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I turned to the side to find a bloodied and bruised Nikkos rushing toward us, Hellis and Bronnen, Osric’s other chief advisors, with him. The small but fierce omega wore a wide-eyed look of innocent excitement, but something about him made me pull back and hug Rumi even tighter.

“You were turned,” Rumi said with the same distrustful pinch in his voice that I felt. “You tried to kill me.”

Nikkos skidded to a halt and sent a desperate look to Osric, as if trying to convince the man that he’d had nothing to do with it. “I was turned,” he said, facing me and Rumi again. “And it felt awful. I don’t know how I snapped out of it, but I’m fine now.”

My sense of distrust lingered, and when Nikkos tried to approach us, I pulled Rumi back.

For a fraction of a second, Nikkos looked enraged, but that expression quickly flickered back to a pained, hurt look.

“The dark sorcerer’s spell is still out there,” I said, turning to Osric even though I didn’t want to take my eyes off Nikkos or the others. “Whoever he is, he’s still trying to turn your most loyal men.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Osric sighed .

“We have the means to end this,” Leo said, stepping forward, blood-soaked sword in hand. “We’ve had the ability to end this all along.” He glanced from me to Diamant to our brothers.

“If it’s magic you’re talking about, we already know we’re not allowed to wield it as a weapon,” Argus said. “Otherwise, I would have long ago.”

“Mother just reiterated to me that we cannot fight back with magic,” I sighed, frustrated.

“Then what use is having magic at all?” Leo shouted, so irritated that he threw his sword in the grass.

“There must be something we can do,” Rumi said, appealing to me. “Even Queen Gaia would draw the line at an entire army being wiped out and hundreds of people dying because our enemy isn’t playing fair.”

“We have to do something,” Tovey agreed. The rest of the omega princes nodded in agreement.

An idea came to me as I stared at my mate, desperate to find a way to protect him. “We cannot use magic to fight the battle,” I said, dragging my eyes away from Rumi to look at my brothers. “But we can use it to pause the fighting.”

Rufus and Diamant gaped at me, but Gildur, Argus, and Azurus seemed to know what I was thinking.

“The six of us would have to band together to cast a spell that large,” Azurus said.

“Then let’s do it,” I answered, holding out my hand.

Dragon magic was powerful to begin with, but when many dragons pooled their magic together, particularly if they were already kinsmen to begin with, it could do incredible things.

At that moment, with the extent of the battle raging around us and the power of the traitor in our midst, it would require all of us to wield enough magic to make a difference.

My brothers all came forward, starting with Diamant and Gildur.

They placed their hands over mine as we formed a circle.

When all six of us stood with our hands joined in the middle, I closed my eyes and said.

“We’ll pause this entire area and everyone in it.

Stopping things should give us enough time to figure out what to do next. ”

“And to find the traitor,” Diamant growled.

I didn’t need to give my brothers until the count of three to begin the spell. Once I started it, the others joined in. Our sixfold magic coursed through me, filling me with power that was almost as overwhelming as my bond with Rumi.

And then a seventh strand of magic joined us. I had a feeling I knew where it came from, especially since it was black. Black but not evil. I hadn’t realized Osric was ready to show his true colors so soon.

“It’s working!” Rumi called out. “Everything has stopped.”

The spell we’d conjured stayed where it was as I opened my eyes to look around.

Everything around us was frozen. The air had gone silent as the clamor of battle stopped.

Every way I looked, men were completely still, swords held aloft, mouths open in battle cries.

It was a perfect, eerie tableau of a battle.

Even in the far distance, I could see Freslik and his inner circle paused as well.

“That’s just strange,” Leo said, his expression one of shock as he turned in a slow circle, looking at the motionless world around him.

“What do we do next?” Rumi asked, stepping toward me. “How do we find the traitor and break the spell?”

“The traitor has to be here somewhere,” I said, searching frantically without truly knowing what I was looking for. “My guess is that they will remain unfrozen, thanks to their magic.”

“So everyone who isn’t frozen right now has some sort of magic in them?” Obi asked, turning to Argus.

“That’s generally how these things work,” Argus told him with a teasing, affectionate grin.

Obi almost smiled, but turned to Osric instead. “Then what about him?”

We all turned to find Osric watching us, his movements as free and unencumbered as the rest of us.

“I thought you knew,” Osric said, stepping toward us with a mischievous look of triumph.

I grinned. “I can’t speak for all of my brothers, but I knew. You aren’t just a child of the magical world,” I said, speaking the suspicion I’d had all along. “You’re one of us.”

“Cousin Osric,” Argus said with a laugh. “But of course you are.”

“Cousin?” Rumi asked, turning to me in question.

“But you already knew, didn’t you?” I asked, resting a hand on my mate’s shoulder.

Rumi blushed and said, “I figured out Osric was a dragon months ago, but is he your cousin?”

“All dragons are related,” I said, then glanced at Osric. “But some of them have not kept in touch with the family.”

“My mission required me to be elsewhere,” Osric said. “My branch of the family, the obsidian dragons, have lived in this world for hundreds of years.”

“But that’s impossible,” Azurus said with a frown. “How is there an entire obsidian branch of the family that none of us knew about?”

“Some of us knew about them,” Gildur said, sending me a wink .

Osric smirked and went on. “We left the magical world generations ago because?—”

That was as far as Osric’s explanation was able to go. We were interrupted by movement to one side and all turned to find a woman in ragged clothing stumbling toward us.

“She’s moving!” Leo shouted, bending to pick up his sword. “The spell didn’t pause her.”

“She must be magical,” Rumi said with a gasp.

“She’s more than that,” Selle said, adjusting his glasses and glaring at the woman. “She’s the one behind all this. She’s the sorcerer, or should I say sorceress.”

A moment later, the woman pulled up short and gasped as she found herself in our midst. Selle was right. The woman was the sorceress, or at least she had been.

“Saoirse?” Gildur asked, stepping toward her with a shocked expression. “What are you doing here?”

Sure enough, it was Lady Saoirse, the woman who had tried to usurp Freslik so she could use his army in what would have been a futile attempt to attack Mother’s throne and set herself up as the ruler of all.

Mother had taken her powers and banished her to the cruel world, but there she was, looking much the worse for wear, but alive and possessing of some sort of power, since she hadn’t been paused by our spell.

Only when she came to a stop in our midst, she panted and doubled over before glancing up at us all and blurting, “Help me! You have to help me!”