Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers Book 5)

by Rachel Aaron

  “I know,” Amelia said proudly. “But that doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not a dragon anymore. I am a god.”

  She spread her arms with a flourish, but Svena just huffed. “What does that matter? Any dragon worth the name has been worshiped as a god at one point or another. Even your tacky mother tricked the Aztecs into offering her blood sacrifices.”

  “Don’t confuse me with Bethesda,” Amelia said, insulted. “And I’m not talking about human worship. I’m an actual superior being. Here, see for yourself.” She thrust her hands at the white dragon’s face. “Look at my magic. Does that look like normal dragon magic to you?”

  Svena narrowed her eyes. “Of course not. We’ve already covered this.”

  “And I’m trying to answer your question,” Amelia said, her face splitting into a grin. “I’ve transcended, Svena! I didn’t just cheat death. I drop-kicked it! I asked Bob to kill me so I could travel with Marci through mortal death into the Sea of Magic. Once there, I conquered and devoured the nascent Mortal Spirit of dragons and took its power for myself, forever tying all dragon magic to this plane.” Her grin turned manic. “Do you get it now? I solved the non-native reduction problem you’ve been working on for the past five centuries! Me! You always called my interest in humans a narcissistic obsession, but it was through human magic that I finally solved the biggest magical problem of our species! The one even you couldn’t crack! I did that, and now I’m the first dragon ever to become truly immortal by merging with an effectively infinite magical source, which means I have finally and officially won. Our rivalry is over. There is absolutely nothing you can do to beat me now. Even if you did manage to kill me, I’d just come back like any other spirit and laugh in your face.” Her expression grew unbearably smug. “Face it, frosty, you’ve lost.”

  Amelia cackled after that. A loud, cringe-worthy guffaw of pure bad sportsmanship, and Svena began to shake. Julius stepped back at the sight, moving to shelter Marci with his body against the inevitable explosion that came from rubbing defeat in a proud dragon’s face. But as he opened his mouth to call his sister out for unnecessary levels of gloating, he realized Svena wasn’t shaking with rage.

  She was crying.

  “You idiot!” she roared. “I thought you were dead!”

  “Well, yeah, I was,” Amelia said, looking confused. “It was the only way to make everything work. But I was always planning to come back.”

  “I didn’t know that!” Svena cried. “You turned to ash in front of my eyes.” Then before anyone could move, Svena reeled back and launched a trash-can-sized ball of ice at Amelia’s face. “How dare you do this to me!?”

  Amelia didn’t have time to do more than look surprised before the attack smashed into her, blasting her across the living room and into the couch, which exploded in a shower of wood splinters and synthetic cotton filling. The stuffing hadn’t even finished falling before Svena was on top of her, tossing the ice boulder away with a wave of her hand so she could grab Amelia by the shoulders and slam her into the floor so hard the boards cracked.

  “You were the only one left I could talk to!” she shouted. “The only one who remembered what dragon magic actually meant! You were a brash idiot with no sense of subtlety, but you were mine. My idiot, my enemy, my friend! You belonged to me, and you let that smug bastard of a seer take you away!” She slammed Amelia into the floor again and then dropped down herself, her face vanishing behind the long sweep of her ice-blond hair as she buried her head into the crook of Amelia’s shoulder. “Did you even think of what it would be like for me, you stupid, selfish snake?”

  She was sobbing by the time she finished, her whole body heaving as the giant hunk of ice she’d thrown at Amelia melted into a puddle. Pinned to the ground, Amelia shot a panicked look at Julius, but he just shrugged. It wasn’t that he didn’t have sympathy. It was just all for Svena. Amelia and Bob had done this to her as much as they’d done it to him, and as nice as Julius was, he didn’t move an inch to save his sister from the consequences of her recklessness.

  “Okay, okay,” Amelia said at last, awkwardly patting Svena’s shaking shoulders. “I know egg-laying makes dragons emotional, but—”

  She cut off with a gulp as Svena’s hands wrapped around her throat.

