"Fifty years ago, these stars began to shine," Maev said softly. "Grandfather was among the first in the world to become a dragon. The stars gave him this magic." She smiled to remember his stories. "And he gave it to our father. And that great grizzly bear passed it on to us. If the stars blessed our family, perhaps they blessed another family too. Perhaps they blessed Prince Sena of Eteer. And if it's true . . . if he's imprisoned . . . we have to save him." She clutched her brother's hand. "We have to bring him home."

They kept walking in silence, listening to the crickets and rustling grass. When they were far enough from the town, Maev closed her eyes and summoned her magic. It flowed through her, warmer than mulled wine, easing the pain of her wounds. She beat her wings, rising into the air, a green dragon in the night. At her side, more wings thudded, and she saw her brother soar too, a red dragon with long white horns.

Silent, keeping their fire low, they rose and caught an air current. They glided through the night, heading away from the villages that hunted their kind . . . heading toward that distant mountain, that new home, that place of safety and warmth in a cold world.

ANGEL

She crouched in the darkness, a queen of rock and fire, and licked the blood off her long, clawed fingers, savoring the coppery heat, shuddering as the hooks upon her tongue lapped the goodness, and she unfurled that tongue, stretching out a dripping serpent, and Angel howled in the depths in her hunger and lust.

"It is sweet, my children, my terrors," she hissed. Saliva dripped down her maw to steam against the stone floor. The cracks upon her body widened, leaking smoke and fire. "The blood nourishes. The blood is darkness."

Her meal writhed before her, all but drained, a gray husk of a thing. Once it had been three; she had molded them together, cutting and sewing, stitching twins like dolls, bloating the beast with embers and meat and sweet drippings of fat, letting it fester, letting it grow. Now she drank from her twisted creation, her living wineskin of meat and marrow. She drove her head down, thrusting her hollowed teeth through its skin, and sucked, sucked, lapped the sweetness, the red and black, the heat and stickiness. Its many arms twitched, and its mouths, sewn together, whimpered and begged, and its eyes blinked and wept where she had placed them, and still Angel drank, leaving it an empty shell, a shriveled thing, only skin over bones.

"Yes, my dears." She licked the creature, her conjoined twins, her meals in the darkness. "You will live. I will fatten you again, and you will grow, and more will join you. I will sew you into a great feast."

It begged her for death, tears pouring. She laughed. She shoved it aside, leaped, and scuttled through the depths. Her leather wings beat, wafting smoke and stench, and her four arms flailed, ending with claws, cutting into the stone. Around her they lay, the creatures she had sewn together. The largest was a hundred strong, bodies morphed into a writhing hill, sacks of blood and rot, meals to last through her long, ancient banishment.