As the battle engaged in the distance, the emperor had Agadart’s hands bound and secured to the railing of the deck. She could jump off but she’d likely just dislocate her shoulders and end up hanging off the side of the ship for however long the emperor wanted her to dangle there. She ground her teeth together but did not say anything.

They watched for hours as the massive, relentless forces of Iskaryyva lashed out against their opponents. The ship she was on was too far out to be in immediate danger, but close enough to watch ships engage and sink, dragons fight each other bloody and fall into the waters below to sink out of sight just like the ships around them. Watt had the advantage in speed and agility across all metrics, but the Iskaryyvan numbers were just too overwhelming.

Eventually her legs gave out and she let herself collapse to the deck. One of the guards tried to get her back on her feet, but she just pretended to be a sack of flour and flopped over.

She heard the emperor chuckle. “No mind, no mind. She will be your future empress anyway, she can sit. Bring her a chair, however. We must maintain some dignity.”

She rested her head against a railing post.

Not long after, when she had indeed been provided with a short and uncomfortable stool to sit on, someone came onto the deck and saluted the emperor with a flourish, then held out a folded piece of paper. The emperor’s aide took it and handed it off to the emperor, who read it then smiled.

“It appears they have moved Prince Tonae inland, but his younger brother is in the fight above the coast.” He tapped the paper at his mouth, thinking. “A royal kill worth taking, even if it is not the current prince.”

“Rodgardae?” she said with a gasp before she could stop herself.

He looked at her keenly. “Ah yes, you were in service to him at Endestern, weren’t you?” He stepped up to her until they were barely a hand’s width apart. “Were you close?” He smirked at her, and the implication was clear what he meant. She slammed her shoulder into his chest, causing him to stumble backwards in surprise. She stilled when she felt a blade at her throat.

The emperor studied her for a moment, but then waved the guard off. The sword moved slowly but finally was re-sheathed. She let out a long breath.

“My patience is at an end. Even watching your own land be invaded and your dragons killed, you refuse to shift.” His tone was blasé but his eyes were sharp and glittering with anger. “I will kill this prince, and when I return from my victory, you will shift and accept me as your king. It will be the only way to save the Isle of Watt.”

“You can’t make me do that,” she said, meaning it literally even if he only took it as defiance.

“There are ways. They are unsavory, but effective. I have my draconic physicians creating the draught as we speak. You will shift, and I will claim you, and that will be the end of your ridiculous, pointless resistance.”

Without another word between them, the emperor left the deck and returned to his quarters. A few minutes later, the ship was moving again, picking up speed as it aimed for the small city of Meintresse.   No one came to untie Agadart, so she settled back down on the stool to watch the battles get closer and louder.

She was not sure how much time passed, but possibly little more than an hour, when the emperor re-emerged. He was wearing a shifting tunic, thin and loose, which would easily rip apart when he changed into his flying form. He nodded at her, almost gleeful in his actions, and went down to the broad landing deck. His shift was quick and impeccable, no shuddering or stalls. His coloring was a brilliant red with gold streaks shot through his hide, clear markers of his imperial pedigree. He was not particularly large, but as with his walking form, he did not have to be. His bearing and his power were evident to anyone watching. He took to flight wi1th a brief, economical flap of his wings and was quickly soaring toward Meintresse with a flight of at least a dozen guards.

They cleared the path before him with brutal efficiency. The ship she was on followed in their wake, slower but just as relentless. Agadart pulled at the rope binding her hands, as futile as she knew it would be.

Just as she saw the emperor engage with a small group of dragons, still too far away for her to know for certain if one of them was Rodgardae, the ship she was on shuddered as if it had hit something, the fore of it tilting down and causing everyone aboard to fall forward, and a few to fall off completely. Sailors were clutching at ropes as they swung through the air on the masts, and Agadart found herself doing the same with her bindings. The ship crashed back down into the water with a loud splash, but then it was pulled over on its side before anyone could get their feet under them, including Agadart.

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It once again straightened up in the water with another splash, bobbing up and down like a child’s toy. Everyone was running around either trying to secure anything that had not already been thrown overboard or looking over the edge to see what they had hit.