  “But perhaps I didn’t go about this in the best way,” she finished, eying Svena’s sharp claws nervously despite her much vaunted new immortality. “I’m back now, though, so everything’s cool. All’s well that ends well, right?”

  “All is not well,” Svena snarled, sitting up with a glare. “You hurt me deeply, and I want an apology. A real one, right now, or I will never speak to you again.”

  “Oh, come on!” Amelia cried. “What are we? Five?”

  Svena set her jaw stubbornly, and Amelia clonked her head back down on the floor with a groan. “Fine,” she muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. “I’m sorry.”

  The white dragon did not look satisfied. “Promise you’ll make it up to me,” she demanded. “A life debt good for one favor of my choosing.”

  “No way!” Amelia shouted. “I’ve already admitted I was slightly in the wrong here, but you’re crazy if you think that means I’m giving you an open-ended favor.”

  It did seem like overkill, but Svena wasn’t budging. She just sat stubbornly on Amelia’s chest, glaring down at her as the silence grew colder and colder until, at last, the new Spirit of Dragons sighed. “All right,” she growled, lifting up her hand. “If it will make you stop, then I swear a life debt to make this up to you with a favor of your choosing.”

  “Done,” Svena said immediately, grabbing Amelia’s offered hand. The moment their fingers touched, dragon magic slammed down on the room like a falling guillotine. One favor was relatively small for a life debt, but Amelia’s new status must have given the spell extra bite, because Julius wasn’t even tangentially involved in the agreement, and the magical spillover was still strong enough to make him gasp. Even Marci looked uncomfortable, rubbing her own hands together as if they hurt. Svena, however, looked deeply satisfied, her lips curling into a smug smile.

  “Apology accepted,” she said as she rose gracefully to her feet. “You always did grovel beautifully.”

  “Shut up,” Amelia growled.

  “Why should I?” Svena replied, looking down at her with a superior smirk. “I just put myself back on top.”

  “What?” Amelia shrieked, shooting to her feet. “That did not count!”

  “It absolutely counts,” Svena said with a toss of her hair. “Everyone just heard a self-proclaimed god apologize and agree to grant me a boon in exchange for the mercy of my forgiveness. Including the Golden Emperor, apparently.” She arched an eyebrow at the Qilin, who was standing behind Julius in the hallway. “I think we’ve all just seen who has the real power here.”

  “You little faker,” Amelia growled, her face furious. “That was extortion!”

  “I faked nothing,” Svena said angrily. “I was legitimately wronged! If you’d told me ahead of time it was a ploy for power, I would have understood, but did you do me even that small courtesy? No! You let me think you were dead.”

  “She held a beautiful funeral for you,” Katya said sadly. “Full honors at sea, same as she’d do for one of our sisters.”

  Svena nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “You hurt me truly, Planeswalker. A life debt is the least I could demand for the loss of my greatest rival. Not that you deserve my forgiveness after rubbing my pain in my face.” She turned up her nose. “I should have let you dangle. See how you like being left alone.”

  To Julius’s amazement, Amelia laughed at that. “Like you could,” she said with a smile. “I admit it, you played me good, but I should have known you were bluffing. ‘Never talk to me again,’ my tail. You couldn’t even wait for the magic to settle before you came running.” She nodded at the baby dragons still clinging to Katya and Marci. “You even brought your poofballs.”

  “I couldn’t leave them
behind,” Svena said haughtily. “I know how little you Heartstrikers understand proper parenting, but a responsible dragoness doesn’t leave her whelps alone for a moment during the first month.”

  “Are you sure they’re whelps?” Amelia asked, stepping out of the wreckage of the couch to get a better look at the little dragon on Marci’s shoulder. “They look more like feather dusters to me. But if you’re back to insulting my mother, all must be forgiven. And speaking of forgiveness, you owe Julius a new sofa. And a lot of new doors.”

  “They do not look like cleaning implements!” Svena cried. “They are an entirely new sort of dragon! A hybrid of my clan’s shape and snow-white coloration with the Heartstriker’s feathers.” She held out her arms to the little dragon perching on Marci, and the whelp almost knocked the mage over leaping back to its mother, much to Svena’s delight. “They will be unspeakably beautiful,” she said proudly, cradling the fluffy white whelp in her arms. “And my eldest daughter here, the first born after Estella’s death, will be the next seer.”

