Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers Book 5)

by Rachel Aaron

  Bob went pale in horror, his hands shooting up to shield his pigeon roosting against his neck. “Don’t listen to him, darling,” he whispered. “He’s just jealous you’re with me.”

  The bird cooed in reply, and the oldest seer rose to his feet with a sigh. “Now that you’ve made your point, can we go? They’re going to be in that meeting until midnight at least, and you promised me a local delicacy for dinner. Some sort of canine, I believe?”

  “A coney dog,” Bob said, popping to his feet as well. “Which isn’t actually a dog, but you’re still going to love it. And across the street, there’s a place that serves chicken and waffles!”

  The Black Reach looked troubled. “Why would anyone put chicken on a waffle?”

  “Oh, my sweet, innocent child,” Bob said, wrapping his arm around the taller seer’s shoulders. “This is going to be the best vacation you’ve ever had.”

  The Black Reach sighed again, but he didn’t resist as Bob dragged him down the scaffolding toward the service elevator, the pigeon fluttering along behind them in the cold winter air.

  ***

  The meeting didn’t get out until one in the morning. Julius was exhausted by ten. Given the state of his body, he really should have called it earlier, but the whole “get dragons to talk instead of killing each other” plan was working so well, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. By the time the all-clan meeting adjourned, he’d helped resolve three clan wars—all of which were stupid—arranged a five-clan trade summit for next weekend, and gotten Svena and Amelia to agree to take on younger dragons as apprentices to help rekindle the dying art of formal dragon magic. All in all, it was a marvelous beginning, but the best part came at the end, when he hobbled out on his cane to find Marci waiting in the hotel lobby.

  He hadn’t expected to see her again tonight. The Merlin delegation was still fantastically busy. Getting them to come and support him for the first ten minutes had been tricky enough given their overlapping obligations, and he hadn’t been offended when they’d ducked out the moment the actual clan politicking had started. He’d assumed they’d moved on to whatever world crisis was on the docket next, but when he stepped out, there she was, waiting for him by the elevators in the same lovely, long dress she’d worn to the meeting.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey yourself,” he replied, hobbling over with a grin. “What are you doing here?”

  She gave him a funny look. “What do you think? You just became the Dragon of Detroit. I’m here to help you celebrate!” Her look turned sly. “I might also have gotten us a room at the hotel since, you know, it’s late and I thought you might be sick of the hospital.”

  He loved the way she thought. “You have no idea,” he said, hitting the button to summon the elevator. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. It wasn’t until they got into the elevator, though, that Julius realized Ghost wasn’t there. Not that she could ever really be separated from her spirit, but by their standards, this was alone.

  Even three weeks after he’d confessed his feelings, that was still enough to turn his whole head red. “So,” he said, loosening his collar against the sudden heat. “Anything big happen while I was in the meeting?”

  “Actually, yes. Myron and I need to get serious about recruiting more Merlins to handle the flood of spirits, so we decided to go ahead and open up a formal headquarters in the DFZ.”

  His heart began to pound. “Here?”

  “We can’t exactly be anywhere else given Myron’s spirit,” Marci said with a shrug. “Personally, though, I think it’s very fitting. The DFZ always was the city of mages. Now it can be that for real. We’re actually meeting with what’s left of Algonquin’s city council tomorrow to discuss making the new Merlin Council a permanent part of the city’s governing structure. The spirit of the DFZ isn’t actually interested in running herself on a municipal level, but she doesn’t want to cede power to humans she doesn’t know, so we’re trying to compromise with a joint government between the city’s spirit and the elected officials. That way, we’ve got proper civil servants running all the normal stuff people need—trash, power grid, police, economic policies, and so forth—but the DFZ still has a say in how she’s run without having to do something crazy like swallow up city hall, which she has threatened to do.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Julius said. “Anything will be an improvement over being left to fend for ourselves by Algonquin. Maybe we’ll actually get laws this time.”

