Kaz was ‘shopping’ with Lianhua, Kyla was sleeping, and Li was bored. Li had never actually met another dragon, but her instincts told her that dragons didn’t like being bored. Li definitely didn’t like being bored, especially since she couldn’t pass the time by sleeping, as she usually did. Li was hungry, and the edge of that hunger wouldn’t quite let her rest.

Kaz sent her an image of a stick with some kind of meat skewered on it. He and Lianhua had gotten them at one of the ‘stalls’ they’d visited, and Li could almost taste the dense, chewy meat, and feel the warm grease filling her mouth. She knew he was just trying to reassure her that delicious food was on its way, but all he succeeded in doing was making her even hungrier.

She looked up as the flat pieces of wood across the openings in the walls shuddered in the wind. Raff had said something about a ‘storm approaching’ when Kaz asked why the wind was so strong today. Even after the humans tried to explain what that meant, Li only understood that the air itself seemed to be attacking her. She’d even been forced to remain on Kaz’s shoulder for most of their journey today, so she was not only bored but restless.

Glancing over at Kyla, curled up in the center of the large bed, cuddling her fuergar to her chest, Li had to suppress a feeling of envy. No, not envy. Why would Li, a dragon, be envious of an overly enthusiastic puppy and her rodent? Li was just glad that Kyla was distracted enough by the creature that she had given up trying to touch Li.

The wood rattled again, and Li glanced over as something scraped and clattered. A latch held the pieces of wood together, and as the wind pushed on them, flashes of light showed through the cracks.

Li glanced again at Kyla, then the door. Kaz had made them promise that they wouldn’t open the door under any circumstances, but the door and the - what had Lianhua called it? Window? - were two separate things.

With a leap and a short glide, Li found herself sitting on the edge of the window, her paw resting on the metal latch. She focused on Kaz, who was distracted by a very nervous-seeming human who was holding various clothing items up against his chest as Lianhua watched.

Li leaned a little - just a little! - and the latch slipped from its place, allowing the wood to part. Warm sunlight flowed in, gilding Li’s scales, and she shivered in delight. Dragons were meant for sunlight, not darkness, and she could feel the difference between the parts of her body that were bathed in its glow, versus the ones still lingering in shadow.

She fell out of the window. It was entirely unintentional. The wind blew, and Li just… fell. Her wings spread, catching the breeze, which lifted her high over the buildings that made up the human habitation. No one looked up. They were all focused on their little lives, walking or talking or whatever it was that humans did.

Unfortunately, the higher she rose, the more the wind pushed and pulled at her. This was entirely unlike the smooth, gentle breezes she had so quickly become accustomed to. Hard gusts blew in from one direction, then another, spinning her around until she wouldn’t have known where she was if not for the ribbon of ki that hung in the air, linking her to her kobold.

Li dropped, dipping down among the buildings, which at least protected her from the worst of the wild blasts of air. She settled into an easy glide, which required very little movement to maintain, and pulled ki around herself. The ki she held and the ki in the world were one, hiding her physical shape from those without sense to see.

Kaz was close, and she would go to him. They would be together, as they should have been all along. Would have been if Lianhua hadn’t insisted that Kaz would need to take off his cloak in order to be measured for clothing. That female was becoming more and more annoying, even though she was the only one of the humans who recognized Li’s majesty.

A flash of bright red caught her eye as she paused on a rooftop to orient herself. That exact shade was one she was very familiar with, and she focused just in time to see Raff enter a particularly large building. The door closed behind him, but Li’s curiosity was piqued.

She perched there for a while, splitting her attention between the door and Kaz, who was now looking at devices that the human in the shop claimed would conceal small objects. Kaz was barely listening, fascinated by the light of ki inside some of the devices, while others held only dense clouds of mana. Lianhua was asking questions, but Li watched the flicker of ki with her kobold, at least until she heard Raff’s voice exclaim, “What?”

Turning back toward the large building, Li cocked her head, trying to track down the source of the sound. Fortunately, Raff was still speaking very loudly, so she was able to narrow it down to a particular window, high above the ground and conveniently straight across from her current perch.

Leaning forward, she released her grip on the roof, gliding down, then back up to land on the ledge protruding from the wall just beneath the window. It was an unusually deep ledge, big enough for a human to step out on, with metal bars all around the outside edge. A large pot containing a flowering plant sat in one corner, and Li edged closer until she was between the pot and the wall, listening intently.

