Popilia never did get that fish for Nazagin. Galnai’s words had flung the promise right out of her mind. It was only later, after she had dried her tears, assured Janu she was fine, and retreated to her section of Anshar’s home, that she remembered. The tears came again, slower but more persistent. No matter how angrily she tried to pull herself together, they kept squeezing out.

‘I’m sorry.’ She buried her head in Nazagin’s feathers, repeating how sorry she was in an endless refrain. Sorry for the fish, sorry for the collar, sorry for not being clever enough to help Anshar get it off them both. For being stupid. They had both been promised to Khunuchan. Both traded like so much silk – Popilia as bride, Nazagin as part of her dowry. Two more eggs were to be part of it, too. Two more dragons bound to servitude.

Nazagin rested her head on Popilia’s shoulder, her breath a steady, purring hum beside her ear. Over time, the sound soothed her enough that she didn’t notice the tears or anything besides the breath, and her attention slipped from her apologies. She woke towards evening with sticky salt tracks dried onto her cheeks, Nazagin’s flank forming a pillow beneath her, her wing draped over her shoulder.

Sitting, Popilia stared out at the sliver of darkening sky where the entrance lay. Orange-tinted ribbons of cloud stretched across the distant horizon in dips between the mountains.

‘I hope Anshar finds a way,’ she said. And when she slept that night, her dreams filled with thoughts of sailing to Khunuchan anyway – with her own agenda, with her own freedom, and with three free dragons beside her. What prince could hurt her then?

----------------------------------------

Anshar wasn't home the next morning, and it didn't look like he had been at all overnight. Popilia spent most of the day at the hot springs, watching out for him in the valley. The springs had a good view over most of Kimah-Kur, but she didn't see him once. Of course, she saw the thieves. They left on the back of the grey dragon that had burned the corpses back in the mountain pass. It seemed like so long ago now. Still, she shuddered at the memory of those flames. According to Ilarion, that ability was a rarity amongst dragons. Most breathed only air, though to great effect.

What would Nazagin breathe, she wondered? She didn't know what her mother could breathe, and Ushuene had never spoken to any of them after that first day, besides Ilarion. And the thieves were in her father's home – he didn't even live here anymore. Popilia didn't even know if it was hereditary.

Her dreams that night were furnished with dragon fire.

Dawn's light barely woke her the next morning. When she finally blinked her eyes open, it was obvious why – Anshar sat just outside the doorway, examining the intricate whorls of the grey stone sculpture that stood there.

Popilia made her way outside, rubbing her arms for warmth in the morning chill.

'Have you found anything more for us to try?' she asked.

Anshar turned his head towards her, sunlight highlighting the edges of his feathers in gold. 'I think I have,' he said. 'I hope I have. It is difficult to know, without trying. But in fact, what I aim to try today was your idea.'

After searching her tired memory, Popilia said, 'The thing you did with the markings? Where you read Nazagin's mind?'

'That's the one.' Feathery fronds bobbed in the air as he nodded. 'I have had to make some modifications, of course, and I have little idea if the same magic will work on humans... Well, but that is why we experiment, isn't it?' He hummed a fragment of some upbeat refrain.

'When do we start?' His good mood was infectious, and Popilia's heart leapt at the thought of making progress. Her neck hurt where she had been scratching at the choker in frustration, and the morning breeze stung.

Anshar chuckled. 'Break your fast first, child. This could take some time, and I have no wish for you to faint from hunger in the middle of the ritual.'

Though excitement made her stomach churn, Popilia followed his instructions. She didn't want to be the one to mess this up. It had to work. Her whole soul ached for it. She ate so fast that her chest felt like it might burst, and she had to sit still for a minute or two afterwards before she could bring herself to move.

In that time, Anshar had already begun his preparations. He toiled at his workbench, grinding and roasting and mixing all the ingredients they would need.

After her hasty meal, the aroma made her nauseous, but Popilia hovered close by with Nazagin and watched. At one point he even turned to the entrance and jumped into the air. Popilia ran to keep a clear view of him, but all he did was scrape a clawful of clay from the edge of the lake and fly straight back.

He eyed her curiously when he landed. 'You don't have long to wait.'

True to his word, he worked for another minute mixing the clay with some sharp-smelling oils and fragrant herbs. When he was done, he arranged three large bowls on the floor around him, lay down, and motioned for Popilia and Nazagin to sit opposite each other before him.

