Mabsant looked up, his face an angry snarl. “I should have killed that dog weeks ago,” he growled out.

He yanked the knife from the chair as Adda charged him.

“Arlais!” Dagmar screamed. “Run!”

Arlais ran to the door, but it wouldn’t open. The key broken off in the lock.

“Help us!” Arlais screamed as she pounded on the door. “Get us out of here!” Dagmar heard someone trying to get in from the other side, bodies ramming into the thick wood.

Adda wrapped her jaws around Mabsant’s throat and bit down, but the bastard managed to ram his blade into the dog’s chest and inner thighs.

“No!” Dagmar screamed, getting to her feet.

Arlais ran back to her side, her small arms around Dagmar’s waist as Mabsant tossed Adda aside.

The dog had done great damage, but Mabsant was still coming for Dagmar, his bloody dagger raised high.

Dagmar pushed Arlais behind her and yanked her own eating dagger out of the small belt around her waist.

But both of them stopped as they heard a strange hissing noise from the back of the study. They looked over and smoke curled from the bookshelves.

Dagmar assumed it was dragons about to tear down the walls. But then her youngest five girls were standing there, their heads low, their gold eyes locked on Mabsant.

“Abominationsssss,” he hissed hysterically. “You all need to—”

They flew at him. Literally. No wings. But their bodies were off the ground and they were on Mabsant in seconds. Fangs tearing into his flesh as they slammed him to the floor.

His ceremonial blade flipped from his hand and landed at Dagmar’s feet. She thought nothing of it, until Arlais picked it up.

“Arlais, no!”

Rhiannon swung her forearms wildly.

Ghleanna stepped back. “What are you doing?”

“It’s like gnats!” she complained even as she knew Ghleanna, with her very non-magickal self, would never understand. “All that buzzing around me. It’s annoying!”

“You’re starting to sound as crazy as Annwyl.”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Why don’t just admit you’re wrong. For once in your life, just admit it!”

“I am not wrong about anything! And . . . and . . . och!” Rhiannon swung her forearms again, the feeling of being covered with something magickal becoming overpowering.

Unable to stand even a second more, Rhiannon lowered her claws, called a spell to mind, and spoke it while writing runes in the air with magickal flame.

“There!” she announced triumphantly. “It’s gone!”

But before Rhiannon could crow too much, the voices of her offspring railed in her head, most in mid-thought, as if they’d been blocked from her hearing all this time.

Rhiannon looked at Ghleanna. The black She-dragon had her claws to her head, her eyes wide in panic.

“Bram,” she said.

“Go,” Rhiannon ordered her.

“I can’t leave your—”

“It’s not me they want. So go! Go save our Bram!”

Brannie was nearing her father’s home when they slammed into her from above, and dragged her to the ground.

A squadron of dragons that Brannie had fought with before, as both dragon and human. Dragons she’d once called her comrades, she would now call her enemies.

Brannie brought her head up, slamming it into the dragon who had her pinned facedown.

“Bitch!” he cried out when she heard bone break.

Brannie knew she had only seconds to get to her claws or she’d die on her knees.

She scrambled up, her blade in her hand. She slammed the base against the nearest tree and, as it was designed, it extended to a length and width befitting a She-dragon of her size.

“You will die, blasphemer,” a green dragon needlessly warned her.

Brannie grinned. “But first, I will take all of you worthless shits with me.”

Kachka rode into the rundown courtyard outside Bram the Merciful’s castle. She urged her mare up the stairs and then had the horse rear up on her hindquarters so that when she came down, her hooves smashed the doors open.

She rode inside and across the hall. Bram stood in a circle of men that she now realized were also dragons. Older ones, but still dragons. So Kachka kept moving forward as Bram stared at her with his mouth open, his eyes wide in shock.

Keeping her right foot in one stirrup and pulling the left one out, Kachka leaned over and down. As she hung from the horse’s side, she gripped her saddle and held on tight as she swung her free arm out when she neared Bram.

“What the hells are you—oof!”

She picked up the dragon—thankfully still in his human form—by his waist. The other dragons dashed out of the way in a panic, giving her room to swing Bram up onto the back of her horse.

“What are you doing?” he demanded once she was sitting back in the saddle and had hold of the reins.

“Saving your life, dragon. You are welcome.”

“Kachka, what the hells is going on?”

Kachka turned a corner. “You are to be assassinated by the zealots of the one-eyed god.”

“Var—”

“Is safe. He is with Elina.”

She turned another corner and saw the back door ahead. Thankfully, it was open.

“Hold on, Bram the Merciful,” she ordered as the horse reached the doorway. “I will get you—”

Once past the door, the horse reared up again, took several steps back, then turned in circles.