Kihrin turned around, his heartbeat still pounding. Several men in imperial military uniforms stood next to Thurvishar, Senera, and Qown. Another group of soldiers were busy leading away stragglers, those who’d made it through the portal before Morios had destroyed it. But Kihrin’s focus was drawn to the woman who stood in the middle of the bridge, lowering a silver wand. She was a handsome olive-skinned woman in her forties, lavender-gray cloud-curl hair supporting a plain silver circlet. She wore black, but that color would never be half as deep as the fathomless night of her eyes. The woman saw Kihrin and grinned.

“Hey, Scamp,” Tyentso said. “Miss me?”

Kihrin stared. He panicked for a moment, thinking this wasn’t Tyentso at all, but rather some monster—the mimic Talon, maybe Xaltorath—counterfeiting her. However, he dismissed the idea as too easy to check.

Kihrin slid off Scandal and swept her into an expansive hug. “Tyentso, you’re alive! By all the gods, you’re alive!”

She sputtered. “Easy now, Scamp. You can’t just go around hugging the emperor of Quur, you know.”

“The what?” He blinked and took a second look at the silver circlet on her head, the slender wand in her hand. No … it couldn’t be …

But the energy field that had held off Morios had matched the one surrounding the arena back in the Capital. The same arena where a new emperor was selected, whenever the last one died.

“Oh yes,” Tyentso said, “I’m emperor. Empress? We’re still figuring out the title. It’s, uh—” She grinned again. “Not going to lie; it’s good. Except having to deal with a damn dragon, two days into my reign, wasn’t how I thought this would go.”

Janel dismounted. “Go help with the evacuees,” Janel told Arasgon. “There isn’t anything you can do here.”

He started to argue, then tossed his head in a way Kihrin could only assume meant We’ll talk about this later and trotted away along with Scandal. She seemed perfectly fine with the idea of not staying around for any more fighting.

“Scamp?” Janel asked him carefully as she turned back to the group.

Kihrin held up a finger. “You don’t get to call me that. There are rules. Only the emperor of Quur can use that name.”

Tyentso grinned at Janel. “You have my permission to call him that.” Then she tilted her head toward Thurvishar. “Thank you for contacting me. As you can see, we moved as quickly as we could.” She motioned for them to follow as she moved off the bridge, heading toward a distant cluster of men gathered before a table. Soldiers were busy erecting a tent around them. “This way. We have maps and battle plans and wizards from the Academy to ignore—all the amenities.”

“I wondered how you’d arrived so fast,” Senera mused.