Page 151 of Fortune's Blade

“You already did that,” he murmured. “No, don’t move.”

“Why not?” I lifted an arm, trying to cup his face.

“You need to heal.”

Yeah, it felt like it.

I relaxed back against the bed, trying not to notice how weak I was. Claire had said that it would be weeks before I was back on my feet, which was ridiculous. I had never been down for that long in my life.

“You never tangled with an enraged dragon lord, either,” Ray said, bringing my attention back to him.

“Are you going to finish the story or what?” I asked.

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“Yeah. I already got that part.”

He nodded. “Well, after Athena bought it, courtesy of the Basarab clan, the plan was for everybody to book it back through the portal. The Pythia thought she could shut it behind them—her mother was Artemis, who had power over the paths between worlds—but not destroy it, because it was feeding from a ley line sink and had practically unlimited power—”

“Wait. Weren’t the dragons there to do that? To destroy it?”

“Yeah, but they were busy taking on the gods, even before the big boom—”

He broke off abruptly, and started looking sketchy again. And then at Louis-Cesare, with an expression that said he’d done enough, and now it was my Hubby’s turn. Only he didn’t seem to want the job, either.

“Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?” I said. “And where is Mircea? And Dorina? And my moth—” This time it was me breaking off, because I’d just had a sudden, terrible idea. “No.”

“Dory—”

“Tell me you got them out. Tell me that right now. Tell me, Ray!”

He didn’t tell me.

“Louis-Cesare—” He looked at me, and everything I didn’t want to know was written on his face. “What the hell?”

“You need to stay calm,” Claire said, putting a slender arm across me as I struggled to get up again. “You’re going to tear your stitches—”

“I’m going to tear a lot more than that if—”

“They’re alive,” Louis-Cesare said. “That is, we assume so—”

“You assume? What the—”

“It was the goddamned pixies, all right?” Ray said. “Specifically, that queen of theirs. It was her fault!”

“What?” I frowned at him. “What does she have to do with anything?”

“A lot, as it turns out. She was furious at Steen for trying to kill her baby, but couldn’t take him on ‘cause you already had. So, she decided to kill the rest of his dragons instead. But Lord Rathen was already cleaning up the ones in the city, and helping the dark fey to evacuate, not that they needed it much. If there’s one thing they’re experts on, it’s getting the hell out of—”

“Ray!”

“So she targeted the rest of ‘em, the ones who went for the portal. And, uh . . .”

“And, uh, what? Spit it out, man!”

He swallowed, threw his shoulders back, and finally manned up. “She threw a city at ‘em.”

“What?”

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