They took a public conveyance, having it drop them off two blocks from the fae quarter. Sere wanted to control her approach and preferred to go on foot.

“What’s the plan?” Amnan asked when they were ‘alone’ again.

He was beginning to annoy her. Well, he always annoyed her, but this was the start of teeth-gritting annoyance. He strolled at her side, hands in his pockets like his dilettante of a brother, Hrutha. Seemingly at ease and perfectly prepared to follow her every lead, as passive as a puppy on a leash. Until it turned and bit its owner’s hand, streaking off into the distance with mad, triumphant yelping.

“Find the sigil. Talk to the head of the demesne.”

Annan stopped. “Serephone. You just can’t request to speak to a fae Lord. And if you suspect him of wrongdoing, that’s even more dangerous.”

“Won’t do much talking once I know for sure.”

He stared at her, gaze steady. “And you think killing one will be easy? They are not dragons, but they are still dangerous.”

She shrugged. “Danger is relative.”

“Have a care for my oath to your mother.” Amnan sighed. “You should see your expression. My father warned me you were mad. I should listen to him more often.”

“Stop whining. I should do nothing? Allow a criminal to continue to prey on young girls and women?”

He crossed him arms. “I simply expect you to act with more discretion than, say…Hrutha.”

How insulting. “I have discretion.” Her voice was flat. “You are still living.”

She whirled away as he grinned. “Threats again, sweetheart?” he called after her. “I’m starting to think you’re wanting to pull the dragon’s tail. Let’s wait until we’re alone, hmm?”

* * *

The difficulty they had walking into the fae quarter wasn’t what she’d expected. To stay any longer than a few hours for shopping of visiting required a permit from a Lord, but otherwise one could simply sign in. Serephone was aware all the non-human races guarded their communities the same as Maddugh guarded his town, but since this was a multi-species city, under a Dome, and technically on a human-owned dimension, she’d thought the entry would be a simple formality. More of a type of traffic control. And it was, until the magic seized her.

She began sweating as they approached, a strange tightness behind her eyes. The checkpoint was a simple man-sized entry in a wrought iron fence stretching across, what she assumed were, the boundaries of the quarter and easily three stories tall. When she looked up she thought she saw a glimmer.

Magic.

For a moment, she thought her corset was too tight—but she wasn’t wearing the ridiculous garment. Perhaps the fae had a magical barrier erected that her own small, latent skills were reacting to.

“What’s wrong?” Amnan asked.

“I feel faint.” She couldn’t believe she said the words, even as she said them.

His glance was sharp. “This is the first time you’ve encountered fae?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I’m not sure.” He frowned. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“Well, you’re old.” She’d never considered how the concentrated auras of so many magic users of, apparently, her own blood would affect her. “You really think I’m fae?”

He took her arm as they approached the entrance. There was a single guard who appeared weaponless, dressed in a long tunic, jacket, and loose trousers in slate gray, a dark gold trim at the edge of the v-neck collar. It was the oddest ensemble she’d ever seen, a far cry from the tailored denims and vests and trousers of her hometown—and most of the residents in this city. It must have been the kind of thing they wore in their own dimension.

As they approached the guard, a female with black eyes and loose golden hair, Serephone stifled a gasp. “I really can’t breathe.”

“We’re turning back.”

He sounded grim, but Serephone overrode his decision with her curt response. “No.”

Whatever was happening—it needed to happen. She needed the knowledge. Amnan ignored her, halting as the person in front of them in line was waved through, and began to turn her around.

“Stop,” the fae woman said, holding up a hand.

Amnan kept moving, but Serephone stopped. And couldn’t move. The dragon at her side growled, head whipping around to stare at the fae.

“Release her. Damn fae. Should have known you’d have a locking spell.”

“I don’t know your face—and I do,” the woman said, ignoring Amnan and staring at Serephone.

“Heard a lot of that lately.”

“You are in some distress?”

She wouldn’t reveal weakness to a stranger. But her vision was slowly blackening. “Whatever spell you’ve got is affecting me.”

“The wards. You’ve not passed through them before. They are tasting you. Whose Line do you belong to?”

“What?”

“Let’s go, Serephone. Break the hold spell.”

The fae woman sighed. “Another bastard.”

Serephone snarled. “My parents were married. Watch your mouth.”

The woman’s expression didn’t change. “Nonetheless. Relax—the ward will be done soon. You may go in. But you, male—“

“She’s not going in there without me,” Amnan said, voice low. Steely.

The woman stared at him, voice cool. “You are not human. Declare yourself.”

