Marcus resisted. He stared into the night sky at the stars, which sparkled so sharply it seemed to Edward he would cut himself if he touched them.

“It’s too late, Father,” Marcus said and his voice was calm. “Death has caught us.”

Death had not caught Draconas. At least, not yet. He had searched unsuccessfully for the army of dragon warriors for a fortnight, and he had almost begun to think that perhaps Maristara had called off” the fight and gone home to think things over when word came from Lysira that the dragon army had reappeared. They surrounded a human city.

Draconas warned Lysira to keep well away. He then tried several times to contact Marcus, to warn him that New Bramfells was under siege and that the king should immediately send reinforcements.

As it turned out, Maristara had no thought of besieging the walled city. She had given her troops orders to destroy it, and they did so, burning out a city of five thousand people in less than a day. Even if Draconas had managed to speak to Marcus—and he was never in his little room these days—Edward’s force could not have reached the city in time.

The law of dragonkind. Kill no human.

Draconas had upheld that law and defended it for hundreds of years, as had other dragons before him. He tried to save the city without killing any of the dragon warriors. He swooped down on them with no intent to kill them—though they didn’t know that. He hoped to frighten them, scatter them, cause them to break and run. His hope was a meager one, for he guessed that Grald had trained them for just such an attack.

Sighting Draconas, the male warriors continued their assault against the humans, leaving the female warriors to defend against the dragon. With incredible speed, the women summoned a cyclone of magic and sent it after Draconas. He had no choice but to pull out of his dive and retreat or risk being caught up in the whirling, whipping winds.

Draconas was forced to watch New Bramfells burn, watch the smoke billow into the air, watch it rain ashes and hot cinders back down onto the ground. He heard the screams of the slaughtered and smelled the burnt flesh, and he saw, as he dove at them, the faces of the dragon warriors looking up at him, cold and calm and unfeeling, as they went about their business of killing.

“They can defend against one dragon or perhaps even two or three,” Draconas muttered to himself. “But what about hundreds? I think that might give them pause.”