“By destroying my own soul?” I ask incredulously.

“If need be,” she answers with a calmness that freezes my insides. “Remember where we started this discussion? Saying we would do whatever it took to keep the people we love safe? This is how we do that.”

I make a disbelieving sound deep in my throat. “Have you ever thought that that’s Cyrus’s grand plan? To put Hudson away so that the one person who actually has the ability to stop him never gets the chance?”

Nuri starts to dismiss my words again, but then she stops. Narrows her eyes. Taps a finger to her lips as she stares into space, deep in thought.

Which makes me decide to press my luck. “You want to defend your kingdom against Cyrus? I agree that you and I will make a formidable force—and maybe, just maybe, we’d survive everything that he’s ready to throw at us. But the two of us, with Hudson on our side? That’s the only real chance we’ve got.”

Nuri is still lost in thought, but when she goes back to steepling her hands on her lap, I know that I’ve got her. Even before she says, “Flint mentioned you and Hudson were actually wanting to go to prison. He didn’t elaborate why, just that you wanted my help figuring a way to get out. Is that still true?”

Now my heart is beating so fast, I’m certain Nuri can hear it. Was this it? Were we finally going to get the answer we needed? I nod.

“Well, maybe we can both get what we want and come out stronger.” She pauses and looks at a small statue of a dragon, its wings curved down to nearly cover a small dragon baby within its protective care. “I can agree to this. If Hudson goes to prison, I can curry favor with Cyrus for now, maybe even give the impression that the Dragon Court may want an alliance again. But I will also help you find a way to escape the prison so you are ready to fight by our side when the time is right.”

I’m already leaning forward, willing her to continue. Because the truth is, we need more time to prepare. None of us is ready to stand against Cyrus yet, not when he has had a millennium to prepare for his moment.

“I’ve heard rumors of a witch, the Crone, who helped build the prison. She lives a hermit’s life, and no one is exactly sure of how sane she is anymore. But supposedly, if you can get her to talk to you, you can learn the secrets of the prison. And a way to escape. She once helped a dragon do exactly that—but be forewarned, her price was steep.”

Tiny wings of hope flutter against my rib cage for the first time since those elevator doors opened. “What was the price?”

“His dragon heart, which is a fate worse than death for a dragon. We cannot take our dragon form without a dragon heart,” Nuri says, and the tragic pain in her eyes says it all. We would need to make a much more favorable bargain or there would be no point. The cost would be too high. “But I have to tell you, Grace, it’s not good odds.”

True that. And still, “Nothing I’ve done since I first got to Katmere has had good odds, Nuri. But bad odds are better than none.”

“Especially for the girl who keeps beating them.” She sighs, then says, “I can give you a week.”

“A week?” My eyes go big. “To find the witch?”

“Finding her isn’t a problem.” She pulls out a piece of paper and writes down an address before handing it to me. “Getting her to talk to you and convincing her to help you? That’s going to be a bit hard. But any longer than that and Cyrus will want to know why I haven’t taken Hudson prisoner. The Dragon Court will look weak—or like it’s making a move against him. I can’t afford to have either of those things happen.”

I get it. I do. In a lot of ways, Nuri is as stuck as I am. But I add, “Do I get to pick which week I want, or are you talking about this coming week, which, I don’t know, includes nearly all my friends and I needing to be at Katmere Academy? For graduation?”

“Definitely this week.”

“That’s what I figured you would say,” I answer as I seriously contemplate banging my head on the edge of her desk. Maybe if I knock myself out, when I wake up, this will all just be a bad dream.

She grins. “Good thing you’re the girl who beats all the odds, then, eh?”

“Yeah, good thing,” I answer faintly.

“Don’t you have a vampire to liberate?” She looks pointedly at the key in my hands.

“Yeah.” It’s my turn to sigh. “Yeah, I do.”

“Better get to it, then. The banquet starts at eight, and I can’t stand it when people are late.”

78

Dungeons and Dragons:

The Grace-Loses-

Her-Shit Edition

I make my way out of Nuri’s office and down the hall at close to a run (which is the fastest I feel safe going with guards eyeing me every fifty feet). And considering they look like the type to shoot flames first, ask questions never, I don’t feel like antagonizing them is the way to go.

I finally make it to the elevator, but the ride down is excruciating—I swear to God, we stop on all fifty-six floors, which gives me plenty of time to picture Hudson bruised and battered and chained up against some wall. The only thing that keeps me calm is seeing that the mating bond is as strong and blue as ever.

And I know he could use his powers to cause some serious damage. I sigh because I also know he wouldn’t want repercussions to come to us if he did. So he won’t.

By the time the elevator doors open onto the basement floor, my palms are sweating and my stomach is in knots. I dart out of the elevator into the vestibule and look around wildly, not knowing what to expect but desperate to find Hudson.

I figure I’ll run into a guard or a warden or a dungeon master of the very non-D&D variety—someone who is in charge down here—but there’s no one. Just a dark, echoing, cavernous room that totally puts the creep in creepy.

I step forward tentatively, trying to get my bearings in the dim room. From what I can see, the basement is huge—the same size as an entire floor of this building but its opposite in every other way.

There are no Dale Chihuly lights down here, no overstuffed furniture—almost no lights or furniture at all, in fact. There are a couple of flickering light bulbs placed in a seemingly random order on the ceiling, but all they do is light the room up enough to take it from pitch-black to eerie as fuck. Not exactly my idea of a good decorating choice.

Still, standing here freaking myself out isn’t going to do any good, so I step farther into the room, straining to see whatever I can. A few more steps and I realize the entire room is ringed in vertical bars, and every so often, the bars are cross-divided by shorter stone walls, forming squares or…

Cells, I realize as I step out of the elevator vestibule and into the main part of this basement. They’ve divided the room into a lot of cells. Like, a lot a lot.

Exactly how many prisoners does the Dragon Court anticipate having here at one time, anyway? It looks like Nuri’s got enough cells in here to take half of Tribeca prisoner.

All the cells close to me are empty, so I start running toward the center of the room. I’m far enough away from the other side—and the light is so bad in here—that I can’t get a good look in the cells.

There’s a strange hissing noise coming from the back left corner of the dungeon, and while I can’t see what’s making the sound, it’s animalistic enough that I’m nervous about getting too close. But a quick running tour of this half of the basement shows me two things. One, all the cells over here really are empty, and two, they are modeled exactly after the ones at Katmere Academy…right down to the arm and leg shackles in the walls.

My stomach churns at the idea of Hudson being chained up like this, and I start moving faster, looking in each of the cells I haven’t already checked, getting more and more desperate to find him.

Has Nuri been lying to me this whole time? Did she just call me to her office to keep me busy while she had something horrible done to him? The thought has ice slicing down my spine even as I tell myself not to panic, to stay calm. To ignore the strange slithering sound that is growing louder and louder the closer I get to the back corner of the room.

Hudson is in here somewhere, I tell myself. I texted him in the elevator—a long shot, I know—and of course he didn’t answer. Maybe if I scream for him, he’ll hear me…or maybe whatever is making that sound will hear me and that will be the end of everything.

Still, I have to do something. If he’s not in any of the corner cells, then I’m going to need to—

I freeze as I finally realize what the strange slithering sound is. Two guards are sitting on their butts on the hard cement floor, rolling a plastic playground ball back and forth to each other.