  “Don’t count on too much order,” Marci warned. “This is still the DFZ, and she values her freedoms. But I think we can strike a good balance between freedom of choice and cruel neglect.” Her face darkened. “There are parts of the DFZ none of us want to see come back.”

  That was certainly true. “At least I won’t have to worry about being hunted anymore,” Julius said cheerfully. “The city can be my home for real now, and speaking of homes…” He turned to look at her. “If we’re both going to be staying here for the long term, I’m thinking we should move in together.”

  Marci laughed. “But we’ve always lived together.”

  “I meant for real this time.”

  Her cheeks flushed as she realized what he was implying. “Oh,” she said, reaching up to fiddle with her short brown hair. “Sure. I’d love to shack up with you.”

  “Actually,” Julius said, moving closer. “I was hoping for something a bit more permanent.”

  He hadn’t meant to say this so soon. He couldn’t even kneel due to the stupid weakness in his legs. But Julius had learned his lesson many times now about putting things off, and it wasn’t as if he would ever change his mind about Marci.

  “I was hoping you would live with me forever.”

  By the time he finished, Marci’s eyes were so wide, he could see the whites all the way around. “Wait,” she said, voice shaking. “Is this what it sounds like?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Julius replied, leaning his cane against the elevator wall so he could wrap his arms around her. “Because I’d very much like you to marry me. If you can find the time.”

  “I have time right now,” Marci said, whipping out her phone. “There’s gotta be a twenty-four-hour license office somewhere in this city. I’ll get us an appointment tonight and—”

  Julius cut her off with a kiss, holding her tight until her body relaxed into his. “It can wait until tomorrow,” he said when he finally pulled back. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not letting you go, either.”

  “Like I’d leave before I got you on lockdown,” Marci said breathlessly, looking up at him with a lovingly dazed expression before she suddenly stopped. “Wait, is this all right? I’ve never heard of a dragon getting married. Do you guys even do that?”

  “I have no idea,” Julius confessed as the elevator stopped at their floor. “And I don’t care. I’ve never been a proper dragon. Why start now? All I know is that I want to marry you, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Works for me,” Marci said, dragging him off the elevator and down the hall, laughing the entire way.

  Epilogue

  20 years later.

  Alicia Williams sat on the edge of her chair in the opulent golden lobby of Merlin Tower, nervously sorting through the notes the Merlin Council had posted for mages interested in internship positions. The other half of her AR interface was covered in her credentials: her honors certification from the University of Georgia School of Thaumaturgy, a list of her extracurricular activities and personal accomplishments, including the ward against mice she’d perfected for her local food bank and the results from the one MSAT where she’d gotten a perfect score on the spellwork portion of the test. Everything was strategically arranged to make her look like the best possible candidate. The trouble was, everyone here was already the best.

  Merlin Tower in the DFZ was the home of the Merlin Council and the heart of everything magically important in the world. No
one got here on anything less than their A-plus game, and while Alicia had been the best back in Atlanta, she was on the world stage now. She wasn’t even sure which Merlin she was applying to intern under, but it didn’t matter. Just working in this building would be enough to get her a full ride to any grad school she wanted. She’d already passed the weed-out test and the first-round interview. All she had to do now was ace this final meeting today, and the future was hers.

  That should have been exciting, but it felt like there was a lead brick in her stomach when a man wearing a very nice suit called her name. Hands trembling, Alicia swiped through her AR to close it and stood up, clacking across the marble floor in her borrowed, slightly-too-big high heels to duck into the elevator he was holding open.

  She expected the man to lead her to another waiting room, but the elevator took them straight to the top of the tower. When they reached the highest floor, her guide told her that the Merlin was waiting for her in the office at the end of the hall. Before Alicia could ask which hall—because there were two—the elevator doors closed, and the man was whisked away, leaving her alone.