“How could this happen?” That was Raff. The male talked constantly, so Li would recognize his voice anywhere, whether she liked it or not.

“Princess Reina chose her as one of her attendants last year,” another voice answered. “They became friends.”

There was a silence, as if Raff was waiting for more information. None came.

“And?”

A long sigh. “That’s all we know. Jeanne delayed her own wedding, moved to court, and none of us have spoken to her since, other than Oliver, who sometimes saw her at official events. She wrote to Mother at first, but even that slowed to a trickle after a few months.”

“And you all just, what, forgot about her?” Raff sounded incredulous. “Sent her to a pit of vipers and assumed she’d be fine?”

“We didn’t send her!” the other exclaimed. “Father even asked King Maleim to have the princess choose someone else, since Jeanne was already engaged. The king just laughed and said that all of the high-born ladies were engaged, and it was only a year.”

When Raff spoke again, there was an undercurrent of angry frustration in his usually cheerful voice. “So how did our sister go from being an attendant to being a… kidnapper? Is that what they think?”

The first part of the reply was mumbled, lost in the rising wind. Then the second voice said, “-an adventure.”

“An… adventure?” Raff asked, voice now dangerously flat.

“Like you. Jeanne read every letter you sent until it barely held together. Exciting tales of slaying monsters and rescuing fair maidens, all while making ridiculous amounts of gold. She sent a letter to Mother saying she wished she could have an adventure like that, just once, before being married. Less than a week later, soldiers knocked on our door and demanded to search the manor for their missing princess. They’ve turned Cliffcross upside down, and with the tournament happening soon, the city is filled with ne'er-do-wells, vagabonds, and scoundrels.”

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Raff growled a word Li had never heard him use before. “You checked with the Adamant Reach?”

“Of course we did,” the second voice snapped. Then there was a sigh, and when it spoke again, it was calmer. “The King has put out a warrant for your arrest, Grafton. You disappeared at almost exactly the same time as Jeanne and Princess Reina, and a lot of people think that’s a very unfortunate coincidence.”

“They’ve been missing for a month?” Raff’s voice rose to a shout again, and Li flinched back. She’d been leaning in to hear the quieter voice, pushing ki into her ears, and Raff’s sudden bellow was almost painful.

She rubbed the side of her head with a paw as the two humans continued speaking, but now the dragon’s attention was drawn away by a clatter in the street below. A great number of humans were gathering there, led by a warrior wearing a metal shell much like Raff’s, but shiny. He was speaking to a tall, thin male with a long face.

Li stretched her neck out, trying to hear what the humans below were saying over the wind and Raff’s conversation. Something about… a reward? An arrest? Whatever it was, Li had a sudden feeling that she didn’t want to stay there much longer, and Raff probably shouldn’t, either. The question was, what should she do about it, if anything?

Kaz felt her growing concern through their bond, and she opened the link so he could see and hear what was going on. He grabbed Lianhua’s sleeve and brought the female to a stop, then stepped to the side of the street.

You have to help, he told her, and she snorted a puff of water vapor. She was a dragon. She didn’t have to do anything.

Kaz played back scenes of the large human warrior protecting them, battling monsters, chatting over meals, playing with kobold puppies. Kaz liked Raff, and Raff was about to be in trouble. Kaz was too far away to help, but Li wasn’t. Kaz was also not happy that Li wasn’t waiting for him in the room where he’d left her, but for the moment at least, his concern for Raff overshadowed that.

Li sent back some of the same images. Raff swinging his huge sword, cutting up beasts and monsters and even kobolds as if it was nothing.

Negation. Lianhua says he won’t want to kill them.

Why? What was the difference between the humans below and the kobolds in the mountain? Did Raff know them? How could Lianhua be certain of that?

Kaz began to move toward Li, Lianhua trailing behind him, and Li made her decision. Even if she didn’t care about Raff - and she did, a little - Kaz would be in danger if he had to fight so many humans. If they were as strong as Raff, and the ki sparking inside several of them indicated that they might be, then even her kobold might be injured while fighting them. And Kaz would fight them, though he would prefer not to.

Li scurried toward the window, which was unusually tall. There were no wooden coverings over this one, but instead a clear material that was like Lianhua’s mirror, but less reflective. Li scratched at it. It was hard, but her talon made a piercing screech, leaving a deep mark behind it. She pulled on her ki, inside and outside, remaining silent and invisible as she waited.

