I looked up, gasping at two shocks in as many seconds, and saw Mircea’s face backlit by the light through huge, leathery wings. “Hold on!” he yelled, clutching me tight.

I held on.

Yet I couldn’t help wondering why we were following the dragon straight down into—

“Heeeeeeellllllll!” I screamed, and Mircea’s grip tightened even more.

But he didn’t let go, or change course. What he did do was to follow the dragon straight back through the side of the castle. Which promptly ceased to be a castle and became a burst of flying blocks larger than my body, of tiny, shrapnel-like pieces as big as my fist, and of dust and screams and blood and arrows, because some of the crazed fey appeared to be trying to shoot the dragon.

This did not work, any more than shooting an out-of-control jumbo jet would have. And like anyone foolish enough to try, the fey ended up getting mowed the hell down. Or slammed against whatever remained of this part of the castle. Or kicked away from us by Mircea, who was still right on the dragon’s tail for some reason.

Maybe that reason, I thought, as we burst out of the shattered building and back into the courtyard where we’d first come in, and where still more fey—did they respawn or something, I wondered dizzily—were rushing to form up.

Only one does not form up before a dragon.

One gets the hell out of the way of a dragon, or one wishes one has.

It was a fact these fey were learning quickly, with the pretty, pretty lines, so shiny and smart, scattering and flying and, in some cases, getting ground into the stones of the courtyard beneath the great belly.

And then continuing to be so as the wounded beast thrashed around, giving me a brief, confused view of leather sheets blocking the sun, of great claws scrabbling at the ground I was trying to run over after Mircea touched down, of the feys’ silver hair streaming like banners in the wind, while we ducked and dodged and tried to avoid the churning caldron of dust and death that the once orderly forecourt had become.

And avoid it we did, because somebody had opened the portcullis, not that I could see it from here. But I could hear it clang, clang, clanging upwards, and more importantly, I could feel it. A blinding, shimmering tide of the Pythian power surged through the opening, as if it had been bunched up on the other side, collecting into a mighty wall as it struggled to reach me, but was denied.