More hard knocks come from the door. They’re so loud that they echo from the back door, all the way through the corridor, and into the dining room we’re still hiding inside.

“Nysara!” that male voice calls again. “Are you there?”

Alarm shoots up my spine when I realize that I recognize the voice. It belongs to the dragon shifter who interrupted me and Nysara the first time I was here. Karleus. Her neighbor, who is very much in love with her, who was about to break the door down last time she didn’t reply, and who will definitely not just give up and go home.

Oh Goddess, I need to make him leave before he draws too much attention to this house. To us.

Isera opens her mouth to say something. But right before she can, Orion lurches forward and slaps a hand over her mouth. Lightning flashes in her eyes, but Orion just snaps commanding eyes to me and shoots me a pointed look.

I leap into motion.

And a sickening sense of relief washes through me, because now I have a legitimate excuse to use my magic.

My eyes start glowing as I shove my magic towards the yellow-green spark of suspicion in his chest. Just as I suspected, I find it burning in there after he didn’t get a response from Nysara. I start by lowering that into the tiniest of flickers.

The knocks grow less insistent, but he still calls, “Nysara?”

Releasing the grip on his suspicion, I instead envision creating a large gray flame of boredom. After making sure that Draven still can’t feel any of my emotions through our mate bond, I shove my magic across the house and slam it into Karleus’s chest.

Pleasure immediately floods my body, and I have to bite my lip to stifle a moan. Warmth and comfort fill me as I continue to increase that flame of boredom in his chest. Suddenly, I feel like I can breathe properly again. All of the regret and grief and pain just melt away until they’re a distant memory. I’m okay. Everything will be okay.

“Good job,” Draven says.

My heart jerks.

Scrambling to pull my focus back to the present, I realize that the knocks have stopped and Karleus is no longer calling out to Nysara. It worked. He left. So now, I can release the magic.

I get ready to cut off the flow of it. Pleasure is still flowing into me, embracing me like a warm hug. I flex my hand, bracing myself for when it disappears. Just one more second. One more.

To my right, Isera slaps Orion’s hand away from her mouth and summons a shard of ice.

Gritting my teeth, I drink in another second of pleasure. Just one more.

With great effort, I force myself to cut off the flow of my magic.

Crushing regret and searing grief crash over me like a cold black wave. It’s so intense that I actually suck in a small gasp.

Thankfully, Isera chooses that exact moment to shove Orion up against the wall. The thud his body produces when his back hits the wall masks the sound of my faint gasp, and the sudden confrontation between them draws Draven’s attention as well. I drag in a deep breath, frantically trying to compose myself again.

While Isera grabs Orion by the collar and slams the shard of ice up against his throat, I at last manage to push all those awful emotions far enough away to function again. With a neutral mask back on my face, I turn towards the two arguing fae as well.

“If you ever gag me like that again, I will fucking kill you,” Isera growls in Orion’s face.

His eyes glint, and a devilish smile spreads across his lips. He seems entirely unbothered by the fact that she has a shard of ice against his throat. In fact, he slides his own hand up her neck and along her jaw in a teasingly loving gesture.

“And here I was, thinking you enjoyed that particular activity.” He smirks at her. “Why else would you threaten me with it so often?”

“Because the sound of your voice is making me want to stab you.”

“Ah, so you enjoy knife play, then? Excellent. I do too.”

Heat flushes Isera’s cheeks. “That’s not⁠—”

“Then what, little viper?” With his hand still on her neck, he draws his thumb over her bottom lip. “Tell me all your wicked little fantasies, and I will make them all come true.”

Isera looks like her brain has momentarily stopped working. She just stares back at him, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open, while that flush still stains her cheeks red.

He slides his thumb back over her lip while his smirk grows. “You really are perfect.”

Something that looks a lot like panic flashes across her face, and she jerks back. However, before she can say anything, or stab the smirking Unseelie King, the front door is yanked open and Nysara comes sprinting into the living room.