The voices inside stopped, and a moment later, the material covering the opening was lifted out of the way, and a human looked out. He had one eye and white facial fur, so Li thought he must be a male. She could see Raff standing behind him, sword out and ready.

Li held as tightly to her power as she could, folding it around her. The ki within and the ki without were the same. She darted past the white-haired male, feeling her control slip as she did. It was hard to convince the ki to continue including her as she moved. When she shifted slowly and carefully, it could be done, but rapid movement like this?

She knew the moment her concealment dropped. The eyes of the humans widened, locking onto her, but she was already leaping for Raff. The other two males raised their weapons, but Raff lowered his, a look of confusion chasing away the hard determination of a moment before. He lifted his arms to cover Li, protecting her as she ran up to his shoulder.

“What…?”

But the male who had opened the window was turning away, attention drawn by the sounds from below. “King’s guard,” the one at the window muttered, looking back toward the third male, who had less hair than any human Li had seen before. Was he part husede? The sudden gray color of his skin argued that it might be possible.

“Raff, you have to go,” the thin-haired male said, eyes flickering between Li and the open window. “We’ll tell them we haven’t seen you.”

Raff shook his head. “At least two servants will remember me. Probably more. I don’t exactly fit in here.”

The shorter male pressed his lips together as Lianhua did when she was fighting a strong emotion. Then he turned his sword and drew the edge along his upper arm in a single, determined motion. He hissed in pain as blood poured from the wound.

“Timon? What in Pellis’-?” Raff said, reaching out to staunch the flow.

“We tried to arrest you,” Timon said hurriedly, looking at the one-eyed male. That male nodded and reversed his own weapon, cutting a slice along his ribs, then another on his leg. He barely winced, just turned his back on Raff.

“You’ll have to knock us out,” Timon whispered, dropping his sword as he moved a chair to block the door.

“I can’t-” Raff tried, but Timon gave a small grin that looked eerily like one of Raff’s own.

“You’ve wanted to punch me since we were boys,” the man murmured. “Do it.”

So Raff did. One hard punch, straight at Timon’s chin. The other male’s head snapped back, and he went down in a crumpled heap. Li hissed in approval. Kaz needed to learn to do things like that.

Raff turned toward the white-haired male, who gestured for Raff to continue, but didn’t look around. Raff huffed a laugh. “You think I couldn’t take you without striking from behind?”

Li couldn’t see the other male’s response, but he fell as easily as the first when Raff struck a hard blow at the base of his skull. His head cracked against the wall, and Raff winced.

“Good thing the old man has bones of iron,” he muttered, and lunged for the window as someone began to bang on the door behind him. Li clung onto him, gripping his shoulder and beard with her claws, wondering if it was possible that the white-haired male was part fuergar, to have bones made of metal.

Then they were out of the window, and Li concentrated on hiding herself and the huge human on which she sat as people below stared upward. Some were armor-clad warriors, but more seemed to be perfectly average people, the faceless masses who wandered the streets.

It was hard to cover someone as large as Raff, much less hold that concealment while the human clambered up the wall like Kyla had once climbed the Tree. His lips were pinched and his eyes resolutely on the sky, however, so Li didn’t think he was enjoying himself nearly as much as the puppy had, which made her own struggle slightly less irritating.

Then water began to fall from the sky. The winds had brought thick, gray clouds, and Lianhua had tried to explain that those clouds were made of water. Li knew that, understood it deep in her bones. In her core. But why was the water dropping on her? Had she somehow summoned it with her use of so much ki? She hadn’t even been focusing on her black ki, just using it all in a desperate attempt to hide them.

Raff grunted something about Pellis as he leaped from one building to another. The water made the surfaces slick, but at least people weren’t looking up any more. No, now they were hurrying into the buildings, as if the water would make them melt, which Li was quite certain it wouldn’t. Lianhua and Raff didn’t melt when they got wet, anyway. But if a human could be part husede or fuergar, perhaps they could also disintegrate when touched by water? If so, that would make her water breath much more powerful, which was an exciting thought.

“Pellis cursed rain,” Raff muttered, swiping water from his eyes. He turned to look at Li, who finally felt safe to let their camouflage drop. She practically melted after that, her core and channels drained by the intense burst of power use. “Do you know which way to go, dragon?”

Of course she did. Li turned her nose toward Kaz, lifting a paw which was absolutely not shaking to point the way. Raff nodded and ran across the roof, racing in the direction she had indicated.