Isabelle splashed both of their reflections away. Just because she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her feelings toward Bitterlich didn’t mean she wanted their cynical solutions.

Rebecca’s blue-green scales glittered. Her eyes grew round at the sight of Isabelle. “Piss me. You look like a chicken!”

“Bad case of chickenpox,” Isabelle said. “Has me a bit down.” She teased some of the fluffy stuff on her shoulder.

“It was too much to hope that your sense of humor would improve,” Marie said.

Rebecca hopped up as if to land on the bed, but just kept going until she floated halfway between floor and ceiling. Her white mane rippled as if on an ethereal breeze.

Isabelle’s eyes rounded and she gasped, “You can fly.”

Rebecca grinned at Isabelle’s astonishment. “Yep.” She bounced from wall to wall, doing somersaults in midair. “Major Bitterlich showed me.” Rebecca twirled like a ballet dancer and then she hovered over the bed, upside down. “It’s getting easier with practice too.”

Marie said in her deadpan, “I invite you to imagine about eight hours of maniacal cackling on the wing.”

“And I can spit fire,” Rebecca said.

“Not indoors,” Bitterlich said. “We’re here to discuss our next move with Isabelle.”

“I thought we were going to look for Jean-Claude,” Rebecca said.

“Isabelle has to agree to it,” Marie said.

Isabelle yearned to say yes. To shout it and embrace these four who would help her find her heart-father. There was no place in the sky she would not go to find him if he was lost, and no foe she would not challenge to save him if he needed her help … but she would not ruin other lives to do it.

“No,” Isabelle said. She went to rub her face but reconsidered, given the presence of sharp talons. Eventually she’d be able to retract them, to tuck them away in that esoteric space that sorcery seemed designed to exploit, but for now putting out her own eye was a real danger.

She took in all of her would-be conspirators with her gaze. “Of course I want to find Jean-Claude, but if I run away from Sireen’s recall, I will be a fugitive. If you aid and abet me, then you will all be complicit.”

“We have a plan to get around that,” Marie said. “As long as Turenne thinks you are still in a coma he won’t try to deliver the summons. As long as you never receive the summons, you aren’t bound by it.”

“You’re mad,” Isabelle said. “If you think Sireen is going to be taken in by such a flimsy excuse—”