by Rachel Aaron
“I’ll stop him,” he growled, clenching his fists. “I put it off once today, but never again. I’m not going to lose my brother or you, because none of us are going anywhere near Vann Jeger.”
“Sounds great,” Marci said. “How are you planning to accomplish that?”
Julius shrugged. “I thought we’d start with the curse. That’s the lever forcing us into this mess. If we can break it, we can run and avoid everything.”
“Works for me,” she said, smiling. “I’m still not sure it’s possible to break a Sword of Damocles, but impending death is the mother of invention. I’ve actually got some ideas already for—”
The door to Marci’s room banged open again, making them both jump. By the time Julius landed, his brother was on top of him, shoving both him and Marci to the floor.
“Ow!” Julius yelped as Justin slammed him into the hardwood floor. “What are you—”
“Shut up,” Justin growled, glaring at the ceiling. “And stay down. We’ve got incoming.”
“Incoming what?” Marci hissed.
Julius was about to ask the same thing when a wind strong enough to rattle the windows swept over the house, followed by the unmistakable thud of a dragon landing on their roof.
Chapter 7
The house was still shaking when Julius scrambled back to his feet.
“Did I not just say to stay down?” Justin hissed, grabbing for him.
Julius dodged him without thinking, focusing on the familiar scent in the air as he raced for the stairs, feet barely touching the ground. He cleared both flights in a single jump, landing with a scramble as he lunged for the front door, yanking it open just in time to be blown back again as the enormous, pure white dragon hopped off the roof to land directly in front of him, her wings creating dust storms with every flap.
“HOLY—”
Marci’s shout echoed down the stairs, but it was instantly drowned out by the thunder of Justin’s feet as he charged toward his brother. “Get back inside now!”
Again, Julius ignored him, his eyes wide with wonder. He’d heard stories of the daughters of the Three Sisters, but nothing could have prepared him for the real thing. Though only two thirds the size of Justin, the white dragon was a jaw-dropping blend of ethereal beauty and coldly efficient predator. Even covered in grime from her flight through the city, her white scales and frosted wings sparkled like fresh snow in the dim glare of their porch light. Cold, pale smoke curled from behind the white, razor-sharp wall of her teeth, and her eyes were the vivid, electric blue of sea ice. Even Justin couldn’t seem to find his voice again in the face of such striking, terrifying beauty, which was why no one said a word until the dragon changed a few moments later, collapsing in on herself like an ice sculpture melting in the sun until she was just Katya again.
A completely naked Katya, shivering on her knees with her hands clutched tight against her chest like she was trying to hold herself together, or trying to hold onto something. He was still staring dumbly when Marci whistled.
“Wow,” she said. “I guess that answers the question of where your clothes go.”
Julius jumped and dropped his eyes at once, cheeks flaming. Justin, of course, kept staring, earning himself a sharp elbow in the ribs from his brother, which he didn’t seem to feel. Julius ignored him after that, ducking back inside to grab his raincoat from their coat closet before running down the stairs to throw it over Katya’s shoulders.
She clutched the long, plastic coat with a nod of thanks, pulling it around her body like a cape as she rose shakily to her feet. “I’m sorry to burst in on you like this,” she said quietly, her normally soft Russian accent thicker than ever. “I didn’t know this was your home.”
“It’s fine,” Julius said quickly. “You’re always welcome.”
“Unless you were followed,” Justin growled.
Katya looked offended. “Who do you think I am?”
“No sirens, no problem,” Julius shooting his brother a not now look before offering his hand to Katya, who seemed to be having trouble staying upright. “How far did you fly?”
“From your mountain.”
His jaw fell open. “You flew over a thousand miles tonight? Like, since the party?”
She shrugged. “I’ve always been a good flier.”
Julius would have said amazing. A flight that long would have taken him days. But then, from the hunted look in her eyes, he didn’t think Katya had done it for fun.
