I hung in the dreamscape. The souls—or minds, or whatever it was—of those I’d touched surrounded me, distant stars among the haze that was every other soul out there. All but one of those stars were dim; it was the middle of the day, after all, and they were all awake. That included Herald, who was right beside me; she’d napped plenty on our way here, so no surprise there. She was probably still reading, trying to get her mind wound down to the point where she could take another nap.

  The one soul that wasn’t dim was Instinct. She burned like a small sun. As for whether that meant that she was asleep, or if I could see her though she was awake, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t even tell if there was a meaningful difference between the two in her state; when the only control she could have over Herald’s body was to make her speak, how connected to the flesh was she?

  Not very, if the way she fluttered was any indication. Her hold on Herald was as tenuous as Herald, Mak, and Tam’s had been before I helped pull them back into their own bodies. The obvious difference was that where they’d been comatose, she was lucid and able to speak through Herald. I could only assume that it had to do with her soul being intrinsically more powerful, for whatever reason; the way her soul shone suggested as much. Why, who could say for certain? This was entirely new territory, as far as I knew, but there were a few possible reasons. We certainly had far more Advancements than any of my siblings, if that was any measure. We could also hold far more magic. And, of course, Instinct was a dragon. Any or all of those—or something completely different—might be the cause.

  But that could wait. I could see Instinct, right there, and the similarity of her situation to those of my siblings gave me hope that the solution might be the same as well.

  Of course, the situation was only eerily similar; it wasn’t the same. My siblings had been coming unstuck from their own bodies; Instinct had come unstuck entirely, and was hanging precariously off Herald. Our shared body was right next to her, but there was no connection between her and it. So my job was to not only separate her from my sister, but to do so without accidentally causing some sort of terrible harm to either of them, and then bring Instinct back into our body.

  Brain surgery might be a good comparison. Or perhaps a brain transplant. I was about as prepared now as I would be to perform either of those, and the possible consequences were no less dire. It was almost enough to make me chicken out. But having seen how tenuous Instinct’s bond to Herald was, I didn’t dare do nothing. I couldn’t just leave her there; who knew how long she could hold on? I had to at least investigate, and knowing me, I’d probably try unless what I saw made it seem entirely hopeless.

  Even if it did seem entirely hopeless, I might just try anyway. I’d rather have tried and failed, than to walk around knowing how dire the situation was and then realize one day that it had been far too long since I heard from Instinct. I had no idea how I’d explain it to Mother, but that was a problem for future Draka; here-and-now Draka had some DIY brain surgery to perform.

  I started by trying the simplest thing I could think of: I tried to enter Instinct’s dreams, or mind, or whatever the situation might be. I couldn’t say if she was awake or not, but her soul blazed as bright as those of my humans when they slept. Perhaps if I went to her, she’d get stuck to me instead.

  No luck, unfortunately. I could no more enter Instinct’s mind than I could Val’s. So I tried the second simplest thing. Extending my power like I had with Tam, I created a very loose mesh around Instinct, then pulled her toward our body. The good news there was that she moved! I successfully moved her so that she vaguely overlapped our body. The bad news was that absolutely nothing happened when I did, and the moment I released my power, trying to tie it off the way I had with my siblings, everything just snapped back.

  Fine. Instinct was stuck to Herald, so I hadn’t actually expected that to work.

  Perhaps I could have just pulled harder, but before I dared do that I wanted to observe the connection between Instinct and Herald more closely. That seemed like the sane thing to do, rather than just throwing more power at them and hoping for the best. I spent a good, long while circling the two souls, trying to learn something, anything at all, about how they were connected.

  I did find something, and I was glad for it. Instinct wasn’t just stuck to Herald. It wasn’t like she was glued onto my sister or wrapped around her. Instead, where they touched a thin tendril extended into the very core of Herald’s soul. And there, at the end of the tendril, was a… what? A seed, maybe? It was a mote of light, even brighter than Instinct but so small as to be overlooked just because of its size. It wasn’t doing anything. It sat perfectly still at the center of Herald’s soul, moving with her whenever she shifted and not reacting at all when Instinct did. Its light didn’t flash, or pulse, or change in any way at all; it was perfectly even and constant.

  This, I thought, must be what anchored Instinct to Herald. If I could somehow get it out, then Instinct would probably come loose. Only, I didn’t actually know what it was. Something she’d grown there, or something she’d latched onto? I couldn’t say if it was part of Herald or Instinct or both, or if it did anything else but keep Instinct in place. For all I knew, that tiny mote of light was Herald’s true soul and it was tiny because she was awake, and everything around it was just… well, who could bloody say? Memories, maybe? It was only two weeks since I’d come up with the idea that I saw in the dreamscape were people’s souls, so it wasn’t like I was an expert or anything. What I did know was that I didn’t dare try to touch that little light without first doing some more research. So off I went to do just that.

