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As quickly as whatever had the other dragons in its grip started, it stopped. My brothers were left panting and panicked, but their mates, Emmerich’s brothers stood blank-eyed and docile, like they weren’t aware of anything and didn’t have a care in the world.

“Our bond!” Obi shouted, scrambling toward Argus. “Is it gone?”

“Not gone,” Leo said, gasping for breath like he’d been underwater as he rose to his feet. He helped me up, too. “Just…silenced.”

In a panic, I reached for my bond with Emmerich, willing him to stop mindlessly kissing Nazeing as if I didn’t exist and nothing else in the world mattered.

I didn’t know what it felt like for my brothers, but to say the bond was “silenced” was accurate.

It was still there, as thick as ever, but it was like the invisible cord binding me to my mate had once been a conduit of light and energy, but now it was nothing.

“What do we do?” Misha asked, so panicked that my own fear paled in comparison to my deep-seated need to protect my fragile brother.

“We fight,” Leo said.

His bravado vanished a moment later when he turned to the doorway that was supposed to bring the rest of Osric’s army into the Great Hall only to find that it wasn’t there.

The doorway was gone. I had been too distracted by Nazeing’s transformation and everything that happened after to note that it had closed up before a single soldier could come through.

The only people who had made it into the Great Hall were me and Emmerich, Nazeing, my brothers, and their mates.

Now, the only ones who remained unstupefied by Nazeing’s dark magic were me and my brothers.

I took one last, painful look at Emmerich and Nazeing completely absorbed in each other, my heart breaking with what I knew we needed to do. “We run,” I contradicted Leo.

“What?” Leo dragged his attention away from Diamant, who didn’t seem particularly aware of anything, and glared at me. “I am not leaving my mate.”

“We have to,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to the side. “While Nazeing is distracted.”

“He’s right,” Selle said, pushing up his glasses. He grabbed Misha’s hand and gestured to the others to follow me toward one of the doorways leading out of the Great Hall. “We can’t fight against this kind of magic.”

I doubted that Nazeing was so absorbed in kissing Emmerich that he didn’t know what we were doing.

Since we’d entered the Great Hall, he’d treated my brothers and I as if we were castle kittens or something else too weak to bother with.

There was as good a chance as any that he let himself get lost in kissing Emmerich as a way to dishearten or humiliate me.

I was disheartened, but I was also determined to move heaven and earth to find the one person who might stand a chance to break Nazeing’s spell and his dominance .

“Is he just going to let us escape?” Tovey gasped as the six of us dashed out into the hallway.

“I don’t think that’s what he’s doing,” Leo said in a dark voice. “I think he’s toying with us.”

“He’s underestimating us,” I said, taking a path through the castle’s halls that would not only get us closer to the dungeons where Father kept his most sensitive prisoners, but that let out onto a balcony with a view over the entire western part of the king’s city and the field beyond, where the earlier battle had taken place.

“We need to find Osric,” I said, trying to think and plan and panic at the same time.

“He’s the only one who can help us now.”

“Osric handed himself over to Father,” Obi said in distress. “He’s probably in chains by now, magical chains that dampen his magic.”

“If Father hasn’t killed him,” Misha said in a barely audible voice.

I ignored both of them for the moment, throwing myself against the edge of the balcony and leaning out as far as I could so I could see as much of the courtyard below as possible.

I had to trust that Osric would be able to keep himself alive and that my father would be vain enough to want to taunt and torture his enemy instead of killing him outright.

Whether it was Father’s vanity or Osric’s cleverness, I spotted them and the front of Father’s ragged army marching into the castle’s front courtyard a minute later.

“Fortune is on our side!” I called out, pulling back from the balcony and darting for a doorway at the other end of the long gallery that would take us into a different part of the castle.

“We have to get as close to them as possible,” I said, rushing on and trusting that my brothers would follow.

“They won’t expect us to be at the castle already.

We can use that, but we have to be careful. ”

“The guards will be exhausted from the battle and from the trek back to the castle,” Leo said, striding along by my side. “It’s a longshot, but they might be too overwhelmed to get in our way if we try to rescue Osric.”

“We’re going to rescue Osric?” Obi said, catching up to us, clearly distressed. “Shouldn’t we be trying to rescue our mates?”

“This is rescuing our mates,” I told him, turning a corner that led to a staircase taking us down. “We need Osric’s dragon magic to break the spell.”

“I still can’t believe Cousin Osric is a dragon,” Tovey said in wonder as we scrambled out onto the ground floor.

I could already hear the sound of dozens of boots stomping on the flagstones out in the courtyard.

I pressed myself back against the wall closest to the huge archway leading to the courtyard and gestured for my brothers to do the same.

There was as good a chance as anything that my father’s soldiers would walk right into the part of the castle where we waited, hardly hidden at all.

At any second, we could be discovered and captured or killed.

Fortunately, the marching stopped just short of the soldiers discovering where we were.

“What are your orders, Your Majesty?” Rottum’s tired voice sounded from far too close for my comfort.

I was surprised when my father answered, “I…I don’t know. Battle is exhausting. I need a nap before I decide what to do with our prisoner here.”

“A…a nap, Your Majesty?” Rottum asked. “I cannot advise?—”

“Are you the king or am I?” Father snapped in return .

“You are, Your Majesty,” Rottum said, though he didn’t sound happy.

“Take the prisoner to the dungeon,” Father said. “I’ll deal with him in the morning.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Rottum said bitterly. “Take the prisoner to the dungeon,” he ordered the soldiers holding Osric.

I didn’t care if he was upset with the order or not. I couldn’t have been happier with it. So much so that I wondered if, once again, my father was being influenced by magic of some sort.

It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered at that moment was the fact that we’d been given a chance. Somehow, by some miracle, my brothers and I would have a chance to rescue Cousin Osric and get his help in breaking Nazeing’s spell to rescue our mates.