Isera practically leaps backwards, and the ice shard in her hand vanishes. Giving her head a quick shake, she works her jaw and looks to be desperately trying to school her features into a cold scowl instead of the deep blush they now hold. Orion just brushes his hands down his fancy dark blue shirt, smoothing out the creases that she created when she grabbed him by the collar like that.

“My king,” Nysara says, completely oblivious to what was happening in her living room before she arrived. “I have news.”

A ripple goes through the room, and we’re all suddenly on high alert.

Nysara drags in a deep breath to refill her lungs, as if she has been running across half the city. “The Icehearts are⁠—”

A portal opens right in the middle of the room.

“Your Majesty,” Grey says from the other side. “Do you⁠—”

“Yes,” Orion interrupts before snapping his gaze back to Nysara. “The news?”

“The Icehearts are about to leave any moment now for their ruined homeland,” Nysara presses out between deep breaths. “Because according to the Green Clan’s archives, the Gold Clan is hiding there in a pocket reality.”

I jerk back in shock. A pocket reality? The Gold Clan is in a pocket reality?

But it makes sense. Why else would no one have been able to find them during all these millennia?

“We need to get there first,” Draven declares, his voice pulsing with authority.

“Agreed,” Orion says. He slides his gaze to Nysara. “Well done. You might be able to come home soon after all.”

Hope bursts like sparkles in her eyes. But Orion is already moving. Whirling around, he strides straight towards the portal. The rest of us scramble to catch up with him.

“Hana!” he yells as he stalks back into his throne room. “Get Hana here right now!”

The guards who were stationed in the throne room leap to attention and rush out to obey his orders while Draven, Isera, and I walk back into the throne room as well. Orion, however, doesn’t stop. He continues straight towards a door at the back of the room, forcing all four of us to hurry after him.

“Orion,” Draven says. “Who’s Hana?”

“She’s the girl who opened the pocket reality that you were in during that last competition in the Great Games,” he says, not looking back.

Yanking open the door he was heading for, he stalks into what appears to be a small meeting room. Bookshelves filled with leather tomes and old scrolls line the walls, and a round table takes up most of the floor space in the middle. There are no windows in here, so when Orion enters, he turns on the faelights that have been set into steel light holders around the room. Soft white light bathes the space as we all pile into the room as well.

“If the Gold Clan is in a pocket reality, she should be able to open it,” he finishes.

Paper rustles as he yanks out a map and then spreads it out across the round table. I sweep my gaze over it while we all gather around it. My heart leaps when I find what looks to be a map of our entire continent.

“That’s good,” Draven replies to Orion’s statement. I can practically see the plans and schemes churning in his golden eyes as he meet’s the Unseelie King’s gaze. “If we can get to the Gold Clan first, we will have a real chance of killing Bane and Jessina.”

Isera’s interest sharpens like a knife. “How?”

“They will be alone and isolated out there, and they will need to shift into their human forms to get into the pocket reality.”

I blink at him in confusion. “How do you know that?”

“They don’t have magic to open the pocket reality by force, so they will need to convince the Gold Clan to let them in.” A small smile plays over Draven’s lips as he holds my gaze. “And to do that, they need to be able to actually talk.”

A faint blush spreads across my cheeks. Oh. Right. Of course. Goddess above, that was a stupid question. I really need to get my head back on straight.

“So how does that make it easier to kill them?” Isera demands, pushing the conversation back on track. “They still have their powers.”

“Yes,” Draven agrees. “And they’re lethal with their ice magic. But it’s still just ice magic.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Their dragon fire. Their ice flames cause that ice sickness that…” He trails off, and his eyes soften as he casts a glance at me. “That Selena almost died from.”

“And their ice magic doesn’t?” Isera demands, plans now swirling in her own eyes too.

“No. Our dragon fire is ancient. It’s a core part of our beings. Our bodies. Our souls. It’s sacred and imbued with all the ancient power of dragons. But our clan magic is just… magic. Their ice magic is exactly the same as yours.”

