Nero clenched his teeth and fought to concentrate on Regis yelling at the doyens of his Counseling Coteries. The prince’s face was crimson and spit flew from his mouth with every word, but his voice was ghostly, barely there, compared to the woman, Becca Scott, screaming in Nero’s head. She had to get up and save her friends… no, run… concentrate… wake up—

Run!

Her will squeezed so tight around his essence he could barely breathe, let alone focus on Regis. He had to get out of there, find wherever the hell she was, and deal with her. He couldn’t let anyone know about his weakened condition, especially not the other doyens and certainly not his prince. Definitely not his prince.

A tremor lanced up his arm and across his chest, threatening to send his body into convulsions, and he bit back a moan.

Regis’s wild-eyed glare jumped to him. “You have something to say?”

“Only my hearty agreement.” Mother, what the hell had Regis been ranting about? Nero wasn’t certain he’d heard the prince’s last few statements.

“We can’t control everyone in our coteries,” Barna said. He was the next eldest drake after Nero on the council and controlled the second largest coterie. “That’s impossible.”

Regis glared at Barna. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be doyen. They’re your drakes. You’re responsible for what they do. Everything they do.”

Get up.

Get up and run.

“You should be a better example for them, instead of hosting charity events for the very humans intent on making us extinct,” Regis said.

Barna clasped his hands in front of him on the table. The motion was relaxed, although the rest of his body was anything but. “If I’d canceled the event at the last minute, the humans would have been even more suspicious.”

Another tremor rippled over Nero, and the council chamber faded into darkness then flashed into a hall? …stairwell?

He stood— no, was sprawled on his back in a gray concrete stairwell with agony shooting up his neck and chest — possibly from a broken collarbone? — while a lesser agony throbbed through the rest of him, churning with a massive weight that dragged at his thoughts and muscles and—

Except it wasn’t him. It was Becca, and his dugga’s magic had thrown his consciousness back into her body again.

Shit. The convulsions would follow soon if he didn’t break free.

“Dragonkind must be protected at all costs,” someone said— no, that had been Regis. Back in the council chamber.

Focus on Regis. On the room with the other doyens. On how dangerous it was to expose such vulnerability to any dragon.

But the stairwell remained. Heavily armed security men at the top of the stairs yelled. A large bulky man with shaggy hair and a bushy beard fought with two others, while another man was pinned to the floor by someone else in tactical gear.

“Your drakes step out of line, you’ve stepped out of line,” Regis said, his tone dark.

“It’s more important now than ever,” Maize, doyen of the Major Yellow Coterie, said, her gaze sliding to Barna’s. “We can’t risk having another disaster like the one at your human fundraiser.”

“Run, Becca,” the man with the bushy beard yelled from the top of the stairs. Werner. His name flashed into Nero’s mind. “I. Said. Run.”

He— She lurched to her feet. The stairwell twisted and darkened, and the weight within her swelled until it felt as if he was running and thinking through water.

More agony seized his chest. Mother, just break the connection.

Run. God, run. This was her only chance. There was no hope of the nightmare ending if she didn’t escape. But God, it hurt to leave everyone behind. She hadn’t done that in Afghanistan. She didn’t want to do that now.

But she was helpless. She couldn’t fight. She could barely walk. It was taking everything she had to get down the stairs. Regroup and return was her only option.

Another snap of lightning. Nero couldn’t tell if it was his or her pain, only that it burned through his head, threatening to overwhelm what little connection he had left with his body.

His body!

Shit. He was going to lose it in front of everyone and endanger his puzur.

“Any drake steps out of line, he gets a date with Odyne,” Regis said, sounding miles away.

Nero mentally grasped onto the prince’s voice again, determined to drag his essence back to the council chamber.

“The Handmaiden banned using Odyne’s magic for a reason,” Lothair, the doyen of the Major Orange Coterie, said, his form materializing through the stairwell railing as he leaned forward against the council table, placing his bony elbows on the polished top. “Is the situation so dire we need to ask your father’s torturer to return to the Royal Coterie’s service?”

