Tilor’s cruel face comes into view as she’s lifted from the fog tide with inhuman strength then thrown over the back of Tilor’s dragon. Her stomach collides with scaled, gray hide and Tilor swiftly tethers her there, belly down, Shadow rising all around.

“Thierren!” Sparrow shrieks against the multitude of explosions as she fights against her bindings, unable to see past the few, murky feet surrounding her.

Her head is wrenched up by her hair and Sparrow gasps, Tilor’s glowing gray eyes before her, his Mage face gloating.

“He spoiled you, didn’t he?” he sneers. “But I get you next. Vogel’s going to use you to draw Thierren Stone right to him. Like a beautiful little lure. Oh, Vogel knows all about what you and Thierren did in Valgard. He wants every last staen’en traitor—Thierren Stone, Mavrik Glass, the Gardner brothers, Gareth Keeler—to punish them. And I get to punish you. You should have waited for me, Sparrow. Vogel’s granted me so much power. You should have come to me on the Islands.”

“Thierren!” Sparrow screams again through the cacophony of explosions and battle chaos as Tilor reaches over her to run his grasping hand over her body. Rage firing, Sparrow growls at him, violently wrestling against her bindings as Tilor laughs, swings himself astride the dragon and takes its dark reins in hand.

The dragon fans out gray wings and throws them down, the plaza’s ground falling away beneath Sparrow as her stomach lurches from vertigo and desperate fright.

A cyclonic blast of air from the plaza’s direction suddenly forces the Shadow fog away, the scene below Sparrow now visible, the plaza and gardens stripped of color, the surrounding trees alight with silvery Shadowfire.

Thierren is standing with three dead dragons surrounding him, several slain Mages splayed out on the plaza’s emptying center, Effrey and the others gone. Thierren’s head lifts to the skies, and his eyes meet Sparrow’s in mutual horror.

“It’s a trap!” Sparrow screams as he raises his wand and runs toward her, before the dark fog closes over him and he’s swallowed, once more, by the Shadow tide.

CHAPTER SIX

SMARAGDALFAR BATTLESHIP

Mora’lee Starr’lyrion

Xishlon night, twenty-second hour

A huge explosion jostles Mora’s rune ship. She startles against Fyon’s chest, their arms wrapped around each other under the soft blankets of Mora’s narrow bed.

“Holy Vo,” she exclaims, drawing back to meet Fyon’s silver eyes, his skin flushed from their fevered coupling, emerald lips swollen from so much passionate kissing.

He throws back the blanket and jumps from the bed, yanking her circular window’s curtain aside as Mora grabs her Wisteria dress and wrestles it on, her alarm doubling as Vu Trin alarm horns begin to bray.