“Lily,” my uncle replied stiffly. “You finally show your face after abandoning your family for five years? After leaving the care of your mother to a diabolism-wielding lunatic, it’s only after your ill judgment is revealed that you dare e back?”

  I breathed out, f slow breaths. My care for this man’s approval had ended a long time ago, so best to ignore any urgings, tellio feel shame over whatever he said.

  “We didn’t abandon you, Uncle,” I replied.

  I despised him for phrasing it like that. As if he hadn’t forcibly escorted us to the quarter. Not that we would have had any choi that tter part, even without the implicit threat of my uncle. Back then, Infernals weren’t allowed outside of the Quarter without a lise from the gover or being supported by a family outside. Disowning my mother would have meant we were destihere, regardless. Ultimately irrelevant.

  His already tense face tensed further, but after a sed he rexed and all anger seemed to vanish. I wasn’t the only one who could assume masks.

  “Yer is uandable if mispced,” he said. “There is bme on both sides for what occurred, but I will not tolerate your disrespect.”

  “Both sides?” I hissed. “You threw us out oreet and you want to bme us for it? What, did my het te for you all to ignore what I was?”

  “Do not show me disrespect, child!” My uncle spat back, switg to a nguage I hadn’t practiced for years. “You have a child’s uanding of what has happened and refuse to let go of that child’s view of this!”

  “Oh, because you and the rest of the family are so willing to expin what occurred,” I spat back, keeping to Anglean even as the staff looked our way. If he hoped to not make a se by keeping ht in a nguage they couldn’t uand, he’d be sorely disappointed.

  “You never wao know more,” my uncle spat back, refusing to switch back to Anglean. Obstinate bastard. I wasn’t ging to a nguage I barely remembered and holy might be mishearing.

  “And when was I offered the opportunity to learn more?” I said. “When did any of you deign to visit me or mother in our exile? Could none of you work up the ce to travel the paltry miles over to even see if we lived or not? Or did you just think us dead till I showed up on your doorstep and refused to leave?”

  “I argued against your inclusion in the punishment for your mother’s crimes. That your heritage and who you were desded from had no impa who you were. Exile was the promise to having your head removed before you became a threat!”

  We were off both our chairs by now, heads only inches from each other’s faces. Staff looked on, nervously eyeing the doors. We were perhaps a couple of minutes away from the hospital security tossing us both out of the building. Assuming they could.

  I’d taken an alchemical earlier to improve my bance, even so, I swayed a little from side to side. The floor felt uneven, but that did not e in the slightest.

  I didn’t need ons to be lethal. If memory served correctly, her did my uncle.

  “So you admit they wanted me dead,” I said quietly, ging nguages if only so none of the staff would stupidly try to stop either of us. “You admit they wao murder me for the crime of being born, then?”

  “Father would never have allowed it, and did not allow it,” Liu said, face stoney. “And once again, you ighe most important parts. The unfortunate realities of your heritage would have been ignored if not for the crimes of your mother.”

  My lips quirked. “The ‘unfortunate realities of my heritage’? Don’t obfuscate it. Tell me, would it have beeer if he’d beeish lean?”

  “Obviously, yes, do not be ridiculous. And stop ign me, child. Your mother itted crimes against all of us, yourself included. Your exile is entirely her fault.”

  “And sidering my crime is being born, how serious was hers?” I said. “My heritage brings me death. How much lesser was her crime to deserve exile? Or for you to decide to help me when I brought her out of the Quarter in her current state?”

  Liu paused, a retort oip of his tongue, but something held him back. It took a few seds for him to pose his disappointing answer.

  “It is not for me to tell you, child. If you wish answers, you will return to our family home, and yrandfather-”

  “ e to where I currently live,” I said, and Liu bristled at the interruption, but I tinued onwards before he could protest. “I will be happy to provide the address, and the visiting hours, although I should warn you I am hardly the most dangerous thing currently living there.”

  “Have you no sense of respect?” My Uncle spared a g where the staff had been, all of them having long since left. “Do you wish to make us your enemies, Lily?”

  I rolled my eyes. “If you insist on being mine? Go ahead. Liu, I came here because my colleagues insist I dealt with you pestering the Imperial Gover of removing me as one of Muardians.”

  “By colleagues, you mean that pack of criminal scum from the quarter,” Liu growled. “Out of respect for your privacy, we have not used that fact, but if it es to it, we will not hesitate.”

  Oh. They had told none of them? I suppose that made sehat my tentative membership among Intelligence’s….tractors? People of i? Whichever it was, it made sense my mother’s family had not been told.

  “Uncle, I have not been a member of Versalicci’s anization for five years now. I do work for Her Majesty’s gover, and they are well aware of my prior work.”

  Liu froze, the expression of anger crystallizing on his face as he processed that. If he assumed all five of those years had bee w for the Anglean Empire, I wasn’t in a hurry to disabuse him of that notion.

  “You work for Her Majesty?” He asked slowly.

  “It’s not like I sit with her for tea, but I do my part,” I said. “If you want, you thank Auntie Diwei for her help at Lord Montague’s party on my behalf. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to learn she helped the Queen in some way.”

  Liu froze a little at that.

  “The shape-ger situation,” he said. “You are involved in that?”

  “Heavily,” I said. “Didn’t you hear? I died at a tea party retly because of it.”

  His scowl deepened. “Enough jokes, Lily.”

  “Not a joke. I was supposed to die,” I said. “If not for some extenuating circumstances, I would have. Luckily, someone else was there to pretend to be dead for me.”

  He frowned, a retort oip of his tongue, but he seemingly swallowed it.

