With a sigh, I followed Arienne into the hover floater. If he had control of her, there was no way that I'd abandon her. I could fight my out of being jumped in a side alley with my fists and the skills I'd honed as an orphan, but a well-equipped Draka was another matter.

"Do you enjoy playing fetch?" I asked the Draka who'd just insulted us. Besides a slight stiffening of his shoulders, he gave no indication that he'd heard me and my implication that he was someone else's pet.

We passed the journey in silence, although Arienne put her small hand in mine. I squeezed it reassuringly. I'd figure out a way for us to get out of this situation. At the port, there'd been too many people to fight off. But I'd wait for my chance.

"We're here." the Draka announced. "Now I don't have to watch you."

Biting my tongue, I stepped out and helped Arienne out, too. My shoulders slumped. We were surrounded by Draka servants, without any Yore in sight. While Phuong may not have officially sat on her throne, her imperial status and mine meant something. But Lord Georgius must have known that, because we'd been outplayed.

"Come, come," Lord Georgius said. He clicked his tongue as his eyes flicked over the two of us. "You're simply too dusty to attend my party. I'll provide new outfits for you to wear and an area for you to freshen up."

Arienne and I didn't have much of a choice. I was looking for any kind of exit, but the mansion was too well populated for me to just make a break for it. Several of his servants surrounded the two of us as we were shown upstairs.

"You'll be in here, my lovely," he said to Arienne. She looked like she was about to say something but stopped herself and went in.

"And you'll be over there." Lord Georgius pointed to the end of the corridor. I slipped inside of the room and looked around it. It was small, but it did have a sonic shower in the corner. After being manhandled, I could use a quick shower. I shed my clothing and jumped inside. It took very little time before I got dressed in the strange Draka robes on the bed. They were fancier than anything I'd ever worn and the slight irregularity of the patterns meant that they were hand made. I wondered why Lord Georgius had gone to the trouble of giving me something nice to wear when he'd given me a crummy room.

I heard muffled shouting outside and yanked the door open. Arienne was screaming as she was being hauled downstairs. I ran to the stairs and used the railing to swing around and land on the first floor, in front of the men trying to haul her off.

"Stop!" I shouted.

But they had no intention of stopping. Instead, five men rushed at me. I ducked under their blows and tried to get to Arienne, who was struggling against her captors.

Diving low, I took a blow to the face from someone's shoe, but it put me in a good position to throw him down. I realized that the clothing I'd been given restricted my movement, to give the guards just enough time to react to my moves. I tore my fancy jacket off the instant that I realized that it wasn't helping me in the fight. I used the cloth to mask my movements as I fought off the other men. Arienne was being pulled away, so I jumped over my opponents to land next to her. From the expression in their eyes, I knew that they'd never seen anybody who could jump clear over their heads at a moment's notice. I'd trained for this kind of thing, even if it was just for money. They were dopey and underpaid security, kept around for looks rather than actual utility.

"Arienne!" I shouted. Her arms were being held by the dignitary who'd picked us up in his hover floater. I slugged him in the face, bruising my knuckles. I had calluses that I'd built on my first two knuckles, but it still hurt like crazy. Arienne came to stand near me, using my body as a shield. The Draka dignitary lunged at me, so I swiped at his face. But he jerked back in time, so the only thing I caught was his necklace, which was an irregular shard of something else.

A blast of telepathic energy opened my mind and took me away from the fight in which I was engrossed. I could see in a second that it belonged to a man who looked just like Phuong but with a beard: my father, the deposed Yore emperor. I could feel it more surely than I'd felt anything in my life besides my pull towards my mate. I could tell in this split second that it was part of a greater whole, that something had been broken.

"Where did you get this?" I asked the asshole who was clutching his cheek.

"It's not for you," he sneered. I kicked him in the stomach, sending him sprawling backwards.

"Arienne, run," I said. We pelted for the door and evaded capture. We ran to his ship, the hover floater that he'd used to pick us up at the port. I could see an opening near the entrance where there was a shape that matched the shard I held in my hand. I put it inside, which opened the door. There were security guards filtering out of the house now and raising weapons.

"Don't shoot my hover floater!" the Draka dignitary screamed at the top of his lungs. The split second of indecision on the part of the guards meant that we could start the ship and put it on the highest speed setting. I stared out the window at the red faces of the Draka guards.

Arienne sighed and sat down. "Phew. That was close."

"We're not safe yet." I sat down at the control panel. "We're going to go to the Assembly to talk to Gahariet, my brother-in-law. He's in charge of a council who is supposed to look into just what happened to the Yore."

"Why?" Arienne asked.

"Because that man knows something about what happened to my father."