Nero wrenched around to face Regis and managed to force his gaze to the wall beside the prince’s head before he thought Nero was challenging him. “Your Highness?”

“I said, a word.”

No way in hell. He had to get out of there before the convulsions overwhelmed him.

He fought to keep his expression neutral. “Of course.”

“So?” Regis glared at the other drakes.

“Your Highness?” Lothair asked, his gaze dropping to the floor.

“So?” Regis asked again, red sweeping over his face and his eyes narrowing, as if the other doyens were supposed to have known what the first so had meant. “Out! All of you, out! Now. Or the last one to leave goes directly to Odyne.”

Maize sneered, but leapt from her chair and rushed to the door. The other doyens scrambled for the exit as well, and Nero pressed tight to the wall to keep out of the way. Barna — closest to the door — was out first. Maize shoved Lothair behind her to get out next, which blocked the path for Pike, forcing him to be last.

Regis threw his head back and laughed.

The color drained from Pike’s face. “Your Highness, I—”

“Pike,” Regis said with a dark chuckle, “keep cleaning up Zenobia’s mess, and I’ll give you a reprieve from meeting Odyne.”

“Yes, your Highness.” Pike bolted into the hall.

“Oh, and Pike,” Regis said, stopping the green drake mid-step, “I think you owe a report to my chamberlain about the state of your coterie.”

“Of course, my lord.” Pike’s gaze jumped to Tobias, who still stood in the corner, somehow making his massive body and radiant aura unobtrusive. “I can do that right now.”

“In my office,” Tobias said as he stepped away from the wall and strode out the doorway.

“They need to understand,” Regis said as Tobias and Pike walked away. “We can’t be exposed. Every time a drake goes into the human realm, he risks revealing us to the humans and then they’ll destroy us for good.”

“Your Highness,” Nero said.

Someone yelled, and lightning shot through his head.

Five flights down. Looks like a door. Please let it be the way out.

“Every drake must be recalled from the human world. They can’t be allowed to leave Court again.”

So that’s what Regis had been ranting about. No wonder Barna was so upset. His coterie’s wealth had grown to enormous proportions because of dragons going into the human realm. His whole business was designed to cater to drakes living and shopping and being entertained outside of Court. If Regis recalled everyone, that would mean the Major Brown Coterie would take a financial hit and could lose its position in Court. As well, Nero’s puzur would be nearly defenseless, and his most valuable member, Raven, would be trapped in Court, since she wasn’t a member of the Asar Nergal and therefore wouldn’t have permission to be in the human realm.

The bottom of the stairwell flickered into sight, and a heavy metal security door materialized in the middle of the council table.

Nero ground his teeth. Just get the hell out of there.

Yes. Get out.

Of the stairwell. Of the building—

No. Out of Court.

Nero yanked his attention to Regis’s jowls, dangerously close to making eye contact, which could be misconstrued as a challenge for dominance. “I’ll let Tobias know.”

“Tobias?” Confusion flickered over Regis’s expression. “My father’s chamberlain?”

“Yes.” A chill fluttered through the pain. Regis was regularly demanding, sometimes even cruel — they were after all a spirit race of predators and aggression was part of their nature — but lately he was becoming more and more confused. Just like his father when his soul sickness had started to overwhelm his spirit.

Regis’s confusion melted into rage. “My father,” he said, his tone dark. “You must deal with my father, Nero. He can’t be allowed to hold the throne. It puts us all in danger.”

“He can’t.” Mother, Nero had no idea what to say to that. He could barely think past the pain and see the council chamber through the semi-translucent stairwell, but this was the same conversation he’d had with Regis five hundred years ago, before they’d imprisoned Constantine in his suite.

“Yes.” Regis bared his teeth and hissed. “And I want to see the heads of Hunter and the sorcerer he created at my feet within the week.”

Nero’s brain stuttered at the sudden jump in topic.

“Within the week,” Regis growled.

“Hunter is a resourceful drake.” Shit. How was he going to get out of this? Even if he wanted to kill Hunter or Anaea, they were too powerful for him or any of his soldiers in the Asar Nergal. “It might take more than a week. Hunter has gone into hiding.”

“You’re the dugga. She’s a sorcerer. You know exactly where she is. Isn’t that how your magic works?”

The simplified version. Yes. “She’s—” Come on. Just think of something. But even just concentrating on Regis’s words was difficult. “They’re—”

Regis’s eyes narrowed. “This should be an easy answer. Do you need Odyne to jog your memory?”

“That won’t get you Hunter’s head any sooner.”

The red fury swept over Regis’s face again in a giant wave, rushing from his throat to his forehead. If the situation weren’t so serious, Nero would have laughed at how close to a cartoon it was.

“You can be replaced,” Regis growled.

“I can. But do you trust any of the other doyens?” Nero’s pulse pounded. Confronting the prince was a risk, but he didn’t have the time or ability of thought to be delicate. He needed to finish this conversation and get the hell out of there, deal with this Becca Scott, then figure out what to do with a prince whose mental state was even less stable than Nero had feared.