The boat tipped again, this time on Agadart’s side, bringing her face-to-face with the ocean…and a dragon. A dragon who was swimming under the water, clutching at the boat with its claws to pull it over. Before she could scream, it lifted one claw up and broke apart the post she was tied to, freeing her hands. It gave her just enough time to grab what remained of the railing to hold onto as the dragon let go of the ship again so it tilted sharply back the other way. She watched it curve away into the darkness of the water, disappearing, only to reappear meters away, shooting up into the air. She tried unsuccessfully to struggle to her feet as she watched it fly straight up into the sky, quickly outpacing its pursuers.

She looked around at the chaos on the ship. No one had noticed that she was no longer bound to the railing, so she crawled off to the side, still holding on for dear life as the ship continued to violently bob back and forth. She kept her eyes on the bizarre dragon who had freed her — she realized quickly that doing so had to be the whole reason the dragon attacked the ship but did not otherwise damage it. It caused a distraction so no one would notice when it freed her.

It clipped a sharp turn and then plunged back down behind the ship Agadart was on, causing two of its pursuers to collide in midair and another two to tip wide to avoid the same fate. It kept going straight down, three more dragons quick to nip at its tail, but it didn’t stop. Agadart held her breath, waiting for it to pull out but it didn’t; it went straight into the water at breakneck speed but hardly made any waves as it breached the surface. One of its pursuers did not pull up in time and belly flopped with a painful screech and a splash of water that sprayed up several meters.

What a bizarre dragon, she thought as other dragons started circling the ship, trying to spot it in the water below. What Agadart did notice, however, was that all the splashing had pushed the boat closer to the front lines, closer to where the battles were raging. The boat continued to bob sharply in the water, so Aggy hung on to the railing for dear life but cast her eyes towards the fight that was happening over the coast.

The fight where the emperor was attacking Rodgardae.

The pushing and the shoving of the strange dragon, along with all the waves and splashing going on around the ship, had caused them to get substantially closer to the fight. Agadart could see now, very clearly, that it was Rodgardae that the emperor had attacked, just as he said he would.

She cried out in dismay watching the scene unfold. The emperor was only slightly larger than Rodgardae but obviously more powerful and just as obviously fighting as dirty as possible, with no honor or restraint. His own Imperial Guard was engaged with fighting the dragons who might have been able to help Rodgardae, so the fight was coming down to the two of them facing off, one-on-one.

It was bloody, and it was ruthless. Agadart could see the sprays of blood droplets in the air as the two dragons fought each other.

Agadart had never felt more helpless in her life. Even when she was working against her own husband and felt trapped by all the intrigue and danger around her, she had always felt like she had some control over what was happening to her and how she could respond to the situation…even if the choice was to simply allow herself to be killed.

But now she was reduced to screaming Rodgardae’s name as he was battered about by the emperor. All Agadart could think about was that he was going to die, and she would never see him again, and that Mani would leave the island, cloaked in grief. One man would die, and the other would disappear from her life, and she felt the unfairness of that deep down in her bones in a way that was beyond mere grief or regret. It was as if two things that were precious to her were being stolen straight out of her hand.

She had stopped paying attention to anything around her as she watched the fight, but the ship had slowly started evening out and sailors were busy fishing each other out of the waters that many of them had fallen into, with some dragons flying as close as possible to it in order to ward off the bizarre amphibian dragon. Bizarre amphibian dragons were not her problem, though; her problem was that her mate was being killed before her eyes.

As the tears streamed down her face, she stopped for a moment, brought up short by the very thought that she just had. It felt out of place to think about it… but when she was feeling it, when she was screaming about her loss, it felt natural.

She looked up again and saw the moment that the emperor bit the back of Rodgardae’s neck and yanked, clutching Rodgardae’s wings in his own claws. Her breath left her and she felt ghosts of pain throbbing down her own neck and back and shoulders as if she was feeling a phantom of the agony that her mate was experiencing.

“No!” Agadart yelled at the blood-drenched sky. “No!” Her words felt lost in the tumult of the ship’s crew erupting into action around her, but she could not stop. She screamed over and over until her throat was raw and the deck was shaking under her and people were screaming as they ran away. Everything tumbled in her mind, the world tipping to a wrong angle and her voice becoming a raking noise over her nerves.

Her chorus of “no!” turned into a wordless, echoing screech as she launched herself from the bonds of earth, flying like a demon into the skies.