Page 141 of Fortune's Blade

“The one Dorina just went through?”

“The one her mind went through; we have her body here—”

“And that helps? How are we supposed to get through an army of dragons?”

“The army is here,” Louis-Cesare said, “Attacking the city despite having orders to the contrary. And having already taken out the guns that were impeding their progress. Why?”

And I suddenly realized that I was no longer hearing those deafening booms. Just intermittent dragon screeches, explosions, and distant screams. It was why we were able to talk at all.

“Steen’s after the queen’s son,” Ray said, listening to something the tiny man was saying. “She won out in the contest over who would replace the absent king, and he lost. He’s never forgiven her—”

“Sounds like him,” I said.

“—and the pixies are making a last stand in the nursery. They want Dorina to help—”

An explosion interrupted the conversation, close enough to shake the entire building and to rain dust down over my sister’s face. “She’s busy!”

But Ray was looking between her and the little man, his expression changing from worried to confused to resolute, and I got a bad feeling in my gut.

“I will do my best,” he told the creature, who nodded, a look of pure relief overtaking his features for an instant. Before the small wings fluttered as a shudder shook him, and he lay still. “Change of plan,” Ray croaked at me.

“What?” I didn’t get an answer, so I grabbed his arm as he strode past, but he shrugged it off.

“No time. Get out of here. I’ll handle this.”

“Handle—wait! What are you doing?” I demanded, catching him again as he headed back into the hallway. A hallway which was now a precarious slide down to an empty main corridor, because yeah. Everybody with sense had already left!

“What I must,” Ray said, turning to me with eyes blazing. “What Dorina would want me to do!”

“She’d want to live!” I said, putting both arms on his and bracing with my legs in the doorframe.

“Which is where you come in. Get her to safety. And tell her . . . tell her I love her.”

And then he was gone.

Motherfucker!

“If we’re going, we have to go now!” Louis-Cesare said, watching an approaching dragon.

The was huge and black and I didn’t think it was one of ours. But it looked like it was going to crash straight into us. I watched it come with horror dripping down my spine, chilling me to the bone, but not because of the approaching fury.

But because of the choice.

I just wanted to get my family out of here; that was it, my sole wish in the whole damned world. It was all I’d wanted since I came into Faerie, and faced the biggest challenges of my life. I’d fought hard to create a little group of my own out of nothing, to surround myself with people that actually cared about me, to build a life.

And yet, after five hundred years of sharpening my skills, I’d been slapped in the face by the fact that I wasn’t good enough. And that one of them, maybe all of them, were going to die because I couldn’t protect them. Leaving me forced to choose between two terrible options and right freaking now.

“Dory!”

“With Ray!” I yelled, right before Louis-Cesare jumped, causing him to break off with a curse and almost fall out of the window. The dragon curved right before hitting the building and a second later was gone, leaving a very unhappy Louis-Cesare behind. But unhappy was better than dead, and I didn’t think that his idea had a chance in hell.

He’d planned to enter the Veil to assault the human form of a passing dragon and hold it at knife point, in order to make us a taxi straight out of here, avoiding the hellscape below. That sounded great, only I’d tried something similar with Steen and had not enjoyed the result. Dragons didn’t take well to coercion.

As far as I could tell, they didn’t take to anything except beat downs from other dragons, and that was questionable. They were the stubbornest, craziest, most completely infuriating people I had ever met, save one. The one I slid into a moment later, hard enough to knock him off his feet.

“What the fuck?” Ray said, looking up at me wildly.

He had already run into a problem, being hip deep in debris—only most of it wasn’t fallen stone or splintered timber. Instead, packs of hastily assembled clothing were everywhere, which had been discarded when the going got rough. Along with casks of jewels, fancy rugs, silk hangings and actual furniture, much of which had been busted up as people slid into it, leaving us with what amounted to a garbage heap at the bottom of the hall.