“I can’t trust anyone.”

“You can trust Tobias, and you can trust me.” A tremor raced through Nero’s chest.

“I’ve yet to decide that,” Regis said. “You still haven’t killed Hunter or his sorcerer.”

“She’s hiding herself with magic. But when I find her, I’ll kill her.” Just let him go. Please. “I’ll kill Hunter, too.” And when he had a moment to figure out how to deal with that, he would. One problem at a time.

“You’d better.” Regis stormed away, his two-man guard — who’d been standing discreetly a dozen feet away — falling into step behind him.

Another bolt of pain shot through Nero’s head, and the muscles in his chest spasmed. He pressed a hand to the impossibly smooth granite wall — shaped by the Handmaiden’s powerful magic, like all the halls in Court — in part to summon a gate to get the hell out of there, but mostly to keep standing.

He’d known keeping a puzur of natural human mages — in direct defiance to dragon law — would eventually become a problem. Even as the dugga of the Asar Nergal, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to keep his kids a secret forever. But he’d hoped, from the depths of his soul, that dragon attitudes would have changed by the time his secret coterie was discovered.

Except Zenobia and her coup, using unnaturally created mages, had once again swung popular opinion among leading dragons away from openly co-existing with humans. While there were few drakes who remembered the first couple hundred years of chaos after the Great Scourge, and even fewer who remembered the Great Scourge and the time before, it was as if the fear of being wiped out of existence was written in the DNA of half the dragon population, whether they remembered those times or not. The fear even defied logic, making drakes kill other drakes in order to seize leadership — marching them closer to extinction.

It made no sense. And yet the need to do anything to protect his puzur strained against all logic. It was as if his bonds of family — even if it was an unusual family — were stronger than the bonds of species. Like a miniature insanity, a ghostly reflection of the insanity that captured the newly inamorated.

And Regis wasn’t helping by demanding all drakes return to Court. That would only fuel the fear as well as the divide between those drakes who were afraid and those who weren’t. Hiding wasn’t going to help. Getting information. Making informed decisions. That was their best recourse. Not all humans wanted to finish what their ancestors had started. The kids in his house and those he’d raised and taught over the centuries were proof of that. No one would win in an all-out war. Only a minute fraction of the human population even knew the truth about magic, and even fewer knew about the existence of dragonkind. The only conflict dragons were involved in was one of their own making and imagination.

Another slice of agony burned through him, and the muscles in his chest tightened. He gasped, fighting the convulsion. He needed to hold it together long enough to get out of Court. He could give in to the pain back in the privacy of his room — and he wasn’t going back to his office. Someone still might find him and he didn’t want to terrify any of his kids. Once he’d pulled himself back together, he could find Becca Scott, deal with her, then deal with Regis and the rest of this mess.

He subvocalized his power word and summoned a gate. A speck of darkness, the heart of the gate, flared to life against the wall, then whooshed into a man-sized vortex. He concentrated on his bedroom at his house in Newgate. A simple room, decorated by Raven in black, white, and burgundy, with a king bed and an en suite bathroom. Since Zenobia’s coup, he’d been spending more time than usual in Newgate. As dugga, Newgate was currently where the greatest gathering of human mages were, and even with the ability to free gate anywhere in the world, it helped if he wasn’t juggling too many time zones. But if he wasn’t careful, the other doyens — who didn’t know he was the dugga — could become suspicious, and then this mess would get worse.

The image of his room wavered, and a heavy security door appeared, semi-transposed over his bed.

Almost… there, Becca thought.

A weight flooded his limbs and he stumbled.

Shit. Except he had no idea if that was his thought or hers.

The world darkened and twisted— no, he’d stepped into his gate—? No, he’d…?

His chest heaved, each breath an effort, each step a marathon. He had to get free. Had to get out of there. Had—

Had to control his gate, or—

His foot hit something hard and the world lurched into focus. Shadows surrounded him and a freezing wind stung his cheeks. He faced a brick wall with a rusted fire escape bolted into it beside a barred, grimy window. To his right, across a street edged with filthy small snow banks, was some kind of square, with half a dozen leafless miniature trees in massive concrete boxes, a wide set of curving steps leading up to the front of a high-rise, and some kind of sweeping metal modern art installation with metal umbrellas hanging from it.

Something crashed, and Becca’s metal security door flickered into sight over the brick wall. The door swung back toward him… her… and she staggered through, clutching at the frame to get her bearings. Across a small patio sat two picnic tables surrounded by piles of snow, and on either side of her stretched an ice-slicked walkway. The path to her right was shorter than the left and had more light. There’d be people there. Help. She just had to make it along the icy walkway, up those stairs to that… arm of metal with two umbrellas hanging from it?

Shit.

The muscles in Nero’s arm and chest seized. He’d gated right to her, without a weapon or a winter coat, and barely in control of his body, let alone his magic.