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“What is that?” Annabelle hissed as she took a deep inhale.

“Smoke.” Her father whispered. His eyes snapped to the entrance they’d used to get to the coliseum. It led out to the free weight room of their massive gym.

A body hurtled past the line of demarcation, a dragon who bore deep crimson slashes over his chest and arms.

Alessandro phased to catch him before he hit the floor, Ciel on his shoulders, looking down at the man with concern.

“Black Cove.” The dragon growled. “The whole damn city is attacking.”

Rowan watched as Blaise, Naseem, and Stone phased out without prompting.

Aqua phased next to the man and had already begun weaving spells of healing as Terra began yelling instructions to the remaining dragons.

Helios phased in next to Alessandro, collecting his son and placing a kiss on his forehead before depositing him into Opal’s awaiting arms.

Rowan watched Opal fight back the urge to reach out to his retreating form as he followed a wave of dragons back into Draconis before she herself phased out.

It occurred to Rowan that if Draconis was being attacked the families had nowhere to go. Then she realized she’d never seen a dragon family in Draconis to begin with, nor enough space to house all of those who’d shown up for her coronation.

Her nose flared as something was on the verge of clicking before Alessandro phased in front of her.

His rainbow eyes swirled with hues of red. She’d never known the color to have so much range.

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Confusion filled her before fury took its place as the world blurred from her vision before it reassembled to show the familiar shadow of the Eastern Elven Kingdom’s castle.

Sidelined.

The hurt bubbled inside and she snapped her head to Louisa, who had appeared a second later, followed closely by her family.

“He said you need to stay here and protect your family,” Louisa said before Rowan could even open her mouth.

Rowan narrowed her eyes. “Who exactly are your loyalties to, Louisa?”

Louisa leveled her with a stern stare before she wavered and groaned, “Fine, but no magic.”

Axel grinned, holding her hand out and conjuring a giant tomahawk from mid-air. “Never needed magic myself.”

Kin sighed, “I’m surprised I’m still alive after half the shit you two drag me into.”

Rowan didn’t need to remind him he was definitely not being dragged in. It was his defense mechanism.

“You’re not going.” Annabelle hissed, pulling on Rowan’s arm. “You’ve lost your eye, your magic. Will you quit only when you lose your final breath?”

Rowan had never seen her mother so scared.

“My shifter mate is facing a psychopath who has a talent for making shifters lose control. I have to go.”

“He’s the one who sent you here!” Annabelle snapped. “Kyron, dile.”

Rowan turned her attention to her father.

He was the only one who stood a real chance at stopping her. If he feared for her life, that meant she had been in a worse condition than she’d been imagining.

He cast his eyes to his hand. “You’re not going.” He reached down to the scabbard at his hip. “Not without Whisper.”

Her jaw dropped. Never had she done more than sharpen and polish the heavy sword her father had taken into all of his battles throughout the elven-dwarf wars.

“It has some magic for defense, like your sister’s tomahawk, but nothing like your own. Be quick, Rowan. Light on your feet, heavy on the hit.”

She nodded and took the encrusted hilt. The magic licked against her palms, comforting, familiar.

Annabelle looked thunderous. She turned and stormed away. A flurry of Spanish Rowan had no hope of translating flying behind her. It was so rare for Annabelle to turn to what she called the tongue of her past that it had become a marker of her anger surpassing reasonable territory.

Rowan grimaced, “Sorry, dad.”

He sighed, “I think I’ll just have to treat her to that five-day getaway to make it up to her.” He didn’t look the least bit sorry about it.

Frowning, Lexine kissed her and Axel’s brows. “Come back to us whole.”

Zeva, who’d looped her arm around her father, simply waved and bit back a yawn

Rowan snorted and tipped her head to Louisa. They phased.

When the world reformed, Rowan found they were at the gates of Draconis.

The lights of the residences were out, but that didn’t obliterate the view of thousands of Black Cove residents overwhelming the market street and squeezing through the hole in the barrier that was no longer charmed to keep intruders out.

Most of the trespassers were humans, but mystics scattered amongst them, varying in shape, size and race.

“Is that a fucking djinn?” Louisa cursed, pointing overhead at where Alessandro’s black dragon form zoomed against the form of the djinn Rowan had ever only felt in the city.

“Yes. Yes it is.” Kin rolled his shoulders. “Remember what I’ve asked you to do if I lose control, Rowan?”

“Something about owing me the rest of your life once I calm you down again?” She grinned.

He rolled his eyes. “Just remember your limited magic, alright?”

She waved his concern away and turned to Axel as the giant kitsune unfurled to his full size behind her. “Incapacitate only, they’re under Barros’ control. I can feel him somewhere in the middle, but the spell is taking its toll. He’s too weak for me to pinpoint a precise location”

“You got it, boss.” She saluted as she raised her weapon and began carving a path with the efficiency and grace of a dancer.

“I smell vampires.” Louisa hissed from behind her. “And I don’t think they’re under Barros’ control. They’re just taking advantage of the chaos.”

Rowan scowled, “You should definitely let them know why you’re Rosario the Cruel’s chosen heir. I got this.”

Once having witnessed Louisa lose her shit on a vampire who had drawn blood without consent, Rowan was wary of accidental death resulting from her confrontation, but she also knew there was an instinct in the vampiress that she lost control of once incensed.

Light on her feet, Rowan plunged into the darkness of the body of moving victims and weeded out the weaker fighters, careful to hold back anything that would cause lasting damage.

Her swings were strong, her mind sharp as she distinguished the bodies of dragons who were taking just as much care.

No doubt it was on Alessandro’s command.

It wasn’t until she had to disassemble a knot of banshees screeching at the top of their lungs that she actually had to interact with the dance of the dragons during battle.

Unlike her style, which was airy and flexible, the dragons fought, grounded and powerful.

An air-dragon blasted the knot into the sky and an earth-dragon sent walls of earth shaped like hands to undo the banshees from one another and place a wad of grass in their screeching mouths.

“Nice.” She praised as she dodged a swinging knife from a giant man and used her tail to swipe his legs from under him.

Her free hand caught the weapon that went flying with his fall.

A water-dragon dragged him to join the other bodies floating in midair, everything but their heads covered in turbulent water cells.

She grinned as she joined their ranks, cutting into the still overwhelming numbers.

It wasn’t long before she ran into a form she recognized almost instantly. “Harris?” She asked, unsure as the giant white wolf was carefully holding his paw over the neck of a teenage kappa. She watched as he fell unconscious.

“Princess Rowan.” He took a deep inhale and his green eyes shone. “Or should I refer to you as Queen Consort of the Dragon King?”

“Sure, don’t forget the bow when you utter it, though.” She took a step back as a bear shifter jumped through and swiped three armed civilians deeper into the crowd.

The action created a ripple effect and, like dominoes, the civilians fell.

From just behind them, Rowan saw an incoming cloud of glowing sand being conjured by a bronze dragon she thought might be Terra. For who else had earth magic so strong that they could conjure a sea of sleep sand?

It was a rare piece of earth magic, and it usually took decades of training to conjure even one particle.

“Get on.” Harris lowered his head to allow her to clamber up on his back

She didn’t have to be asked twice. They barely evacuated the area as Terra flew overhead.

The bodies behind them dropped.

Rowan’s eye caught a shadow moving from one of the library’s highest perches. The shape of Axel’s tomahawk gave her away as she flung herself to intercept a flying hippogriff that was heading to stop Terra’s progression.

Rowan’s eyes locked on the plummeting duo, relief washing over her when Master Japhet phased in to pluck them both out of the air.