  There were two obvious places to go. I chose the closer one, not because distance in the real world mattered here but because I wanted to examine Tam anyway. I hadn’t met him for weeks. I hadn’t even taken a look at him since binding his soul back to his body, which had been tricky to do without enthralling him. I’d had to put the lightest of marks on him to be able to do anything for him, but that was all. All I knew was that he was finally awake, if mostly bedridden, and that Conscience hadn’t been able to enter him, which I took as a good sign. I’d promised Val to do what I could to leave Tam free, after all, and if either I or my more self-righteous half could enter him and experience the world through his senses, well… that would be proof positive that I’d been less gentle than I’d thought.

  Finding Tam was easy. He was nearby, and he had my mark. Jekrie was a little further away, presumably doing something in the forest: hunting, foraging, logging, something like that. But I was far more worried about Tam than Jekrie, so he was the one I started with.

  The power I’d used to lash Tam’s soul-cloud-thing to his body still lingered more than I would have liked, but there was nothing for it. I hoped that it would dissipate with time without his soul losing its hold on his body again. Or should that be the other way around? Either way, I would have to keep an eye on him if at all possible. The important part was that any way I looked at it, his soul was secure. Having established that, I looked closer, at his very center. And there, small and faint, was what I was looking for: a spark. It was as visible as a dust mote in a sunbeam, no more, much smaller than Herald’s, but it was there. And that posed more questions than it answered.

  Questions like: why was his spark so small and faint compared to Herald’s? The obvious answer was that Herald was closely bound to me and I’d only barely touched Tam, but it might also be the other way around: Herald was much more devoted to me than Tam was. And either way, how was the spark connected to that? Was it just a visible representation of our connection? Did it come from me? Or was it some part of them that I affected, directly or indirectly?

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  There was an easy way to answer that. Those I hadn’t touched weren’t invisible to me. They were still there, just much more difficult to see, especially while awake, and I couldn’t home in on them like I could with one of my humans. There was someone right by Tam’s side, either Val or someone else taking care of him, and when I looked closely at whoever it was, try as I might, I couldn’t find one of those sparks. I then looked around the immediate area, finding a handful more souls. None of them had the spark, either, so it probably wasn’t something intrinsic to every human. That was a good sign. I couldn’t rule out it being some part that only lit up once a bond was formed between me and the human in question, but I had no way of testing that. Unfortunate, but I’d just have to live with the uncertainty.

  So. So far, the spark was only present in people I’d touched. And when I moved to Jekrie, the obvious next stop, there it was. He was moving about a little, but I still managed to get a close look at him, and when I knew what to look for the spark wasn’t hard to find. And his was brighter than Tam’s but weaker than Herald’s, lending credence to the idea that the size and brightness was connected to how strong our bond was. So far, so good.

  Done with Lady’s Rest, I went on to Malyon. That was where most of my humans were, so I figured that if there was anything else to learn, that was where I was most likely to find it.

  The humans in Malyon were all fairly close together, which I approved of, and they were all above ground. There was no terrain in the dreamscape, but I could tell that they were where they were for one simple reason.

  The only dragon’s soul I’d ever seen in the dreamscape was Instinct’s, and with our relationship I couldn’t expect her to be representative, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was looking at one now—Sandstorm, if I were to guess. She was as immaterial as any human free of my influence, but compared to a human she was huge. Whether it was a reflection of her larger physical size or if her soul was in some way larger than a human one I couldn’t say, but her cloud of soul-stuff was many times larger than any of the humans near her. And I was sure that we’d never get Sandstorm back into the cellars, so they must be on the surface. QED and so forth.

  With Sandstorm were Mak and two untouched souls that I thought must be Sira and Marvan, simply because that was more likely that it being either of them together with Maglan. I’d never actually seen any of Herald’s thralls in the dreamscape, so I hadn’t known what to expect. Now I’d wondered if maybe they’d look the same as one of the humans I’d claimed, but no; they looked no different here than anyone else I hadn’t affected. No spark. I filed that away as interesting, but not very helpful at the moment.

  What was helpful was when I looked closer at Mak. Knowing what to look for, the spark inside her was impossible to miss. Not least because of how large and bright it was. Even compared to Herald, Mak’s spark blazed.

  A suspicion formed in my mind, and the more I thought about what I’d seen, the stronger it got. I cast about, identifying two of my humans together—Zabra and Tammy—and approached them, almost entirely certain what I’d see. Sure enough, their sparks burned bright as well; one brighter than Herald, the other a little less so. When I found Avjilan a ways away from everyone else, his spark was much like the less bright of the two women. But Kira and Ardek, who were close together only a short distance from Sandstorm, perhaps listening to what the others were telling the young dragon, they were more like Jekrie.