Realization dawns on Isera’s face. “So if we can ambush them in their human forms while they’re in an isolated place where they don’t have an army of silver dragons to back them up…”

“We might be able to kill them,” Draven finishes for her.

Orion lets out a huff that is half amusement, half approval while sliding his sly gaze to Draven. “Huh. That was actually clever, beast.”

Draven gives him a distinctly threatening smile back.

“So how do we get there first?” I ask, looking between them. “Where even is the Silver Clan’s original homeland?”

“Here.” Draven points to a section of the map close to the top, which is the far north. “This is where the Silver Clan used to live before their lands were destroyed in the war against the Seelie Court.” He looks up at Grey. “Can you open a portal somewhere there?”

Grey, who everyone has been ignoring up until now, starts slightly at suddenly being addressed directly. His turquoise and yellow eyes dart to Orion, who gives him a nod to indicate that he can answer.

“No,” he says with an apologetic grimace. “I need to either have seen a place myself or have it described in detail in order to be able to open a portal there.”

“Aren’t there any illustrations of what the land looks like in your history books?” I ask, flicking my gaze between him and Orion.

Orion gives me an incredulous look. “Illustrations? Who has illustrations in their history books? And if there were illustrations, why would there be one of a destroyed landscape?”

“The sass really isn’t helping,” I huff.

“And besides,” Orion continues, locking eyes with Isera instead. “If we had illustrations in our history books, don’t you think I would have immediately recognized Lavendera as the Seelie Queen’s second daughter?”

“Her name wasn’t a dead giveaway?” Isera snipes back while arching her eyebrows at him.

“Do you have any idea how many female Seelie fae have been named Lavendera over the course of history? It used to be one of your most popular names.”

“And Dawnwalker?”

“You never told me that her last name was Dawnwalker.” Crossing his arms, he glowers at us all. “Could have saved myself a lot of trouble if you had.”

Good thing we didn’t. Because if Orion had figured out that Isera was lying to him before all of this business with the Gold Clan which endangers his court, he might not have been here right now. And regardless of how arrogant and frustrating Orion can be, I know without a doubt that we will lose this war if we don’t have the Unseelie Court on our side.

My gaze shifts to Isera.

Though, I have a feeling that the danger to his court is not the only reason that Orion is still here.

“Azaroth’s flame,” Draven growls while rubbing his forehead. “It’s like being surrounded by children.” He shoots the two of them a sharp look. “Can we get back to the problem at hand? We need to get to the Silver Clan’s homeland before Bane and Jessina, but Grey can’t open a portal there.”

“So we fly there,” Orion counters with an equally pointed glare back at him.

“You want me to carry all of you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not a horse.”

“Are you saying that you’re not strong enough to carry five people?”

Draven narrows his eyes, and I swear I can see storm clouds gathering around his muscular body, as he stares Orion down. “One of these days, I will give you that beating you’re always asking for.”

Before Orion can retort, a female fae with shoulder-length black hair and eyes that are a vibrant mix of blue and green practically skids across the threshold. She’s moving so fast that she almost crashes right into the table with the map. Spinning her arms backwards, she tries to regain her balance before tossing her hair out of her face and looking up at Orion.

I recognize her from the Great Games. This is Hana, the girl with the magical ability to open pocket realities.

“Your Majesty,” she says, her voice soft but breathless, as if she has been running all the way here. “You sent for me?”

“Yes,” Orion simply says. Then he turns to Grey. “Where is the closest location you can open a portal?”

Grey absentmindedly draws a hand over his head and fixes the ponytail that his brown hair is pulled up in while squinting down at the map on the table. Then he moves his hand down and points. “Here.”

“Then open a portal there.” Orion looks between him and the bewildered Hana. “Both of you are coming with us. And we’re leaving right now.”

They nod, and Grey immediately begins to summon a portal.

My heart pounds as I watch that glittering blue rectangle rise from the floor.

We need to hurry. Because Draven is right.

The war has already started.

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