  Heart pounding, Alicia decided to try the right side first, creeping down the hallway that was lined with priceless magical artifacts, including a genuine spellworked leaf from the Heart of the World and a full labyrinth drawn and signed by Sir Myron Rollins himself. It was a jaw-dropping collection, and if she’d had more time, Alicia would have spent an hour taking pictures of all of it. But after the long wait downstairs, she didn’t want to delay any longer, so she hurried through the hall of wonders to the door at the end, a solid wooden panel with no sign or nameplate beside it.

  Taking a deep breath, Alicia raised her hand and knocked. When nothing happened, she was sure she’d chosen the wrong hallway. For all she knew, she was knocking on a closet. But just as she turned to try the other side, a woman’s voice said, “Enter.”

  Swallowing, Alicia opened the door and poked her head inside. “Sorry to bother you,” she said quickly. “I’m here to interview for the internship position…”

  Her voice trailed off. The door hadn’t opened into an office—it had opened into another world. After a few stunned moments, Alicia could acknowledge that was probably an exaggeration, but the room she was looking into still must have taken up half the top of Merlin Tower.

  The ceiling was all glass. So were the walls, leaving nothing between the furniture and the glittering city below, the superscrapers and the lake beyond shining like gems in the bright morning sunlight. As always, the landscape was moving, the roads reworking themselves through the buildings like rivulets before her eyes, but that was to be expected in the Living City. Thankfully, big buildings like Merlin Tower only shifted occasionally. As she’d discovered on the harrowing drive from the airport, the smaller ones moved constantly, rearranging themselves according to the spirit of the DFZ’s ever-changing whims.

  As the home of the DFZ’s human partner, Merlin Tower was the tallest tower in the city. It was only to be expected that the view from the top would be unparalleled, but what really surprised Alicia was that the rest of the room was equally as impressive. Everywhere she looked, the office was packed with casting tables and state-of-the-art workspaces. Wooden shelves held packs of casting chalk and markers in every color and type. Another corner was packed with special lamps that synthesized moonlight, sunlight, and starlight on demand, and there was an entire ten-foot square of slate on the floor for drawing casting circles. There was so much going on, Alicia didn’t even see the woman with gray-streaked brown hair sitting at the cluttered desk in the middle until she stood up.

  “Ah,” the woman said, reaching out to nudge the large cat bed perched on the edge of her desk to a less precarious position. “You must be here about the job.”

  Speechless, Alicia could only nod. The job listing hadn’t said whom she’d be working for, but the woman in front of her was one every mage in the world knew. Even with her graying hair in a bun and a piece of casting chalk stuck behind her ear, there was no question that this was Marci Novalli, the First Merlin, Archmage of the Merlin Council, and three-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Magic.

  “Well, come in,” Merlin Novalli said, her lips curling into a grin. “I don’t bite, though he might.” She pointed at the glowing cat Alicia could now see curled in a ball on the cat bed. “You’ll have to excuse him. Ghost isn’t a morning spirit.”

  Alicia obediently stepped inside, her eyes so wide they hurt. That was the Empty Wind. She was standing in the same room as an honest-to-god Mortal Spirit. The first Mortal Spirit! And the first Merlin! She was actually here, with them!

  And she still hadn’t said anything.

  “Merlin Novalli,” she said, almost tripping over herself as she rushed forward to offer the woman her hand. “Thank you so much for meeting with me. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be in your presence.”

  “Oh, I like you,” Novalli said, shaking her hand with a wink. “But lovely as this is, I’m afraid we’re on a schedule, so I’ll have to make it quick.” She reached down to tap the mana contacts on her desk’s glass top, and a glowing AR display appeared in front of her with Alicia’s face displayed front and center. “My secretary—the man who led you up—already sent me your information, and I’m very impressed. You’ve got a marvelous record all around, but I was particularly intrigued by your focus on wards.” She glanced at Alicia through the floating display. “How do you feel about last-minute trips?”

  “I… think they’re exciting?” Alicia said nervously, unsure where this was going.

  The Merlin nodded as if that was a satisfactory answer. “Who owns the magic of the world?”

