Fear emptied Anora of color. For a terrible moment she was cold and hollow and dark inside. The voices of her ancestors seemed to cry out against her, their dead eyes stared at her accusingly. In an instant she had undone the work of centuries. And where would it lead?

“To peace,” she insisted stubbornly. “To stability. Once the humans are cowed and come under our rule, the dragons who have been deluded into siding with the humans will see reason. Parliament will be restored. All will be well again. Better than before.”

So she reassured herself, and though doubt remained burning in the pit of her gut, like an unexpelled remnant of brimstone, she was able to ignore it and turn her attention back to Maristara. And a good thing she did.

“What did you just tell me?” Anora demanded, appalled.

“The dragon’s children are in Seth,” Maristara repeated, her colors murky and sullen.

“How could you let this happen?”

“I cannot be in two places at once!” Maristara returned vehemently. “I cannot prosecute this war from Dragonkeep as you insisted upon and, at the same time, chase after Grald’s monstrous progeny!”

Anora caught hold of a word. “Monstrous. Yes, that is what they will seem to the humans of Seth, who have been taught all their lives to fear dragons. We have no need to worry. The humans have undoubtley slaughtered them.”

“On the contrary, they embraced them,” said Maristara, and it seemed she would have hidden these thoughts, but Anora ferreted them out. “I have lost contact with the High Priestess. The heart in the locket withered and turned to dust. They found the body of Lucretta and they freed her from my spell. The body I had stolen is dead. Fortunately, I was not in it at the time. I had abandoned it.”

“You have abandoned your senses! One of two human kingdoms under our sway, and Seth has been lost to us.”

“We will regain it.” Maristara was confident.

Blindly confident—the confidence of ignorance, Anora thought, seething. All contact lost with Seth. The Mistress of Dragons unmasked. By all logic, the humans of Seth should have killed the half-dragon monsters.

Humans are so completely unpredictable! Anora fumed. She had lived among humans, disguised as the holy sister, off and on for years, and she still found them baffling.

We must destroy them, Anora realized. Destroy them all. Only then will we finally be at peace.

“Is all going well in Ramsgate?” Maristara was asking. “Our plan remains unchanged?”

“Yes,” Anora replied. “The plan proceeds. The dragon army marches with the dawn. By sunset tomorrow, this city will be a hole in the ground, and the world of humans will have learned a bitter lesson.”