“I can’t deal with this right now, Alfonso,” Cassius snapped, his face twisting into a grimace. “This is what I pay you for.”

“Cass,” Alfonso pleaded. “You need to come into headquarters this week! The deal in Dubai is going south, and the developers in—”

“Did you not hear what I said?” Cassius growled. “I don’t have time! Something much more pressing has come to my attention. You are the president of the company, Al. Do what you must. You have my blessing.” He disconnected the Skype call before Alfonso could retort and reached toward his tumbler glass, just out of view of the screen.

None of us may have any time, he thought coldly, chewing on the insides of his cheeks. It was his third brandy in an hour, but it still did doing nothing to alleviate his taut nerves. This is really happening, Cassius told himself as he began to walk along the length of the office, his eyes fixated on the distant sea through the glass wall.

Below his feet, he could see the ninety-foot drop to the jungle. In fact, he’d had the entire estate built around the same breathtaking features that his office and bedroom shared: a view from all angles. The staff avoided the rooms at all cost, the height and wildness disturbing to the most seasoned of employees.

Cassius paused, his mind racing with all that had happened over the past few months. He and his brothers had congregated in Misty Woods three months earlier, and like him, they had been steadfastly against the king’s dark plan.

“Father,” Titus groaned. “We cannot simply take over the planet. Some of us have lives to lead.”

“Are you suggesting that I don’t have a life?” Rui hissed, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “You speak too freely, son.”

Titus paled.

“Father, I meant no disrespect,” he assured the old king, desperately looking to his siblings for help.

Estrella floated through the grand hall, her long skirts swirling about her ankles as she poured ale and wine from earthenware urns into goblets of gold. Cassius could not recall the last time he had heard a word from the mouth of his father’s newest wife.

He remains in the fourteenth century, he thought, staring at his brothers, waiting for someone else to defy the king.

“You sound incredibly disrespectful,” Rui snapped. “I am your father, the ruler of this kingdom—”

“Father,” Marcus interjected. “There is no longer a kingdom. You are no longer a king. You must accept this as fact.”

Cassius cringed, his heart racing slightly as he recognized the fire in the patriarch’s eyes.

“I am a king,” Rui snarled, rising to his feet. Despite his age, he was a formidable man, almost as tall as Cassius, with just as large a torso and the same jarring blue eyes.

“You’re not,” Marcus repeated, unmoved by Rui’s anger.

The men held each other’s gazes while the room waited with baited breath for the inevitable explosion, but to everyone’s surprise, their father smiled.

“Does it not bother you?” he asked Marcus.

“What? That we have not been royalty in three hundred years?” Marcus laughed, sitting back against his high-backed chair. “I have learned to deal with those losses in other ways. We all have, Father.”

“You are weak,” the king spat. “All of you.” The brothers collectively bristled.

“We are not stuck in the past, old man,” Marcus snarled.

“Marcus!” Maximus cried warningly, sensing the danger lurking behind Rui’s eyes.

“Let him speak,” the old king ordered. “I do not need cowards in my army.”

“What army?” Cassius exploded, having heard enough of his father’s ramblings. He could plainly see that the others were equally uncomfortable at the idea of starting a war.

“You are ungrateful!” the king snapped. “The lot of you.”

“With all due respect, Father, it is you who seems so,” Anders muttered. Cassius knew it took a lot for him to speak. It went against his brother’s gentle nature to voice his opinion so openly, but like the others, Anders knew just how insane his father’s scheme was.

“Me?” Rui declared, his bushy white brows jutting upward in shock. “I am trying to reclaim what is ours!”

“Father,” Cassius tried again, trying desperately to maintain his temper despite the fact that his patience was wearing thin. “You would fight for nothing. You have land, livestock, a wife!”

Estrella nodded in agreement, and Cassius wondered how she felt about being married to such a tyrant.

“We are owed more than that!” Rui roared, slamming his fists into the rectangular table so that the dinner plates rattled. “We are dragon blooded! We can own it all! Where are the warriors I raised? You have all grown soft over time!”

There was a slight murmuring amongst the brothers, and Cassius suddenly saw a spark of interest in the others’ eyes. Were they entertaining the idea? If they were, then they were as crazy as their father.

“Father,” he said, forcing his voice to sound calmer than he felt. “Think of what the repercussions will be.”

“That is just it, Cassius. There are no repercussions. We will rule the world as we were meant to do!”

“Father, you don’t know that consequences won’t exist!” he insisted.

“Like what?” Marcus asked suddenly, and Cassius felt a cold chill slither down his back.