  “No one,” Alicia answered promptly. “Magic is a natural resource to be shared by all.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how important do you rate your personal safety?”

  She bit her lip. “I suppose that would depend on the situation. Ten normally, but mages challenge the laws of the universe on a daily basis, so safety is never guaranteed.”

  The Merlin grinned. “I see you’ve read my books.”

  “With respect, Archmage, everyone’s read your books,” Alicia said. “You’re required reading in most magical programs.”

  Her face lit up. “Am I? That’s marvelous!” She went back to the AR. “Final question. If you were warding a nuclear power plant to keep out a Spirit of Apocalypse while still letting in workers, would you try to target all spirits, or would you use the emotional modifier variable to try to keep out only the malevolent ones?”

  Alicia didn’t even need to think about that. “Neither,” she said promptly. “A ward against all spirits isn’t specific enough to be reliably enforced, and the emotional modifier variable is too easy for an intelligent creature like a spirit to get around.”

  “Fair enough,” the Merlin said, crossing her arms over her chest. “How would you do it, then?”

  Alicia considered the question carefully. “If I was trying to keep out a Spirit of Apocalypse, I would use a double layer. The outer ward would be heavy, but as standard as possible, whatever the corporate mages normally put on the reactor. Inside of that, though, I’d place a second, inner ward with an emotional modifier variable set to detect for glee, because that’s what I think a spirit of Apocalypse would feel after getting through a wall into somewhere he shouldn’t.”

  The Merlin was scowling when she finished, then she bent over her desk to start scribbling on a pad of spellworked paper. “A double trap,” she said. “That’s a good idea. But how would you—”

  The click of a door cut her off, and they both looked up to see a handsome young man with black hair and an infectious smile stick his head in. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Only mildly,” the Merlin said. “I’m just interviewing my new apprentice.”

  Alicia’s eyes flew wide. “Apprentice?”

  “She means intern,” the man said kindly, turning his blinding smile on her.

&nb
sp; “I’m the Archmage of the Merlin Council,” Marci Novalli said without looking up from her work. “Who ever heard of the archmage’s intern? It’s stupid. She’s an apprentice.”

  The man shrugged helplessly. “I don’t care what you call her so long as we’re still on for breakfast. I’m starving.”

  “I’ll be out in a second,” Marci promised. “This won’t take long.”

  The man grinned at her and left, stopping at the door to wink at Alicia. “Good luck.”

  Alicia nodded, too distracted by his inhumanly-bright green eyes to answer properly. “Um,” she said when he was gone. “Was that a Heartstriker?”

  “That was my husband,” the Archmage said proudly.

  The gasp popped out before Alicia could stop it. “That was Julius the Peacemaker?” She hadn’t meant to sound so shocked, but unlike Marci Novalli, the dragon looked nothing like his pictures, or even like a dragon. He barely looked old enough to drink. “But he seems so… young.”

  “I know,” Marci groaned. “That’s the problem with marrying immortals. They inevitably make you look ancient. But Myron’s already hard at work on making himself immortal, and I mean to piggyback on that the moment he succeeds.” She finished her spellwork with a flourish and handed the paper to Alicia. “Was this what you were thinking?”

  Alicia looked over the formulas carefully and handed it back with a nod. “Yes, exactly.”

  “Wonderful,” Marci said. “You’ve got the job. When can you start?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Alicia said, too shocked to even say thank you. “I only flew in for the interview on a red-eye this morning. I don’t even have a place to stay in the city yet.” She bit her lip. “Tomorrow?”

  “How about right now?” Marci said, walking away from her desk and across her bright office toward a door set in the only wall that wasn’t all windows. “I’ve got to go to breakfast with Julius before he eats me, but I need to get that double ward of yours in position by this afternoon, or we’re in trouble. Email me your details, and we’ll take care of finding you a place to stay. In the meanwhile, we’ve got a very not-nice Mortal Spirit on the loose and not a lot of time to fix it, so why don’t you come meet the rest of the team, and we’ll get you started.”