“Amnan, son of Lord Maddugh, Clan Adallsthone.”

She grimaced, a faint expression. “Dragons. And why do you accompany one of ours?”

“She’s mine. Family. Either let us in or we’ll go. I’ll not have a flunky hold me hostage at a gate.”

The fae waved them in. “I would be up to no mischief if I were you. Girl—give me your name.”

The command was a low, vicious blow to her stomach. Nausea nearly overwhelmed her. She wanted to obey, but couldn’t. She had no name.

“Nameless. Poor child. But it’s for the best, I suppose. Go.”

The inability to move melted away from her limbs and Serephone moved forward, a thin-lipped Amnan at her side. He made no sound but she could feel the vibration of the growl in his chest. But once they entered the tightness gripped her in a psychic vice and began drawing her inexorably along the white stone paths.

“Sere, what’s happening?” Amnan asked in her ear.

Another time she might have crouched down to examine the seamless sidewalk. It wasn’t slippery, but there was no apparent texture. And there were no cracks showing where pavers had been laid. The road was cobblestone, but a type she’d never seen before—like crushed pink, white, and gray quartz.

“You ever been under a geas?” she asked, hand rising to mop a few droplets of sweat off her brow.

Amnan said nothing, but took her elbow, guiding her to a small shaded park lush with flowering trees, more of a sitting area, situated on the corner of the block. If the human areas of the Dome were bronze and copper and shades of brown, the fae quarter was silvers and pinks and airiness. She sat down and as soon as her legs stopped moving she grit her teeth against the urge to rise, to keep moving forward.

He knelt in front of her, hands on her face. She said nothing as her spiders began skittering in response to her elevated heart rate.

“Serephone, why would you be under a geas?”

How the hell would she know?

He swore. “Stone and Skies. If I had known—though I suppose there’s no way we could have known. We can try and walk out of here, but I don’t think that would end well for you. Are you being led somewhere?”

She nodded, movement jerky. He stood. “Alright. Then we go, but remain vigilant. Goddamn, I know I’m forgetting something. I wish my father were here.”

As they walked, the vise around her mind and limbs loosened, as if it were happy with her decision to cooperate. Sere watched the people who passed. Mostly fae, and a fair sampling of the various races as well, but there were humans in the mix. Immortals of any species were generally easy to spot. Their eyes and skin held an internal luminance humans could never match, and they walked with a certain lightness to their steps as if they had to focus on not floating above ground.

“We’re moving into a residential sector,” Amnan said after they’d been walking the good part of an hour. Strolling rather, because they didn’t want to bring attention to themselves by hurrying—especially when the fae moved about as if they had all time in the world.

The shops and cafes and small grocery stores gradually receded, the road narrowing and the sidewalks broadening. The shorter, prettier shrubs and blossoming trees lining the public areas gave way to tall, majestic trunks topped with thick, frothy leaves. Light softened, diffused, and large homes sitting behind ornate gates become the norm.

And guards. Each home sported a set of honor guards. As she and Amnan walked, Serephone observed square plaques of silver set into the stone fences in front of each estate. Plaques that bore spidery, complex glyphs like the one she was hunting.

“The plaques,” she said to Amnan. “On the fences. What’s the chance my prey is behind one of these gates?”

“And the geas leads you here? I don’t like it.”

She did. She liked it very much. And when they stopped in front of another stone fence, twelve feet high with wide, black gates and two guards standing in front, she recognized the glyph on the plaque.

Two fae watched her as she walked forward, hand rising to trace the pattern, but they said nothing, impassive. Their master had a flare for drama because one was as dark as the other was pale. Deep night skin and flowing silver hair, the other an inverse twin with shoulder length black curls and an arctic complexion. Literally, because his lips and the tips of his ears were brushed with blue.

She opened her mouth to speak and the geas roared back to life with a vengeance, propelling her towards the gate as if an invisible hand was on her back. Amnan grabbed her, wrapping arms around her torso to hold her still. She snarled, twisting, and the guards watched, their attention on the pair.

The dark one stepped forward and he flowed through the gate, not even bothering to open it first. Sere stared, riveted. Could they truly walk through objects, or was the gate an illusion?

The guard was tall, of course. She’d like to see a short fae. And in the same kind of garment as the person at the checkpoint. Their livery wasn’t gray but white edged in scarlet, the colors striking on both.

“You have business here?” the guard asked.

“No,” Amnan responded, voice tight. “She wanted to sightsee. We’re leaving.”

The man held out an arm. “Untruth. I see my Lord’s compulsion on her.”

“Your Lord’s what?” Serephone asked. “You know what this is?”