  “Uncle, I’m here because others insisted,” I told him. “You have nothing to threateh over custody of mother. The gover does. I fully expect they’ll use the threat of turning Mother over to you or me over to Auntie Diwei to keep me in line, but that’s when they decide, her of us. Mind you, my ao that will always be no. Even if I’m a corpse in the ground, you do not get your hands on her.”

  “You do not want to make enemies of us, Lily,” Liu said quietly. “I am the most relut to make that the case, and grandfather, but his patience is limited.”

  “I don’t want to be enemies,” I said. “But I hardly feel that obligates me to obey the instrus and requests of a group of people who made it very clear what they think of me. Speaking of requests, before she weirely off the deep end, mentioned you wao see me. Why?”

  “There is…a talk that must be had. Not here though.” Liu looked at the walls cautiously, as if they would sprout ears when he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t wrong to fear that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hospital administrators didn’t listen in on any versation they could get away with.

  “Then you have my address whenever you want it,” I said. “The home of the detective I work with.”

  “Ah, because the home of a detective is the best pce to have a private versation.”

  I ined my head. It was a fair point.

  “A ral pce then,” I said. “One we both agree on. Just you?”

  “There o be oher,” Liu said. “It does not o be immediate, but we were worried you’d fled overseas.”

  “Fled?”

  “My sister is many things. Subtle she is not.”

  “Able to see what is right under her her as well,” I muttered. “Do give her my thanks for helpi the party.”

  “You choose to live a very dangerous life, niece,” he said disapprovingly.

  “It’s the best kind of life to live,” I answered, while behind him the doors flung opeing in a flood of staff led by one of the hospital administrators.

  ***

  Uncle Liu had deed to make a se, so I was allowed to stay after he left.

  Mother seemed as untroubled as ever. Her daughter and brhting over her body bothered her not in the slightest.

  “This is not Diabolism?” I murmured to myself. The staff maintained a healthy distance, but it was still best to keep my voice lohrased in a way that could just be questioning me.

  It could be, it could not be, the Imp said. Untrained and unsuited eyes are a poor tool to find out. You could toud let that inferiic you insisted on learning to do your seeing for you.

  “Ah yes,” I deadpanned. “I could do that. If reag into someone’s unscious body with Biosculpting wasn’t already dangerous enough, let me reato someone under an unknown curse. Brilliant idea Malvia.”

  I dropped that line of thought and ighe Imp’s protests over that dismissal. There were more pressing s and my mother’s situation….I doubted I was any closer to solving it now than the day I found her. Immediate survival took priority.

  I did not have fiden Voltar’s pn. Oh, it seemed sensible enough on the surface, but the dangling bait of Alice wouldn’t do much. Oh, it would unbahem, but at the end of the day would they care too much?

  What would they do? Lord Montague had tried to kill me and Gregory. Logically, from there he would have goraight on to Voltar and Dawes. That fit with his nature. The man wahis problem to end. It probably chaffed him as much as the shape-gers that he was w with them.

  That raised the question of the soried to kill. I frowned as I sidered that thread.

  Assuming the father had not killed the son, the most likely answer for his tinued absence was being hidden away on that third floor. Probably a personality shift the father could not tolerate, or maybe even physical. Keep him ohird floor where he had been stuck, anyway. Arying to infiltrate had to deal with the guardian spirit in that damn dragon statue.

  Thinking about that dislodged ahought, ohat I quickly seized upon. Dragons. There was an ahere. An altogether unpleasant angle, but ohat ealing. After all, there was an old saying about porivilege.

  I gave my mother’s hand a squeeze.

  “Someday, I’ll figure out how to wake you up,” I whispered, and then stood up.

  I was unsteady on my feet, swaying a little bad forth. The alchemical couldn’t alleviate all of that, but I could manage down to the coach. Time to see if they’d take me somewhere besides Voltar’s properties.

  ***

  I had to give it to the drake. He knew how to be ostentatious with very little.

  The estate in front of me erhaps a third the size of Lord Montague’s, but made up for it in the sheer number of details. It holy was overwhelming to the point individual details were hard to pick out, just a sea of statues, carved stonework, and stained gss windows. It was a chaotic jumble of wealth being dispyed.

  Then again, going by the owner’s lifespan, he was barely out of his teens.

  I walked over to the front drabbed the knocker shaped like a fme dragon’s mouth, and hit the door thrice.

  The butler who answered was dressed in red livery as well, the clothing done up to make it look like fmes were c half his body. They moved as well, illusionary spellwork ihread. Someone really liked showing off their wealth.

  “Hello,” I said eagerly to the butler opening the door, his fused expression deepening as I tio speak. “My name is Malvia Harrow, and I believe your master might be ied in hearing whed the death of his sister.”

  I, of course, had no evidehat the drake Millit Ferguseous Valit had been killed by the shape-gers. However, the timing of the death made little sehout that being the case. Either they’d waited for oo die, or they’d arra themselves. Given other factors they had to wait on, I was betting oer.

  “I….excuse me?” the butler said, flustered and gng back towards a security guard. Was that full-pte armor? It must cost a minor fortuo be ented to stand up to firearms. I suppose if you are rid want to live in an enviro resembling more familiar times, you’d be willing to shell out some money.

  “Your master? This is the home of the Honorable Jasperax Veroctous Valit, is it not?”

  Holy, the name felt like a joke, Anglean mixed with Draito garbled nonsense, but it was the fashion among the draic races.

  “It is,” the butler said as the guard came closer, hand reag for a hefty mace. “How do you know aails of his sister’s death.”

  I gave them both my best grin. “I was the ohey got to dig up the corpse and desecrate it.”

  Saithorthepyro