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“Here,” I said, offering over a single dragon scale, once given to me by the fire dragon. “You will be a long way from home, and might need allies some day.”

She accepted it, turning it over in her fingers, then nodded slowly and put it on a side table.

There was a soft knock at the door, and then it opened. Only two men would dare enter the empress’s rooms without formal permission, so I wasn’t surprised to see Prince Hallu in his own formal robes. He looked very serious, as most boys of fifteen tried to be.

He was nearly a man, and he wanted very much to be taken seriously as one, although his facial hair was still sparse and I wasn’t sure he had finished growing.

I stood and grinned at him, Koque already radiating placidity, easily hiding her unease.

“Mother,” he said, his face breaking out into a smile. “You look beautiful.”

“Come, come, Hallu.” Koque gestured, although she didn’t risk getting up, not wearing as many layers as she was.

As soon as he approached, she began straightening the fall of his jacket, adjusting his collar. He tolerated the fussing with the same kind smile Tallu saved for me.

“I can visit whenever you like. I could even take up residence here. As a royal couple, no one will expect Vostop and me to reside together. Many will assume we are only marrying for political reasons, so I could stay in the Imperium. Our marriage is only to solidify the treaty between our nations.” She spoke quickly, losing some of the composure she had maintained in front of me.

Prince Hallu stopped her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “I am full-grown, Mother. You have delayed your happiness long enough using me as an excuse. The Imperium is at peace. You have slain all of Tallu’s enemies with him. You have elevated the people of the Imperium to heights many would never have dreamed of. The Imperium will remember you as the mother of the emperor who helped him turn the nation toward peace. It will remember you as the empress who sacrificed herself twice over for her country. Are you not happy with the marriage?”

Hallu looked at once like a member of the imperial family, asking a political question, and like a young boy wanting reassurance that he was not sending his mother to an unhappy fate.

“I am very happy.” Koque reached for him again, drawing him into a hug and not seeming to worry about wrinkling her dress.

The imperial court did not tell stories. Instead, their scribes kept meticulous records. So it was Hipati, head of the scribes, king of her own little domain in the Mountainside Palace, who wrote into the historical record:

On the sixth day of the fifth month during the twenty-third year of Dragon Chosen Emperor Tallu’s reign, the emperor abdicated. On the seventh day of the fifth month, his younger brother, Hallu Atobe, was crowned. He chose to take the title King Hallu in honor of his elder brother’s work toward peace throughout the continent. His wife was crowned Queen Naî.

Of course, that was the official record. The courtiers’ whispers were this:

Emperor Tallu has driven his blade through the heart of the Imperium. Yes, life is better. Yes, with the nations at peace, the Imperium can once again turn toward agriculture and pleasurable pastimes. Yes, wealth now flows across borders like rivers, crossing between the nations and carrying even the lowest peasant to heights they could never have expected.

But have you seen his face? He is over forty-five, and he still bears the same image he did when he first took his crown.

Have you seen his consort? He flies through the air as though he is a bird. He communicates with animals as though they are people. Fire does not burn him. Ice does not freeze him.

The bravest members of the nobility who had forgotten what fear tasted like under the luxury of two decades of peace whispered that perhaps the emperor’s consort was not human at all.

The feast was still going on beneath the high windows of the emperor’s quarters. Hallu held his hands clasped behind his back, and I watched Tallu come up beside him, gripping tight on his shoulder once, squeezing some of the tension from Hallu’s muscles.

Tallu didn’t speak. Everything he wanted to say had already been said a dozen times before. Hallu was ready for the challenge. He would make a good king.

He could tear down the Mountainside Palace and build something to represent the stability the Imperium now had.

It would not stop Hallu from worrying, nor would it stop the challenges he would now face. They were his though, just as ours had been an impossible war and endless secrets.

Naî wore a revealing dress, showing off her shoulders with a skirt made only of two layers of silk, crisscrossing over each other so that her legs could move freely. It was gaining popularity with the younger members of the nobility.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me,” she said. “Who else will prevent me from eating Hallu’s allies?”

“You are fully grown with the memory of two dragons. I’m sure you can manage not to eat a few annoying nobles,” I said. “And so what if you do eat a couple? It keeps them on their toes, thinking that at any moment His Majesty might invite his wife to consume them whole.”

Naî pulled back her lips from her teeth, exposing her sharp fangs. “I would never eat them whole. I’m no savage. Of course I would cook them first.”

I grinned at her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. I remembered when I had first met her, and she had fit into my palm. Now, a fully grown woman, she was the same height as me.

“You can always come visit us,” I offered.

“What is there for me in the inner Imperium?” She glared at the window where two of my ravens sat. “Other than annoying birds and old men who don’t know how to retire.”