“Let’s get you inside before someone sees,” he said, guiding her toward the stairs. When he tried to take her up them, though, a big, Justin-sized roadblock stepped into their path.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping,” Julius said with a scowl. “She’s not our enemy.”
“Did the definition of ‘enemy’ change while I was in the shower?” Justin shouted, stabbing his finger at Katya’s face. “You told me not an hour ago that her clan just declared war on us, and that Mother wanted me here to protect you and your life debt. Now a daughter of the Three Sisters literally lands on your doorstep, and you want to help her?”
“Yes,” Julius said, exasperated. “Katya’s the one who owes me the life debt you’re protecting, remember? Now move over and let her in before we end up with more dragon hunters on our tail.”
Katya’s eyes widened. “Dragon hunters?”
“Long story,” Julius looking over his shoulder. “But, I have to ask, did anyone see you coming in?”
“Absolutely not,” she said proudly, giving Justin an icy look. “Contrary to what some might think, it’s not hard to slip by Algonquin’s defenses, and you don’t escape as many times as I have without getting very good at flying without being seen.”
“How did you even know where to fly?” Justin snapped, turning back to Julius. “Do you just give your address to everyone, now?”
“I already told you, I didn’t know this was his home,” she said, opening her clutched hand to reveal a crumpled square of dirty paper. “A pigeon gave me this.”
Justin snapped his mouth shut while Julius did a double-take. “A pigeon?”
Katya nodded, and the Heartstrikers exchanged a look.
“Fine,” Justin growled. “We’ll hear what she has to say. But remember, this is your idea.”
Julius sighed and glanced back at Katya, who was shifting uncomfortably under his cheap raincoat. “We should probably get you into some real clothes before we do anything serious,” he said, guiding her into the house. “Marci? Do you have something she could borrow?”
“Sure,” Marci said, watching Katya with a mix of awe and intense curiosity. “This way.”
Clutching the plastic coat shut with one hand, Katya followed her upstairs. Julius locked the door and walked over to join his brother, who was still glaring up the stairs after them like he expected a fireball at any second.
“What’s the plan?”
“I don’t know,” Julius admitted tiredly. “Talk to her, I guess?”
“Talking isn’t a plan,” his brother said with a sneer. “I say we take her hostage.”
“Okay, first, Estella tried to kill Katya herself just last month, so I don’t think that’ll work,” Julius said. “Second, Katya’s my friend, and friends don’t take friends hostage. Third, Bob’s the one who sent her here. He doesn’t do things without reason.”
“He does things for no reason all the time!” Justin said. “Remember three years ago when he sent us all used hubcaps for our birthday?”
“This is different,” Julius said quickly. “I’m not saying we’re going to rush out and do whatever she wants, I just want to talk to her and see what’s going on.”
He thought that was all pretty reasonable, but his brother still looked dangerously growly, so Julius decided to use his big gun. “I’ll buy us dinner.”
Like always, Justin perked up at the mention of food. As ploys went, it was an expensive one—his brother was a bottomless pit even by Heartstriker standa
rds—but all dragons were at their most peaceable while eating. Katya was probably starving as well after a flight like that, and Julius hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. A meal would smooth this process out for everyone, but getting enough to feed three dragons and a human was no easy task. Fortunately, Julius had a good relationship with the rapid-delivery Vietnamese place on the other side of the on-ramps. Ten minutes after he placed the order, a delivery driver showed up with enough food to feed a small army. Justin was already claiming multiple bags for himself when Katya and Marci finally came back downstairs.
Katya must have taken a shower, because her blond hair was damp and all the dirt from her flight was gone. That alone made her look infinitely less bedraggled, and while the six inch height difference between her and Marci should have made her look ridiculous in her borrowed clothes, Katya carried it off with typical draconic grace. If Julius hadn’t known for a fact that Marci’s UNLV Thaumaturgy Casting Team t-shirt normally fell past her hips, he would have assumed it had always been meant to be a crop top from the elegant way Katya wore it, sitting down at their shabby, delivery-bag covered kitchen table like she was taking her place at a banquet.