“Are you saying it isn’t dire?” Maize crossed her arms under her ample bust. “One of our own thought she could break our highest laws and make human mages.” Her attention jumped to Pike, the new doyen of the Major Green Coterie and former third-in-command to Zenobia — the doyen who’d broken those laws.

“I’ve already sent two dozen from my coterie to Odyne for their participation in the… events perpetrated by the former doyen,” Pike said.

“I’m still not convinced you didn’t play your part in that.” Barna cocked an eyebrow, accentuating the lines in his forehead. His human vessel was twenty years Nero’s senior, with more gray in his dark hair and his face more weathered and lined. “You were her Third.”

“By rooting out and sending traitors to Odyne, he’s more than demonstrated his loyalty to the Royal Coterie,” Regis hissed.

The stairwell solidified around Nero again. Shit. He wasn’t going to make it. His only way to keep this problem under wraps was to get away from the other doyens and Regis and get the hell out of Court.

Nero stood and slammed his palms against the council table, wrenching the room back into focus. “This isn’t up for debate. His Highness, Prince Regis, has spoken. Keep your coterie members in line, or they’ll face the prince’s torturer. Anything else endangers dragonkind.”

Barna glared, a clear attempt at proving his dominance, but Nero glared back and flashed his teeth, revealing a hint of the monster curled tight within his human vessel. Barna’s body might be bigger, but he didn’t have an earth magic as powerful as Nero’s. No one on the council did.

Maize and Lothair nodded, while Pike met Nero’s gaze for a heartbeat then slid his attention to the wall behind Nero’s head. Tobias, the Court Chamberlain, watched, his posture neither aggressive nor submissive, while Regis smirked — he always enjoyed it when Nero revealed his ancient dragon spirit to the younger doyens, albeit some of them were only marginally younger.

Run. Come on. Run.

Nero ground his teeth and forced his attention back to Barna, who raised his chin. He’d been on the Counseling Coteries when Regis had proclaimed his father, King Constantine, unfit to rule, and taken the throne. Barna was fully aware Nero had ambushed the previous doyen of the Major Yellow Coterie — and staunch supporter of King Constantine — in the arena and forced the doyen’s rebirth, thereby removing him from his position as leader of the Major Yellow Coterie, to ensure Regis’s succession.

Nero cocked an eyebrow. He’d do the same to Barna if it suited his needs. He’d force rebirth on all of them if it meant protecting his puzur, and he let that resolve seep into his expression.

Barna’s eyes widened, and his gaze leapt to the wall.

Lothair gave a tight nod, the movement so slight Nero would have missed it if he wasn’t in the middle of trying to glare down all of them. The elder drake — not ancient like himself, Regis, or Tobias — was smart enough to know he wanted Nero as an ally.

God. Please. It wasn’t real. But even knowing that, all she could focus on was escape.

Pain slashed through Nero’s head, and he deepened his snarl to hide the agony. He had to get out of there, had to figure out where she was and—

What? Save her?

She thought she was in a nightmare, and he had no idea if he could convince her any of it was real. He had no idea if he should. Her magic endangered his puzur. Besides, she was clinging to her soul by her mental fingernails, and soon she’d lose her grip. So very few human spirits could handle the truth about the world, and even fewer could manage that after being invaded by a dragon’s spirit. In the two thousand years since the Great Scourge, there’d been less than four dozen humans who’d body-shared with a dragon and kept their sanity — and one of them was currently living in his house. No matter how much, since having to clean up Zenobia’s mess, he’d hoped the odds would be in the human’s favor, Becca wasn’t going to be another case like Anaea. God damn it. Being inside her head and knowing she was falling apart, the only realistic kindness he could offer her was an end to her suffering.

Just stay awake. Come on.

The stairwell flickered over his sight.

And an end to his suffering as well.

“It’s been commanded.” He shoved away from the table and stormed to the door. As much as he wanted to just gate out of the room, doing so broke protocol. A drake didn’t summon a gate near the prince unless he wanted to be arrested for endangering Regis. A gate wasn’t just an exit. It was a portal that allowed others to enter as well as leave.

“Nero,” Regis growled. “A word.”

Shit.

God damn shit. He couldn’t afford to lose it in front of Regis, but he couldn’t afford to disobey his prince’s summons, either.