The massive wooden doors to Hazel’s tower top chambers flew open. So excited his green and purple Dr’gon scales almost stood on end, Hazel’s brother Cl’rnce shouted, “Quick, there’s someone in the other tower!” He turned and ran back out, heading down the hall that connected Hazel’s tower to the twin tower he had shouted about. His petite, human Wizard Partner, Moire Ain, raced right behind him.

Gaelyn, Hazel’s Wizard Partner, started after them, but stopped in the doorway when she realized Hazel was not with her. Her Dr’gon Partner stood as if frozen. Hazel’s luminous Dr’gon eyes were wide with something Gaelyn had almost never seen in them. Fear.

“Come on, Hazel,” Gaelyn said. She took a step back toward Hazel. “What’s wrong?”

Snapping out of her frozen state, Hazel snorted and strode past Gaelyn. “Some intruder in the tower is what is very wrong. Unless this is one of Cl’rnce’s practical jokes.”

Gaelyn shrugged, fluffed her cloud of curly brown hair, and followed. Or tried to. Hazel must have been more bothered than she wanted to say, because she immediately burst into top Dr’gon speed. Ten strides down the corridor, Hazel passed Cl’rnce and Moire Ain, who preferred the name Great and Mighty Wizard. Gaelyn didn’t even try to catch up with Hazel. Nothing was as fast as a Dr’gon on a mission.

It took but a moment for Hazel, and then the rest of them, to get to the other tower’s doors. Hazel stood in front of the closed double-doors, her head bowed and her claws touching the chain and lock that hung across.

Gaelyn cleared her throat; Hazel whirled around her snout an angry red and purple. She looked past her Wizard Partner and glared at Cl’rnce. “A practical joke! While I’m busy doing your Primus work, you plague me with another practical joke? Wiz-Tech granted us chambers here in the school because they were honored to have the Co-Primus, Gaelyn, and me in residence. They will throw us out if you don’t stop these embarrassing jokes. Then where will you have your ‘palace?’ In that mulberry tree you nap in a zillion times a day?”

Great and Mighty stepped in front of Cl’rnce, barely coming up to his chest. “It’s not a joke. I promise. These doors are locked, but we heard someone in there.” She held up a glowing ball. Inside the ball a figure paced around a dim chamber almost identical to the tower room Hazel used as her bed chambers and office. The room in the ball, though missing the work tables stacked with scrolls, even had the same ornate, extra-tall window-slits. “I made this scrying ball. You can see the human.”

“Not a human,” Hazel grabbed the ball and held it, peering close. Her snout grew a darker angrier red and purple. She shook it, and the shadowy presence magnified until it was easy to see the person had long limbs and fast movements that weren’t human. It didn’t surprise Gaelyn that Hazel could enhance Great and Mighty’s magick. Dr’gon Magick was legendary. In part that was why Gaelyn’s uncle had sent her to Dr’gon and Wizard Technological School and Knights Academy: to learn that magick. What surprised Gaelyn was Hazel’s anger and how her voice scratched with intense hatred. Hazel never made snap judgements about any creature until after she got to know them, but just seeing this stranger had her rabidly angry.

Hazel tossed the ball back at Great and Mighty. “It’s Fae. I smell it.”

Great and Mighty looked at Cl’rnce, but he shrugged. “She’s got powers,” was all he said nodding at his twin sister.

Gaelyn frowned. Hazel was special, but there was no way she could smell a Fae from this distance. Gaelyn’s little Jinn, Silkkie, whispered from her shoulder, “The Dr’gon is quite the bragger, huh?”

Hazel gave the little pink cat a scowl. “I have many many powers. I have a better sense of smell than anybody.” She held up her long claws to keep Silkkie from saying anything more. “I didn’t mean I smelled it smelled it. It’s a figure of speech. Like being able to smell a lie.” She stopped, glared at Silkkie, then looked at Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty, but they just shrugged.

Hazel sighed and continued, “I mean I know for sure that the miserable nasty creature—who is skulking where it doesn’t belong—is a Fae.”

Hazel had never before discussed Fae even in the All Creatures classes they’d attended together at Wiz-Tech. In all their years as students and then Partners, this was also the first time Gaelyn had heard venom like this in Hazel’s voice. The thought that Hazel hated Fae made Gaelyn nervously pull at one of her soft curls.

