by Rachel Aaron
Amelia snorted. “What happened to ‘Oh Amelia, how could you? That’s so invasive and disrespectful!’”
“It was,” Svena said. “To me. I don’t care if you disrespect the operational security of other dragon clans. That’s just good intelligence.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Amelia said, turning to give Julius a wink. “Ice Queen and I will handle the dragon delivery. Can you get Heartstriker here on your own, or should I pull them in too?”
Julius looked at Fredrick, who nodded. “We’ll take care of Heartstriker. You and Svena bring in everyone else.”
“Not my clans,” the Golden Emperor said. “As I said before, they should already be on their way, and I wish to speak to all of them before this begins.”
“Just make it quick,” Amelia said. “I know you’re luck incarnate, but we’re on a schedule here.”
With that, she walked over to join Svena, who was already staking out a large section of dirt in what would have been Marci and Julius’s front yard if they’d had a yard. Or a house anymore.
“I guess that takes care of that,” Julius said nervously as he turned to Marci. “We’ll get everyone together and stall the Leviathan for as long as we can. How long do you think it will take you to line up what you need for the banishment?”
“That depends on how quickly Myron can work and how much help I can wrangle,” Marci said, glancing at General Jackson, who was already back on the phone as Myron whispered frantically into her free ear. “But I promise we’ll go as fast as we can.”
“I know you will,” he said. “You always do your best.” He looked down at her for a long moment after that, his inhumanly green eyes nervous, like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t. She was about to tell him to just spit it out when Julius swooped down and kissed her.
Even after last night, the move took her by surprise. She was so used to walking a narrow line on her feelings for Julius, she didn’t know what to do with herself now that it was all out in the open. But Marci had always been a quick study, and she got with the program in a heartbeat, wrapping her arms around his neck as she kissed him back. She was getting even closer when a cleared throat made them both jump, and Marci whipped her head around to see Myron waiting a few feet away.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, tapping the cracked face of his wristwatch.
Marci felt her face turn beet red, but she didn’t apologize. Instead, she kissed Julius again, holding him close one last time before she reluctantly stepped away. “Good luck.”
“You too,” he said, giving her the thousand-watt smile that only came out when he was really happy. “We can do this.”
“We can do this,” Marci agreed as Myron pulled her away. She was still staring at him wistfully when the UN mage grabbed her shoulder and yanked her around.
“Ow!” she said, smacking his hand away. “What gives?”
“Everything’s going to give if you don’t pay attention,” he said angrily. “This is the end of the world, not romance time with other species.”
“If I waited until the world wasn’t ending, I’d never see Julius at all,” Marci snapped. Still, Myron had a point. “Okay,” she said, sneaking one last look at Julius before she put on her serious face. “What are we doing?”
“You tell me,” he said. “You’re the one with the plan.”
Again, fair point. “Right,” she said, scrambling to regather the thoughts Julius had just scattered. “The first thing we need to do is get back to the Heart of the World.” She paused, frowning. “Um, how do we get back to the Heart of the World?”
“I usually just follow my spirit,” Myron said with a shrug. “The DFZ seems to be able to travel freely between both sides. For you, though, I have no idea.”
That made two of them. “Stay right here,” Marci said, backing up toward the house. “I have to have a quick meeting.”
“Make sure it’s very quick,” Myron said, raising his voice in warning. “You put yourself at the center of this, Novalli. If you can’t pull it off, we’re in trouble.”
They were in a lot more than that if she couldn’t figure this out, but Marci wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t entirely sure of the details yet, but after everything else she’d been through, Marci was positive she could pull this off too. She didn’t have a choice. Failure was not an option, so she shoved the nagging doubts out of her mind and ran up the broken porch steps toward her spirit, who was still valiantly holding up the barrier that kept the rampant magic from cooking them all.
Chapter 6
Chelsie stood at the edge of the wreckage that had been Julius’s front porch, holding her daughter close as the two of them observed the chaos. Fredrick had already left, cutting his way to DC, where Justin, Conrad, and most of the other Heartstrikers were gathered. She’d offered to go with him as backup, but Fredrick had refused. This was his job now, not hers, and he wasn’t going to make her do it even one more time.