“We have never ventured to take on this many people at once,” Cassius replied slowly. “Opal told us that we can be killed—”

“And yet we have never even been injured so badly that we don’t heal in minutes,” Marcus interrupted.

Father is getting to him, Cassius realized, worriedly glancing at his brothers. To all of them.

“We do not know if nuclear war will kill us!” he exclaimed, the same way he had told Anders and Maximus in New York. “Uranium is something none of us have encountered!”

“There will not be a nuclear war!” Rui yelled, but Cassius could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

“Father, this madness has gone on long enough,” Titus sighed, rising. “I must get back to my life.”

“Make no mistake!” Rui called out to him. “If you do not fight with me, you will be fighting alone. What do you believe will happen when the mortals realize they are at war?”

Titus turned to stare at his father, a questioning look in his eyes. Cassius, though, could already understand what the king was saying. Mortals would turn on themselves, looting and plundering for their own families. Cassius and his brothers would have no choice but to expose themselves to protect their own. No matter what happened, their father would get his way.

“Father,” Cassius said quickly, hoping to alleviate the situation diplomatically. “We need some time to think about this and discuss it amongst ourselves. You cannot expect us to make such a grand decision in minutes! We have businesses to consider and loved ones to worry about. You can at least grant us that. After all, time is always on our side.”

Rui’s cold eyes could’ve burned holes in Cassius’ face, but Cassius could see that his father was carefully considering his words.

“We will reconvene in one month,” he finally told them. “In that time, I expect you to come here prepared for battle.”

“Father,” Maximus offered almost timidly. “Should we decide to go this route, shouldn’t we warn the enemy that we are coming?”

The king snorted. “And ruin the element of surprise? You act as if you have never been to war before, Maximus. This will be good for every single one of you.”

“In one month, we will discuss this again,” Cassius announced, rising before any more talk of battle strategy could be brought to the table. He and his brothers disassembled from the dining room.

When they had met in the grand hall on the following full moon, Cassius was more apprehensive than ever. His brothers suddenly seemed keen on the idea, and Cassius wished he had spent more time communicating with them. But he had a business to run—he couldn’t babysit his father and deal with his own personal matters at the same time.

He had secretly hoped that the king would have forgotten about this nonsense, or at least moved onto something else, but it seemed that Rui was more hellbent than ever to proceed.

“Firstly, we will take out their president,” Rui explained. “We must ensure we strike at a time when we know he is there. From that point, the Pentagon and Congress.”

“Why the United States?” Cassius demanded. “Why should we start there? Here would make much more sense.”

“Why must you question everything?” his father retorted. “The United States, despite their current political and civil unrest, is considered the most powerful country in the world.”

Cassius was not certain that was so any longer, but he waited for his father to continue.

“We will take hold of America and wait for the rest of the world to fall into place.”

“Father, how can you possibly know what the other powerhouses are doing while you sit in the States?” Maximus questioned. Cassius turned to his brother, and he recognized the expression on his face: he wanted to do this, too.

How can they all be so cold to the world in which we live? he wondered.

“I will have you to ensure they do as they are told,” Rui reminded him. “We will concoct a proper plan and take action in the upcoming months.”

Cassius’ brothers exchanged glances among themselves, slow smiles appearing on their lips. A charged excitement hung in the air, replacing the dubiousness that had been there before.

“I assume you are all on board with my plans,” Rui said to his sons, and Cassius watched in horror as his brothers nodded slowly, accepting his plan as their own. Then his father fixed his rigid stare on him. “Cassius, I did not see your nod of consensus.”

Cassius gazed around the room, each one of his brothers giving him an encouraging look. He wanted no part of this war. How could the rest of them agree to such a thing?

Titus nudged him, and Cassius cleared his throat. If he went against his father, he would have to fight not only the king, but also his brothers. If he needed to, could he take them all on at once? He doubted his own abilities.

“Yes, Father,” he answered in the end. “I am with you.”

And for two months, he had waited, agonizing over how to stop or at least prolong the impending war.

Cassius put the tumbler on his desk, slipping back into his chair. He could feel the time was coming closer, the call from Misty Woods about to reach his ears.

His fingers flew over the keyboard of his computer, his hands trembling slightly as he searched through pages upon pages of Misty Woods history. Someone somewhere knew how to stop a dragon—someone somewhere had to know how to stop a dragon.

I have to find out who, he thought grimly, pouring through ancient documents, his eyes scanning the information, although his gut was crying out for him to run away and forget about it. After all, the knowledge put Cass at risk also.

But there was no running from the king’s plan. He was a crucial part of it, and if they succeeded, Brooklyn would be in grave danger.

And that was something Cass could not accept.