“What do you mean, they all look the same?” the soldier wanted to know. “What, like they’re the same color?”

“I mean they’re clones,” I said flatly. “Exact replicas of each other. Talon has been cloning dragons for several years, and now they have an army of them. These dragons have no fear and no self-preservation instinct. They will keep coming at you until they’re dead.”

“Mother of God,” someone muttered, though I couldn’t tell who, and a soldier near the front of the stage crossed himself.

Martin nodded briskly, addressing the soldiers. “We only have a few hours,” he said, making several of them jerk up. “Forty-eight at the most, and probably less than that. This attack is happening—we need to prepare so that when this dragon army does come for us, we’ll be waiting for them. We are St. George,” he added in a louder voice. “Killing dragons is our specialty. Let Talon send their army after us. The Order will not submit. We will not break. If this dragon army shows up on our doorstep, we will do what we’ve always done and send them back to hell where they belong.”

I hoped he was right.

Chapter 39: RILEY

RILEY

I didn’t have a word for what I was feeling.

Angry didn’t quite cover it. Horrified seemed a bit too tame. Appalled and incredulous sort of fit, but even they didn’t compare.

“So let me get this straight,” I rasped at Ember. The five of us—me, Ember, Mist, Jade and a very disgruntled Wes—were standing in the kitchen around a long wooden table. The rest of the hatchlings had assembled in the living room and were sitting or lounging in loose groups, watching sleepily. Ember had insisted on waking up the entire house, saying that everyone needed to hear what she had to say, that it was important.

Absolutely hysterical was more like it.

“You want us—” I gestured to the dragons surrounding me “—and the hatchlings, who have never seen a battle before in their lives, to go help the Order of St. George fight an army of soulless killer dragons? Are you insane? That’s...” I shook my head, unable to think of a proper word for it. “No, Firebrand. Absolutely not. I’m not risking this underground to go and die for the Order, that’s out of the question.”

“Um, yeah, I’m going to go with Riley on this one and say that you’re off your rocker,” Wes added. “Completely, utterly, barking mad.”

Ember’s eyes flashed green, but she answered in a calm, far too reasonable voice. “We can’t hide forever, Riley.”

“We sure as hell can,” I snapped back. “We stay here, keep our heads down and stay the fuck out of the way. That’s how it has always worked. That’s how we’ve been able to survive.”