Since it was usually only Marci and Julius, they only had two chairs. Since their guest had already take one, Julius gave Marci the other and hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter. Justin, as usual, chose to stand, looming in the corner and scowling at Katya over his box of spring rolls like he was one excuse away from eating her as well. When Julius tried to signal him to take the aggression down a notch, he blew out a line of smoke, and Julius gave up with a sigh.
“Please excuse my brother.”
“What is there to excuse?” Katya said with a sad shrug. “I am an enemy of your clan seeking shelter in your home. If the situation was reversed, my sisters would be acting far worse.”
If their situation was reversed, Julius was pretty sure he’d be dead. “So,” he said nervously. “What brings you here? Not that I’m not happy to see you again, of course.”
She flashed him a feeble smile. “As much as I enjoy your company, I didn’t set a new record for flying cross country just to visit. I’m here because, a few hours ago, Estella and Svena attacked the Heartstriker Champion.”
“What?”
Justin’s yell made everyone except Katya jump, but when Julius whirled around, his brother looked more insulted than angry. “She’s lying,” he snarled. “There’s no way any of her puny sisters could beat Conrad.”
“Svena was toppling clans centuries before your overgrown brother was even born!” Katya said fiercely, drawing herself up in righteous fury.
“I don’t care if she was toppling gods,” Justin replied. “Conrad is the top fighter in our clan, and he has the strongest Fang of the Heartstriker. He is undefeatable!”
Katya bared her teeth at him. “Do you think I flew all this way to lie?”
Justin bared his as well, taking a menacing step forward before Julius could jump between them. “Easy,” he said, putting up his hands. “Justin, calm down. Katya, I believe you, but what my brother says is also true.” Or, he assumed so. He didn’t actually know the Heartstriker rankings of who was strongest or who had the best sword, but Justin definitely would, which was proof enough for him. “Why don’t you explain what happened so we can understand. Was there a fight?”
“I don’t know,” Katya said, frowning at the table. “It happened after we left the party. Estella had us wait in the desert, and then she ordered Svena to teleport the two of them to Conrad’s balcony. I don’t know what happened from there. The pigeon appeared shortly after, and it was the first time they’d left me alone, so…”
“So you took your chance and ran,” Julius said.
She nodded, but Justin rolled his eyes. “If you didn’t stick around to see the end, how do you know they won? Conrad probably wiped the floor with them.”
Katya shot him an icy look. “Two on one? Estella is a seer, and she’s stronger than ever. Your brother didn’t have a chance.”
“Yeah, right,” Justin said. “Sorry to rain on your fantasy, but I think we’d have heard if Conrad died to your sisters. Stuff like that gets around fast.”
That was actually a very good point. Conrad getting killed by another clan inside Heartstriker Mountain would be huge news, but Katya was shaking her head. “They wouldn’t have killed him,” she said confidently. “Estella has a plan. I don’t know what it is, obviously, but she’s setting up the board for something big.”
“Seers always are,” Julius said tiredly, pulling out his phone. “Let me call Bob.”
He tapped through his messages until he found the last one Bob had sent. He didn’t actually think it would work—the seer could be amazingly chatty when he wanted to be, but getting hold of him when you needed something was nigh impossible—but telling any other Heartstriker about Katya would put her in even more danger. He had to say something, though, so he typed up a long report about the supposed attack on Conrad and Katya’s warning and dutifully hit send…and immediately got a reply.
Thank you for contacting Everyone’s Favorite Heartstriker! Alas, all of our seers are busy at the moment. Fortunately for you, I already know what you’re calling about. Rest assured that Your Concern will be addressed in the order in which it was received. Assuming I care and/or remember.
Hearts and kisses, your infallible brother,
Bob
“I don’t know what else I expected,” Julius said, shoving his phone back into his pocket with a sigh. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Justin roared. “Her sisters attacked our clan! I don’t know what game Bob is playing, but I say you can’t trust a thing they say. The ice snakes have always hated us.”