“I will kill it.” Hazel motioned for the other three to stand back. So quietly not a link jangled, she took hold of the chain across the doors. Softly she breathed a deceptively cool Dr’gon Fire on the chain. Where the link melted, she caught the ends as it parted.

Hazel turned to Gaelyn. “Open the door. Silently. It will not get away. I will destroy it!”

Gaelyn took a deep breath, ready to say no. There would be repercussions from Hazel that she didn’t want to deal with, but Gaelyn could not let Hazel kill a Fae. She couldn’t, not even for her best friend.

Before Gaelyn could say a word, Great and Mighty and Cl’rnce pushed past her. Sounding calm and not a bit like the excited Dr’gon he’d been a minute before, Cl’rnce said, “The Primus will take care of this, sister dear. Great and Mighty will capture the Fae, and we’ll find out why it’s here.” He sneezed and rubbed a paw quickly over his snout then wiped it on his side.

Hazel tried to push Cl’rnce away, but he was bigger and heavier than his twin. He was twelve feet tall, and she just under. He shook his head. “Great and Mighty, proceed.”

Great and Mighty held up her hands, doubled the size of the ball that had showed the intruder, and threw it at the double door. There was an explosion, someone screamed, and the doors tore off and flew into the chamber headed straight for a slender figure Gaelyn recognized as a Fae. Hazel had been right. There wasn’t even time to determine what Court this Fae came from before the doors slammed into it. Door and intruder crashed to the stone floor.

As everything collapsed, Gaelyn drew on Silkkie’s and her own power to cast a spell to transport the Fae to the Fae Court of Elm. She didn’t have the power to move it to any other Court, and she couldn’t let the insanely angry Hazel get to the Fae first. She hadn’t used a transport spell across the barriers since she and Silkkie had come to Wiz-Tech. She hoped it worked.

Hazel pushed everyone away and tossed the doors off the spot where the Fae should have been pinned. Gaelyn breathed with relief when she saw that underneath the doors there was nothing.

But Hazel screamed, “Where? Where are they?”

Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty hovered next to Gaelyn. No one wanted to be near Hazel in this kind of rage. Smoke poured from her nose, and the scales on her muzzle became darker by the second.

She picked up the doors and threw them against the wall nearly tearing loose the ceiling height tapestry hanging on the wall. Hazel froze where she stood, watching the tapestry swing back and forth in such huge arcs that the wall was laid bare at the top of each swing. Hazel whirled around. “Out! Everybody, get out. I’ll call you if I need you!”

Cl’rnce and Great and Mighty scurried out to the corridor. Defiantly Gaelyn remained. She threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She’d only seen her Dr’gon Partner close to this upset once before. That had been last year when for a moment Hazel had become terrified that Cl’rnce would die on his Quest to secure the Primacy. Not that Hazel would ever admit that was why she threw that tantrum. Hazel wanted to be thought of as cold and logical, emotionless. She treated Cl’rnce like an annoyance. Only Gaelyn knew how deeply Hazel loved her irascible twin and how hard she worked to protect him.

“Is there a danger to Cl’rnce?” Gaelyn asked. She tangled one finger in a longer curl and then dropped her hand. Hazel knew Gaelyn’s nervous mannerisms. Gaelyn needed to appear calm.

Hazel stopped staring at the swinging tapestry and turned. “What?” She frowned and shook her head as if she did not understand Gaelyn’s question.

“Cl’rnce,” Gaelyn repeated. “The person that was here, was that person a threat to Cl’rnce?” Gaelyn worried that she might have just helped some kind of Fae assassin. Two other Fae Courts, Summer and Winter, were certainly capable of killing the ruler of the Dr’gon Nations even if Elm Court never would. It wasn’t supposed to be possible, but if a Fae assassin could make the journey across the Fae planes and into the Dr’gon Realms of Albion, they could do so much damage.

Hazel shook her head a little too hard. “No. Nothing to do with Cl’rnce.” She turned back and walked toward the swinging tapestry. “At least not right now. Maybe someday. Maybe soon.” She stood for a minute, reached a paw to the unicorn tapestry, and stopped the swing. “I have something to tell you.”