We followed Hathai back to Ashur's building. I knelt down to have a quick word with Omari.

"I have to go take care of something Omari. Hathai is going to go take you to get some food in the meantime, all right?"

His face looked worried. "Why are people trespassing?" Omari asked. "Don't they know they're not allowed here?"

If only things were so simple.

"Well, I'm going to go see why they came," I hedged. "Maybe they have a good reason," I added.

"Okay," Omari agreed, still not sounded convinced. "Be careful."

"I will."

I gave him a tight hug. Figuring that was the best I could do right now, I waved goodbye and headed back over to the building that Sven had been kept in when he first showed up.

I worried if I'd be able to find everyone easily, but I shouldn't have. As soon as I walked into the place, I found them. Enzi, Fuera, Ashur, and maybe ten more of Ashur's people that I knew by face but not by name were there, along with four other strangers that Sven was hovering around. I was guessing these were the trespassers, and also that they were phoenixes by how familiar Sven seemed with them. Phoenixes he knew.

Ashur came over to me as soon as he saw me, his face tense.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Sven was the one who answered.

"These are my people from Emberich's palace," he explained in a tight voice. "Or what's left of them," he added, the expression in his eyes haunted.

What was left of them? I looked over at Ashur, meeting his eyes.

"Apparently, their group numbered twenty originally," he said grimly.

Twenty? I looked back at the four people in front of us. The disparity was jarring.

"What happened to the rest?" I asked, dreading the answer. Knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

"Gone," Sven answered bitterly. "Emberich had them executed. Publicly. And now he's going after the flocks those people came from, trying to make an example of them as well."

"An example of them how?"

"By killing them," the young woman with rich dark skin said, her voice sounding dead as she looked over at me, her eyes bloodshot. "By brutally attacking and killing them openly so everyone can see what happens to traitors." Her voice was bitter.

I couldn't imagine...

"And Emberich is not going to be happy that we got away," a man in his forties with thinning blond hair added, the lines around his mouth deep with worry. "We know he's already attacked five different flocks. And we also know ours are next," he added grimly.

"How did you guys get out?" I asked.

I had to remind myself that I didn't know if they were telling the truth. They looked shell-shocked enough, their faces drawn, but it would be foolish of us to take anything at face value alone. I almost hoped they were lying. If not...

Emberich had just killed a number of his own people. And was planning on killing even more.

"Zara sent us a warning message right before they got to her," a man in his early thirties said, his short dark hair cut close to his skull. "We had an emergency escape exit ready to go," he explained, shaking his head. "It seems almost naive now."

"We never thought we would need it. Or that so few of us would be able to get out if we did," another man added quietly, his dark gaze pained. The medium brown of his skin, and his slightly curved nose, hinted at a Middle Eastern heritage.

"That's..." I trailed off, not knowing how to react.

"Politically foolhardy," Sven finished for me, anger harsh in his voice. "It would be one thing for him to simply take us out. We were conspiring against him," he conceded. "But taking it to the conspirator's flocks? Trying to make an example of them?" He shook his head. "He is going to instigate a civil war, the idiot. All simply to make a point about how powerful and in control he is," he bit out.

Civil war. My mind immediately turned to the implications of that. Because as much as dragons and humans wanted to stay out of phoenix matters and vice-versa, we were all very interconnected. A civil war among the phoenixes would affect everybody, dragons and humans alike.

The phoenixes were built to travel long distances and were able to carry a lot of essentials from dome to dome, including things for businesses that dragons were involved in. Food, water, refuse, you named it, phoenixes had a hand in transporting it. They hadn't completely cornered the market on all long-distance transport, but man, they were a large portion of them. They were essentially the present-day shipping lines outside the domes. Not to mention a thriving market for goods created by both humans and dragons.

If they got into a civil war, everyone would feel the effects immediately, there was no doubt about it. And civil wars had a way of dragging on and on. It could throw everything into chaos. I met Ashur's eyes again and saw the same conclusion working behind them.

"This isn't good," I murmured. "This is way bigger then me and Omari now. Or even Emberich."

Ashur nodded, his face grim.

"We're all going to feel it," he acknowledged. "And it isn't exactly a great look for either us or the phoenixes in front of the humans. Not with the way they already picture us in the historic context, as ravening beasts who don't know how to control ourselves. And all of us have our fingers in the human pie." He shook his head. "That isn't a market that we can lose. And that's what will happen if they decide that we're too volatile to do business with. It'll hurt them too to cut ties with us, but they could conceivably go back to the hardcore isolationist policies they'd implemented directly after the Phoenix and Dragon Wars."

I wanted to think the humans wouldn't do something so extreme and lump the dragons in with the phoenixes, but I'd lived too long among humans and overheard their biased views for too long to think that that wasn't a very distinct possibility.

I looked back over at the worn-down group of phoenix insurgents that had essentially come to us for sanctuary.

They were dressed in the spare sweats that were kept here in every corner, telling me they'd most likely flown in their phoenix forms. They'd just lost everything. Their positions and the power that came with them. The lives they'd built over the years. Their friends. And potentially their entire flocks. Not only that, this would only be the tip of the iceberg if Emberich kept throwing his weight around and showing all the phoenixes who was boss.

He'd likely just instigated his own war by going a step too far in his insatiable urge to safeguard his power. I didn't know if we could stay out of it any more even if we wanted to.

Emberich may have just shot himself in the foot.