“I may. I may not. But for you to carry this mark means— “

“Means what?” Amnan growled.

“I want to leave,” Sere said. “I don’t think I can without going in.”

“Who is your Lord?” Amnan asked. “Can he remove whatever binds her?”

“Nothing can remove it, it is a part of her blood. But you may leave—if you can. I don’t recommend you try.”

Serephone didn’t like threats—she also didn’t like the faint challenge in the man’s dark eyes. “What’s your name?”

A smooth silver brow rose slowly at the question.

“That’s not what she meant,” Amnan said, voice curt. “She doesn’t understand.”

“I am called Yuruth. I have given you my call name, now you will give me yours.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “Serephone.”

“Serephone.” He rolled the syllables around the tongue, eyes never leaving her face. “The dragon is right. It is not, indeed, a name.”

“Feel like I’m missing something.” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but in her defense, she was tired, and distracted, and hadn’t been able to properly breathe for blocks.

Yuruth swept an arm to indicate the gate. “There are answers inside.”

“No,” Amnan said even as she stepped forward.

“You cannot obstruct her free will,” Yuruth said.

“The way your Lord suborns it, even now?”

“It is not his fault,” Yuruth said. “Birth binds us all, whether we will it or no.”

She didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she wanted answers. She could walk through that gate, but that seemed a more permanent decision than turning back, and assessing what had happened.

“Will the geas prevent me from leaving?” she asked the guard. She would not ask him the nature of the geas. It would only put her in the position, where she’d be forced to negotiate with him, and she didn’t want to negotiate, when she was the ignorant party.

“It is not my place to say. Come.”

Serephone took one breath, then another. And whispered to her spiders. They woke, crawling on her arms, tiny feet sinking into her skin. The pain was immediate, red-hot, the exact barrier she needed to clear her mind.

“Who is your Lord?” she asked.

Yuruth watched her, saying nothing at first. And then he nodded, slowly. “Dawnthorne.”

* * *

“You’re in a foul mood, darling.”

Persia scowled into her mug of beer. She’d come to the tavern to get away from the nosy eyes of her stepbrother. Nuaddan slunk away into the forest that morning until Hrutha yodeled him out. Literally. She’d surged out of bed very early, almost breaking her neck as she tripped in the sheets, and rushed to her balcony because it sounded like the third apocalypse. She fully expected that the dragon’s loud high-pitched undulations were the sounds of another rip in the dimensions happening right outside her balcony. But she’d looked down to find a purple and green dragon…singing.

Whatever he was doing worked, because moments later another came flying out of the forest, spewing fire into the air. Then Nuaddan landed, shifting to human and threw a punch at Hrutha, who was already pulling on pants and a shirt, laughing like a madman.

“Father said to stay out of your cave,” Hrutha sing-songed, dancing away from his brother’s swings.

“You fiend,” Nuaddan said, swearing.

“I’ll greet the sun with my song every morning unless you are in the castle.”

Persia shuddered. If Hrutha had been her brother, she would have drowned herself at birth.

“I’m drinking,” she said. “Go away.”

“Drinking alone is never fun.” He slid onto the stool next to her, gesturing to the bartender. “There’s not a tavern in the dragon city that doesn’t have my name on a plaque.”

She snorted.

“Truly.” He nudged her shoulder, pointing. “Look. See?”

Persia glanced over at the wall behind the bar, squinting. And shook her head in annoyance. “So you’re a drunk.”

“That is beside the point. The point is that not a bartender in town will forget to inform me if one of my lovely sisters shows up.”

She looked at him. He lounged with one elbow on the counter, tousled blond hair over his shoulder, shirt half unbuttoned as usual. He was likely barefoot as well. “You’re the most annoying creature.”

Hrutha smiled. “But fun. Come, come. What will you have this evening? Music, dancing, a man? A woman?”

“Can you please go away? I want to brood in peace over my sister, and now my mother, abandoning me.” Kailigh and Maddugh had left the prior evening with firm instructions for the other children not to follow them.

“Well, you’ve another sister to tend to, and best keep your eye on her or you’ll find her wedded, bedded, and a mother in nine-months. The sharks are circling now that Papa Dragon has flown away with Crazy Mama.”

She rolled her eyes. “No one calls them that. You just made it up.”

“Oh, really?”

Persia slammed her beer down on the counter, fished a coin out of her pocket, and slid off the stool. “If your aim was to chase me out, you’ve succeeded. Damn. A woman can’t even get a drink anymore.”

“I’ll see you for dinner,” he called as she stomped out.