Mrs. Erickson’s hand tightened. “Can you hear them?” she whispered.

Them. Hope squawked, but there were no words—no words for Kaylin—in the sound. If he spoke to either Teela or Sanabalis, neither chose to respond.

“Sanabalis?”

The Dragon was utterly silent. Kaylin frowned and looked up; he seemed frozen, his neck curved down, toward the altar’s surface. The wings of the ghost were, Kaylin suddenly thought, the width and breadth of Dragon wings. “Hope. Hope.”

Yes, the familiar said, his voice attenuated, as if he were speaking from a much larger distance than beside her ear.

“Go to Sanabalis. Go now.”

Hope was silent; he did not move.

“I’m not in danger!”

Hope didn’t reply, but his claws pierced cloth to prick the area beneath her collarbone.

Kaylin was horrified, but not surprised, when the light emanating from the altar’s unseen surface enveloped Sanabalis; diaphanous wings like shadows composed of light fell across Draconic wings, traveling up the neck of the Dragon Lord until it enveloped the Dragon’s face.

Only then did Sanabalis, suspended and weightless in Draconic form, turn away from the altar. His eyes were white, and his teeth, as he opened his great mouth, white as well, but luminescent, almost opaline. Kaylin’s hand tightened enough that Mrs. Erickson winced.

He opened his mouth on a roar—or the physicality of a roar, absent all sound.

Mrs. Erickson, however, took a step back—as large a step as she could while still attached to Kaylin by hand.

“What do you hear?” Kaylin asked her, trying—and failing—to keep panic out of her voice. The marks of the Chosen—the floating marks—responded to her panic more quickly than Mrs. Erickson did. They rose instantly, to form a revolving shield, their colors so pale they might have been part of the illumination shed by the altar’s light.

When the Dragon that she could no longer think of as Sanabalis roared next, she could hear its voice—it was echoed by the marks of the Chosen. She lifted her free hand to cover her ear, as she often did when Dragons started their conversations; Hope bit her hand hard enough to draw blood. As he had a mouthful of her hand, he didn’t speak, but his meaning was clear.

She was to listen, just as Mrs. Erickson was listening.

Her concern at the moment was not the elderly civilian, it was the Dragon. Any force that could possess a Dragon was beyond dangerous. Should whatever inhabited Sanabalis decide to kill them all, they were dead—and it might not stop there. The Imperial Palace was full of people who stood no chance against a Dragon, and only a handful who did, none of whom were in the immediate vicinity.