'Lift up your head,' said Anshar, using a large spatula to pick up a clump of the scented clay, which had gained a light green tint from his additions. 'I need to apply this to the metal around your neck.'

Popilia smiled and lifted her chin. 'Will this remove it?'

'If it breaks the magic, I should think so, yes.'

Clay slapped against her neck. She braced her hands against the floor to either side of her to keep herself upright – a massive dragon could only be so gentle, it seemed, and Anshar had to press hard enough that the clay would stick. It cooled her skin where it touched, and its scent was soothing. Against its coolness, the warmth of her choker stood out stronger. Soon, she might be rid of the thing.

'You may find it difficult to breathe as it hardens. Try not to panic. The feeling will be more mental than physical, and I will try to be quick with the ritual.'

Popilia said nothing, afraid to disturb the clay. When Anshar moved on to Nazagin and her collar, Popilia clasped her hands in her lap and squeezed. Soon.

When he had applied the last of the clay and curved his neck around to ensure an even coating of both their collars, Anshar put the bowl to one side and closed his eyes. He chanted a low, monotonous string of words that vibrated through the floor beneath them.

As the last syllable rang out, the clay around Popilia's neck froze solid. She gasped and had to quell the same surge of panic Anshar had warned her about moments ago. She could still breathe. She reminded herself of that. But there was something base and instinctual about having such a solid mass tightened around her neck that her heart couldn't help but beat faster at it.

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

Anshar reached for the second bowl now. He did the same as he had before, dipping his claw into the dye, which was a deep blue this time. He drew the same set of sprawling patterns over Nazagin, though Popilia thought it had slight differences. It didn't reach to her chest like it had before, and instead the greatest density of lines concentrated around the ring of clay. He went further still, adding elaborate whorls to the blank spaces of the design that reminded Popilia of his beloved statue by the entrance.

At last, he withdrew and examined his work. He gave a satisfied nod. Then he dipped a different claw in the third bowl, its dye a slightly lighter blue, and moved it towards Popilia.

She closed her eyes, expecting Anshar's claw to scrape against her softer skin like a knife. When he touched her, however, his movements were so soft that she only felt the semblance of a fingernail brushing the fine hairs on her face. It tickled a little, and she had to hold in a shudder, but it didn't hurt in the slightest. She wished she had a mirror – what a sight she must make! Like one of the tribal warriors of old.

Anshar's humming prompted her to open her eyes again. He had his gaze turned up to the stars painted on his ceiling, his snout swaying this way and that. After a few more seconds of the humming, he broke into song – not a monotonous chant like before, but words in a melody that wound into Popilia's brain like thick incense. Their markings began to glow and Popilia's eyes went out of focus as a patch flared at the tip of her nose.

Across the room, the light in Nazagin's markings seemed to move. They travelled from the tip of her nose through all the intricate spirals down to the clay ring. There, the clay absorbed them. It soon glowed like daylight, and the glare at the bottom of Popilia's vision suggested hers was doing the same. Warmth embraced her neck, heating until it stopped just short of being painful. The scent of the heated clay drifted up and made her eyes water.

Everything in the room began to distort as the song continued. A fuzziness descended over Popilia's mind. The stars on the ceiling above her wandered, trailing tails of paint behind them, weaving around each other to leave multicoloured strands. Her perspective couldn't stay fixed in one position. It wavered back and forth – or perhaps she was swaying – and the next moment almost seemed to double. The angles of her world expanded, its dimensions beyond the scope her brain could grasp, her vision no longer centred on herself but including her and all behind her.

She cocked her head to the side, watching as her dark brown hair, normally braided, scattered over her shoulders. She wondered where Anshar had found such a big mirror and how he had managed to— But no, she could still see Nazagin and the sky through the entrance. Her head pounded.

Why can I see myself? she thought, and by the thought meant both the girl and the dragon. In this sprawling sense of self was something both new and familiar. A boundary had been crossed whichever way she looked at it, but in one sense she had simply passed from one side of it to the other, and in another sense the boundary was all she had ever known. Her thoughts ran in binary, two streams separating and mingling and, every now and then, turning to examine the other.

Each examined the other now: Nazagin and Popilia, distance separating their bodies but not their minds. That much, they managed to grasp. The distinction between selves acted as a lifeline to drowning egos, one of them so newly formed.

Popilia blinked rapidly and clenched her hands, using the sensation to anchor herself in the reality of who she was. She could still feel Nazagin with her, as part of her, but she knew where to draw the line between them now. Or so she hoped.

