room, and her wing of the Emerald Palace was quiet in the still of pre-dawn. A soft knock sounded on her door and Tyaniis jolted.

“Mistress, is everything alright?” the voice of Kyen, her head servant, broke the silence.

“I’m fine,” Tyaniis answered with more conviction than she felt. “Actually… fetch Lissti and prepare my favorite tea, a single portion of cured trout, and whatever fruit is freshest. I’ll take my morning meal early today.”

“Certainly,” Kyen replied before a faint slithering signaled that he’d left.

Now fully awake, Tyaniis started to piece together her nightmare. Like always, everything after Hinssa’s scream—the sound Tyaniis knew had died when her love had—was a blur.

Except…

Except this time, she had seen something impossible. The kidnapper had been Issa. Her own daughter obviously couldn’t kidnap herself, but what could it mean?

She thought back to over a year prior, when she’d taken care of those responsible for that reprehensible place that dared call itself an orphanage. Before they’d died, many of the staff had all pointed fingers to a woman who used to run the place, and who had disappeared shortly after Issa and Kyrae fled the place.

Could she have been in on it? Could Issa have been taken directly to Ess’Siijiil? But those who claimed her dumped into the Hssyri…

They’d not been lying—Tyaniis was certain of that. Which meant they were either tricked, or the sigilist that took Issa knew some truly rare forbidden magic.

That woman who had run the orphanage was someone Tyaniis had yet to track down—and just became her top priority. For all it was worth as a hub of information, the transient nature of Ess’Siijiil as the Empire’s largest port meant that it was equally easy to disappear from or hide in. Especially now with all the ships coming in from the south.

Issa had recalled little before being found on the streets. Was she found, or was she placed there? As of now, Tyaniis wasn’t sure, but she was starting to feel a worrying amount of certainty that it was the latter.

Issa should have been identified. Although… it was distantly possible that she wouldn’t have been. Intersexuality wasn’t terribly uncommon amongst lamia, though those outside the royal family—even those who were fully functional as hermaphrodites—weren’t considered “ra’zhii.”

Tyaniis knew Ssyii also opposed this discrimination, and resolved to have a word with her sister about what she’d truly done to address it. That, and the “ke’el” slur for those born of mixed ke’lania and lania’el blood. They were not trying to impersonate kelaniel simply because their parents intermarried.

But neither of those issues were the point at hand. Sure, leveraging biases could be enough to fool most people, and even with all the announcements of a missing young hssen, the Empire was vast and news did not reach its darkest corners equally.

But.

But someone at an orphanage should have checked. Someone should have known. That someone was still at large and likely knew what Issa was.

Why then, did they not return her?

The reward had been more than enough wealth to claim status as kss’kaa, even down a generation. The answer had been as obvious before as it was now: they didn’t want to. Probably because they were involved. Perhaps because they were the one who took Issa that night in the Emerald Mountains.

When she had first heard of Issa’s survival and life in Ess’Siijiil, Tyaniis had wondered how she had gotten there from across the Empire. Now, she had seen her daughter’s face in place of the kidnapper in a dream. Was Jaezotl trying to give her a hint, or was her own mind trying to poison her against her now-cursed daughter?

Cursed.

Whoever had taken Issa had nearly killed Dyni, and had killed Hinssa, neither of which were easy combatants to face. They had gotten into the estate silently, and also evaded Tyaniis. Even distraught and with Ssiina to worry about, she should have caught most anyone.

But most anyone wouldn’t have had the powers granted by Issa’s curse. Moving through the shadows would be one way to slip Tyaniis’s net, and in her dream Tyaniis had pulled the kidnapper out of the shadows. Did the kidnapper have similar powers to Issa’s curse? Was that what the dream was trying to tell her?

The thought made Tyaniis’s hearts race and her fangs extend even as she slipped out of bed to move about her dark room.

That Issa had found the idol was certainly a coincidence, but could there be more to it than a single, simple contact?

After all, Tyaniis had always doubted that the people who sent Dyni had sent the other assassins, as had her bodyguard herself. She’d thought this more and more of late. Originally, Dyni had gone for her alone, leaving her children out of it.

Why the sudden interest in Issa? Why take her, offer no ransom, and then leave her in another city months to a year later? Why have her stay at a poorly-run orphanage if the only goal was to watch over her?

And why cut their losses and let her escape from Ess’Siijiil to Ess’Sylantziis on her own?

Tyaniis needed answers. Planning Ssiina’s coming of age could wait. Today, she would have to make inquiries. She’d already promised Dyni that she would be her own fangs, and it was looking like they would have many things to pierce and envenom in the near future.

Kyen and Lissti returned with her morning meal just as Tyaniis finished dressing herself. That habit of Hinssa’s had stuck with her—dressing herself that was. Hinssa would never watch the sunrise and take her morning meal while planning the capture and death of not only whoever had taken her daughter, but her political rivals as well.

For now, despite her involvement, Ussen Anqi Ziilant was untouchable. However, she had allies that weren’t. Tyaniis planned as she ate, making sure to take pains to shield her daughters from the reality of their world just a little longer.

The fish tasted sweet this morning, but the fruit was bitter.