  The conclusion seemed inescapable. Tammy, Zabra, and Avjilan were the ones I’d intentionally broken, bringing all my power to bear on them to shape them to my will. Mak… I couldn’t be sure. I hadn’t been particularly stable down in our prison. I couldn’t say if I’d used my power to break her unintentionally, or if she’d just… broken. But Ardek, Kira, and Jekrie, they had all bent to my will without shattering. They were still themselves. They served me, yes; I was the center of their worlds. But they hadn’t reshaped their whole selves to be more useful to me, and that, I thought, was a pretty important distinction.

  If I went to find Onur, Kesra, and Barro, I was sure of what I’d see. And since moving took no time at all, I did just that, and I was right. Barro’s spark was faint; Onur’s was about as bright as Avjilan’s. Kesra’s was almost as weak as Tam’s though, which was a relief in a way. Some people around me thought that she’d downplayed her involvement in Zabra’s illegal activities, and I’d learned some unpleasant things about the relationship between the two sisters, but I still felt that I’d treated her more cruelly than she’d deserved. It was good to see that my effect on her was much more in the mind than it was in the soul.

  As for Herald… the implications of her being closer to Mak and Tammy than to the others were uncomfortable. I had touched her with my power, after all, both intentionally and unintentionally; never with the intention of affecting her, but still. I couldn’t rule it out. On the other hand, she’d already been enthralled on some level before that, and what she had in common with Mak and Tammy was that she’d chosen Advancements that bound her to me. Two of them, even. I hoped that made the difference, and that I hadn’t accidentally harmed my sister, even if neither of us had known it at the time.

  For the sake of completeness, I decided to take a closer look at Avjilan. He was the only person with a two-souls situation other than—currently—Herald and Instinct, and me and Conscience. And since I couldn’t look at myself, Avjilan was the only one I could compare with.

  It didn’t help. Avjilan’s two souls were certainly both there and visible, but while Instinct was only connected to Herald by that thin tendril, Old and New Avjilan bled into each other to such a degree that I couldn’t imagine them ever separating. They didn’t look like one soul stuck to another; they were more like two halves of a whole, like the two lobes of a stylized heart. Only one of those souls had a spark, which was quite interesting; that one was dim, but the other was as dark and intangible as anyone else. But again, that didn’t really help. At best it told me that I hadn’t done anything to Old Avjilan, which was a tiny mercy at best. He’d been entirely innocent in Avjilan’s attempts on my life, and even if he had to live with what I’d done to Avjilan, at least he was free to think and feel what he wanted about that. Always something.

  Unfortunately, as interesting as all that was, none of it suggested a solution. So the humans I’d touched all had one of these sparks. The more I’d bent or broken them to my will, the bigger and brighter it was. That was all well and good. That didn’t tell me anything about how to detach Instinct from Herald’s spark and bring her back into me.

  Then Conscience asked a simple question, with enormous consequences: Are you sure that’s what you need to do?

  Was I? Maybe not. If Instinct was attached to that spark, what would happen if I removed the spark entirely? Was that a thing I could do? If I’d put it there, somehow, could I take it back?

  Which raised a different question, one that sent my mind reeling. It was almost too painful to think about, but I owed it to both myself and everyone around me to consider it fully.

  If I could remove that spark, and if that spark represented the bond between me and the one who bore it, would it sever that bond? Would it free them?

  I needed a moment to collect myself after that, but I managed. Then came the next logical question, and the next, and the next: If it did, how would they feel about me afterward? Would they hate me? With the people I most owed their freedom being the same as the most important people in the world to me, would I be able to bring myself to do it? Could I take that risk? If I didn’t, could I live with myself?

  Mercies be kind. What was I supposed to do with thoughts like that? Not try? Hope that I was entirely wrong, or that I couldn’t do it? How bleak was that? But now the idea was in my head, and it wasn’t going anywhere. And contemplating a future filled with either loneliness or self-loathing really wasn’t something I’d expected or needed while trying to rescue my other half from her accidental exile.

  You have to try. Conscience’s voice was only a whisper, but in the stillness that enveloped me it was loud enough to make me start. You know that you have to try.

  Yeah, I replied miserably. I know. I know! But what if it works?

  If it works, she said, her voice becoming uncharacteristically gentle. Then we’ll learn something about you, one way or another. If it helps, I think you’ll do the right thing.

  With a sense of foreboding, I returned to Herald and Instinct. First I’d try to sever that tendril and get Instinct loose that way. How, I had no idea. Only if that failed would I resort to potentially far more painful measures.

  God, I hoped it would work.

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