Can you understand me? she asked again. If things had changed, perhaps—

I always could. The thought appeared in Popilia's own mind, but she knew she hadn't put it there. Across the room, Nazagin blinked at her, her gaze for the first time focussed and direct. I just couldn't respond. I don't think I knew how. There was... a fog. I can still feel it, a little, at the edge of my mind. Nazagin's gaze drifted to Anshar, who was still singing, and she shuddered. Please don't let it come back.

Popilia was almost too amazed to take her words in. How long since Nazagin had hatched? Only a few weeks. At that age, her younger brother had been a screaming mess. What a difference, with dragons. Although if she could have read her brother's mind, who knew what she might have heard?

Just then, the tightness around Popilia's neck loosened. Clay fragments trickled down her neck and fell into her lap, and Nazagin's clay ring disintegrated in the same manner. She threw her hands up to her neck, pulling away loose chunks of clay and throwing them onto the floor. When the last piece came free, she reached up again, expecting to feel smooth, uncovered skin.

Her hand settled on metal filigree instead. No!

As Nazagin shook her clay to reveal a still-intact collar, Popilia turned her gaze to Anshar. She hadn't noticed, but his song had stopped. An echo of it lingered in her memory.

'It hasn't worked,' she said. 'The collars haven't come off.'

Anshar let out a great snort of hair that lifted clay from the floor and flung it to the far side of the room. Popilia's hair billowed around her face.

'Has nothing happened at all?' he asked, tapping his two dyed claws against the floor and leaving bright dots in their wake.

'Yes, but—'

'I can think,' said Nazagin in her physical voice. It was an eerie cross between Popilia's and Anshar's voices, as if she had plucked both of them from the air and moulded them. 'I can feel.'

A fierce wave of pride and joy intruded on Popilia's consciousness. It felt wrong to muddy it with her own note of despair, but they had to get rid of the collars too, surely? She gave her filigree choker an experimental tug, but she could barely get a grip on it. It had been almost part of her skin since Critobulus had sealed it there.

Anshar made a purring noise and lowered his head to inspect Nazagin. 'That is good. That is good indeed. Your mother will be very glad to hear it. The feelings you had before – the fog, the tether. Are they quite gone?'

Nazagin wriggled her claws. 'Not gone, but not... there.'

'Hmm,' With a less violent snort than last time, he turned to Popilia. 'Ask her to stand on her hind feet.'

Popilia did so, and Nazagin lifted her feet one after the other, body straining to follow the instruction, but brows lowered in confusion. At length, she shook her head and lay down with her legs tucked underneath her.

'You still felt a compulsion to follow her instruction, yes?' Anshar cocked his head.

'I did.' Again that wave of pride, and Nazagin flicked her tail. 'But I beat it. Now I get to try. Popilia, come over here.'

Before she could even process the words, her brain fuzzed like the confusion after waking from a faint. Her hands moved of their own accord and she had pushed off the ground by the time she realised what was happening. As soon as she tried to wrest her senses back to herself, she faltered and flopped to the side in a heap.

She winced and rubbed her hip where she had landed. 'Ow. That's new.'

'It is indeed. Most interesting.' Anshar's voice took on a sad note. 'Not quite what I had been hoping for, however.'

Popilia frowned, trying to think of this magic applied to the whole dragon guard. 'But if I can tell her what to do, and she can tell me what to do, and we can both refuse, then that's good, right? We're free to do what we want. We just have to... push. If you did this to everyone, no one would be able to use dragons anymore. And dragons could tell everyone exactly what they thought.'

Anshar tapped his claws again. As he thought, the tip of his tail began to lash in faster and wider arcs. After a while, his lips parted in a semi-smile that didn't move with his words. 'You are right. It's a start, and a path we can ill afford to forsake. My only concern is that with the bond still in place, in principle, the magic may be reworked from afar.' He shook his head. 'I will consult with Ushuene-amaak, but I imagine she will want me to proceed.'

His usual jovial hum returned. 'I will have much to do. Scaling this up, doing it without the clay or the markings... It will be difficult. But thanks to you' – he brought his tail forwards and encompassed them both with one swing of the tip – 'I have hope.'

Popilia smiled, and for the first time since arriving in Kimah-Kur, thought seriously about what she would do when she returned home. It would all depend on how her parents reacted to the dragons gaining their freedom, and the freedom to speak. Her stomach churned at the thought of them rejecting such freedom, but in her heart Popilia suspected that was exactly what they would do.

If that happened, they could never know her part in this. It would be her secret to keep, forever.