  She said that so proudly, Julius had to look away. The Empress Mother wasn’t the most trustworthy source, but unless Bob had stolen Chelsie’s egg and then waited around for half a day before hatching it, he was pretty sure that his new niece was older than Svena’s babies by at least a few hours. That meant Chelsie and the Qilin’s daughter, not Svena’s, would be the next seer. Not that he was going to tell Svena that. Chelsie had clearly had the same thought, because she motioned for Fredrick to scoot her currently human-shaped child back into the kitchen, out of the white dragon’s sight.

  Such a simple ruse should never have worked on a dragon as old and ruthless as Svena, but it did remarkably well, likely because no dragon of any experience would expect to see a whelp that young in human shape. She’d probably assumed the little girl was just a snack for later, if she’d cared enough to notice her at all. A macabre thought that Julius was surprisingly willing to roll with if it kept Svena from blowing up on them again. There’d be time to tell her the truth of what Bob had done later, assuming they survived. To make that happen, though, Julius was going to need all the friends he could get.

  “If it makes you feel better, Amelia didn’t let any of us in on her plans, either,” he said, stepping out of the hall to keep Svena from looking down it. “We thought she was dead too. I’m just glad we’re all happy to have her back.”

  “I don’t know why you’d think it would make me feel better to know I was treated like a common fool,” Svena said with a huff. “But I suppose this does remove the cause for friction between our clans.”

  Julius perked up at once. “Does that mean our alliance is back on?”

  Svena considered that for a moment. “I don’t see any point in continuing my hostilities toward Heartstriker. This was entirely the Planeswalker’s fault, and she’s already sworn to pay.”

  She finished with a snap of her teeth at Amelia, who rolled her eyes. “Don’t let her fool you into thinking she’s doing you a favor, Julius. Svena’s the one who freaked out and broke her oaths.”

  “I did not ‘freak out’,” Svena said angrily. “I did what I thought was best for my clan given the information I had available. Now, of course, I realize I might have been overly hasty, but the laying of eggs is extremely taxing on the body. Add in the trauma of seeing my best enemy murdered in front of my eyes, and I may have… overreacted in certain decisions. But that’s all behind us. Amelia has begged and been granted my forgiveness, and now I feel it is in the best interest of both our clans to normalize relations again.”

  “We’d like nothing better,” Julius assured her. “The world is going a bit crazy, and we all need our alliances now more than ever.”

  “You certainly do need me,” Svena said, petting the fluffy white dragon in her arms absently. “I suppose I should call Ian.”

  “He’d love to hear from you,” Julius said, smiling at Katya in relief. The youngest Daughter of the Three Sisters currently had her hands full with Svena’s other children, all of whom were fighting each other in their rush to get back to their mother, but she managed to give him a thumbs-up. He was returning the gesture when a knock sounded on the front door.

  Everyone jumped. Even Raven looked perplexed, shifting his talons on the wooden banister. When Julius crept over to look through the peephole, though, the tall, black-haired figure standing on the other side was one he probably should have been expecting.

  “Good evening,” the Black Reach said in a soft voice from outside. “May I come in?”

  Julius had no idea. “Can we open the door?” he whispered to Marci.

  “I can nudge the ward aside for a sec to let him in,” Marci whispered back, rising up on her tiptoes to look through the peephole as well. “But should we? That’s the dragon from the throne-room fight, the one you told me is actually… um…” She glanced over her shoulder at the others, who were watching the two of them curiously. “I give up. Is this still a secret?”

  Julius wasn’t sure if it ever had been. He didn’t know how many dragons knew the Black Reach was actually Dragon Sees Eternity, Construct of the Future, or if it even mattered. All he cared about was that the dragon outside was Bob’s death unless he did something, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t. Other than figuring out that Bob had brought them all here together, Julius hadn’t spotted—or foiled—a single one of his brother’s plans. He didn’t want to, either. He thought getting everyone on the same page in one place was a very good idea. Certainly not something he wanted to disrupt, but he couldn’t just leave the Black Reach standing outside in the magical fallout forever.