“Estella has,” Katya said quickly. “But Svena is different. From the moment she took over the clan, she’s been working to make peace with Heartstriker.”
Julius blinked. “Really?”
“Of course,” she said, lifting her chin. “We are proud, not stupid. None of my sisters like your clan, but it’s suicide to try and fight the Heartstrikers now. You outnumber us ten to one. Svena understands this. Why else do you think she’s stayed with Ian so long? Or agreed to go to the party in the first place? I shouldn’t be telling you this, but this last month while Estella was away, Svena was trying to rally the rest of our sisters against her. She was succeeding, too. We’d actually managed to get almost all of them on our side before Estella came back and did…whatever it was she did.”
“I’m sorry,” Marci said, breaking her silence. “I’m out of the loop, here. What did Estella do to Svena?”
“I don’t know,” Katya growled. “But that thing is not Svena. My sister would never take orders like that!”
Given what he’d seen of Svena during the fracas last month, Julius didn’t doubt that for a second. He also didn’t doubt Katya’s story about her sister’s plans to form an alliance with Heartstriker. Playing on Bethesda’s obsession with a mating flight to broker peace between their clans was exactly the sort of savvy politics he’d expect from a dragon like Svena. Likewise, ruining that fit right in with what he knew of Estella, who, as they’d discovered last month, seemed to hate Heartstriker to the point of cutting off her nose to spite her face. The only thing Julius didn’t understand about Katya’s story was, “What about your other sisters?”
Katya looked up. “What?”
“There are twelve daughters of the Three Sisters, right?” he said. “You, Estella, and Svena are accounted for, but where are the rest? If you’re the youngest, then your sisters must all be all-powerful, ancient dragons, so why aren’t they here helping you save your clan?”
By the time he finished, Katya’s expression was the bitterest he’d ever seen it. “No one fears change like old dragons,” she growled. “My family is not like yours. We were once the greatest in the world, the magic-born children of the three most powerful, most ancient dragons to survive the trip from our orig
inal home.”
“Original home?” Marci interrupted. “What original home?”
“Dragons aren’t originally from here,” Julius explained quickly. “We came to this world as conquerors from another plane ten thousand years ago.”
Her eyes went round. “Ten thousand years? So the Three Sisters are ten thousand years old?”
“Older,” Katya said. “That’s why they have to sleep. Dragons who were born on this world are attuned to its magic. They were able to survive the magical drought by simply retreating into their more efficient human forms, but my mothers have no such thing.” She looked at Julius. “It was the same with your grandfather, the Quetzalcoatl. He was only able to stay awake through the disappearance of magic by harvesting human sacrifices. He was still greatly weakened, though, which was the only reason your mother was able to kill him.”
That wasn’t how Bethesda told the story, but it made a grim sort of logic. Julius knew all about his grandfather’s love of human sacrifices, of course, but he’d always assumed the Quetzalcoatl just liked killing people on altars. If he’d been using them as a way to harvest magic when nothing else was available, though, that made a lot more sense. It also meant he was directly descended from one of the most prolific blood mages in history. But when he glanced at Marci to see how she’d taken this grisly revelation about his family’s history, she was staring into her carton of rice like it contained the mysteries of the universe.
“Back to the important stuff,” Justin said, crossing his arms as he glared at Katya, “You’re saying that the rest of your clan, the vaunted Daughters of the Three Sisters, are so stuck up and stuck in their ways, they won’t get off their butts even to save their own hides?”
Julius winced at his brother’s bluntness, but to his amazement, Katya didn’t look offended. She was actually nodding. “More or less,” she said. “But you have to understand, Estella’s run our lives according to her visions since we were hatched. It doesn’t matter what plans we make, she knows what we’re going to do before we do it. My sisters were barely willing to risk siding with Svena while Estella was on another plane. Now that she’s back, they won’t even show their faces. No one knows better than us that you can’t beat a seer.”