  “Open it,” he whispered.

  Marci frowned. “You sure?”

  “No,” Julius said. “But it’s not as if he couldn’t bust his way inside if he wanted to. At least this way we keep our ward intact and stay in control.” As much as anyone could be said to be in control when seers were involved.

  That thought caused a sour feeling in his stomach, but Marci had already pulled a marker out of her pocket and started rewriting the spellwork she and Myron had scribbled all over the inside of the newly repaired front door. Half a minute later, she grabbed the deadbolt and flipped it, cracking the door open just enough to let the Black Reach into the house.

  He came in silent as a shadow, brushing the glowing magic off the black silk sleeves of his ancient Chinese tunic as Marci slammed the door shut behind him. “Thank you,” he said politely.

  “Who’s that?” Svena said, glancing at the Qilin. “One of yours?”

  The Golden Emperor shook his head, which was a shock. As ruler of all Chinese dragons, Julius had assumed the Qilin had some sort of claim over the Black Reach as well. But Xian looked as confused by this as Svena, which, now that Julius thought about it, was the biggest surprise of all. Svena had been Estella’s closest sister. If anyone here should have known the Black Reach on sight, it was her, but she didn’t seem to recognize him at all.

  “Estella was petrified of her death,” the Black Reach said before Julius could ask. “She did not speak of me. As for the Golden Emperor, I stayed away from him, as all seers must. Even before dragons fled to this plane, the Qilin’s magic caused distortions in the future. We avoid him at all costs.”

  He shot the golden dragon a dirty look as he finished, but Julius still didn’t understand. “If you’ve always avoided him, why are you here now?”

  “Because I must be,” the Black Reach said, folding his arms in front of him. “The time has come. I am here for Brohomir.”

  A sharp gasp went up from all the dragons, but Julius almost laughed in relief. Maybe he had done something right, because he could say in all honesty, “Bob’s not here.”

  “That’s all right,” the Black Reach replied. “He will be.”

  “He won’t,” Julius said angrily. “I’ve already figured out his plan. We’re all in position to fight the Leviathan. He doesn’t need to be here.” And he definitely wouldn’t come if he knew the Black Rea
ch was waiting, which he must. “He won’t come.”

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” the Black Reach said, meeting Julius’s determined scowl with a sad look. “He must come, because you are here. You are the point around which his entire life’s work revolves, and now, fittingly, you will be his end.” He smiled, a cold turn of his lips that didn’t touch his eyes. “I like things to be fitting.”

  Julius didn’t know how to respond. He wanted to shout that the seer was wrong, that Bob would never be stupid enough to walk into such an obvious trap, but that was a trap of its own. He’d learned long ago that seers didn’t lie. They didn’t have to. They were the only ones who saw the entire board, but unlike everyone else in the house, Julius had changed his future before. He’d beaten Estella when every vision of the future said it was impossible. He could beat this too. But just as he was opening his mouth to say so, he was knocked off his feet by an enormous crash as something very large going very fast collided with his house.

  ***

  Three minutes earlier, Brohomir, Great Seer of the Heartstrikers and topic of much conversation, was standing in the bed of the once swollen Detroit River, digging the point of his Mage’s Fang into the too-dry mud and muttering to himself like the madman most dragons assumed he was.

  “Not good. Not good, not good.”

  A coo sounded a few feet farther down, and he jogged over to his pigeon, who was drinking from a small pool left in the hollow of a long-abandoned oil drum. The only water left in the entire riverbed.

  “This is not good,” Bob said again, scrubbing his hands through his long black hair. “How much water does she have left in Lake Erie?”

  His pigeon shrugged her wings, but it didn’t matter. Bob knew exactly how much water was left in every Great Lake because he’d already seen this future a thousand times. He’d seen every possible incarnation of this day, enough to know that this wasn’t the one he’d been hoping for.