If it hadn’t been such a sweet sentiment, she would have told him what a stupid idea it was to go alone into a bunch of nervous, prideful dragons who still thought he was a servant and rally them for war. But while he’d framed it as something he was doing for her sake, Chelsie knew her eldest son, and the hard set of his jaw had told her the refusal wasn’t actually about her at all. Showing up with a Fang and a declaration of war was Fredrick’s first big chance to prove himself among the Heartstrikers as a dragon, not a servant. That wasn’t something she dared to mess with, so she’d just let him go, staying by the Qilin’s side as everyone else scrambled to do their part. She was about to suggest they move closer to Amelia and Svena in case a fight broke out—with those two, it was always a possibility—when she spotted Bob walking toward them
As always, seeing her eldest brother put her on high alert. Even when they’d worked together under Bethesda, she’d long considered the Seer of the Heartstrikers to be her most dangerous enemy. For all Julius’s assurances, Chelsie still wasn’t sure that was no longer the case as Brohomir stopped in front of her.
“I hope I’m not interrupting family time,” he said brightly, giving them both a dazzling smile before turning to the Qilin. “You have a phone call.”
Xian looked rightfully suspicious. “But I don’t have a phone.”
“That’s all right,” Bob said. “I do, and it should be ringing right… about… now.”
Sure enough, something in his pocket began to jangle, and Chelsie rolled her eyes as he pulled out his ancient, battered, brick-shaped Nokia. Bob’s phone was so old, it didn’t even have augmented reality. It didn’t even have a touch screen. He texted using the buttons like a savage. But for all its shortcomings, the antique apparently still worked as a phone, because when Bob hit the button to accept the call, the male dragon voice on the other end came through clear, loud, and angry.
“One moment,” Bob said into the speaker before holding out the phone to the Qilin. “It’s for you. A very pleasant fellow named Lao.”
The emperor’s golden eyes went wide, and then he grabbed the phone from Bob, clutching it to his ear as he began speaking rapidly in Chinese. His cousin replied in kind, his angry voice rapidly transforming into one of great relief as he finally talked to his emperor again.
“How did Lao get your number?” Chelsie asked as Xian stepped away to conduct his call in private.
“I gave it to the Empress Mother,” Bob said flippantly, as though that were a perfectly normal thing to do. “He probably got it from her.”
Chelsie clenched her fists. For a moment, the urge to gut her brother was back strong as ever. But then, as if he could feel her anger building, Julius shot her a worried look from where he was standing beside Amelia on the other side of the dirt yard, and Chelsie forced herself to let it go.
“For the sake of family harmony, I’m not even going to ask what kind of treason you and Fenghuang were cooking up together.”
Bob shrugged. “It was a mutual sort. She was as much my pawn as I was h
ers. But that’s water under the bridge now, and you know I never look at the past.”
“Because you can’t stomach it?” Chelsie asked, giving him a cold look. “I couldn’t either, if I’d done what you’ve done.”
“If I spent as much time wallowing in the past as you do, my tolerance would be low too,” Bob shot back, and then he sighed. “Let’s not quarrel, Chelsie. Julius wants us to be friends.”
“Julius wants everyone to be friends,” she snapped, getting a tighter hold on her daughter, who was desperately trying to get to Bob. “He should get used to disappointment.”
“He’s very used to disappointment,” Bob said, grinning at the baby dragon. “He just refuses to expect it. That’s what makes him stronger than the rest of us.”
He held out his arms, and Chelsie sighed, releasing her grip on the whelp, who immediately leaped at her uncle.
“There’s my favorite girl!” Bob said, throwing the child high into the air before catching her one handed. “You really should name her.”
“She’s had a name for years,” Chelsie said as Bob tossed her again.
“Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I never saw that.” He smiled at the little girl. “I hope it’s something grand. Seers need grand names, or we just end up labeled by our epithets. Look at poor Estella. She had a perfectly lovely name, but it was too normal, so everyone just called her ‘The Northern Star,’ including her. Do you know how awkward it is to get clandestine invitations from ‘The Northern Star?’ Not that I got many of those once she realized I’d never be her pawn.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes, “And Brohomir is better?”
“Much,” Bob assured her. “No one ever calls me by common nouns and verbs. I am always myself, which is a lovely thing to be.” He grinned at the little dragon, who was already snapping at him to make him hurry up with the next throw. “So what’s her name?”
Chelsie reached out to shut her daughter’s snapping mouth. The bad habit had to be trained out early, before her jaws got big enough to do real damage. “Felicity,” she said as Bob tossed the little girl up again.
The seer looked so shocked, he nearly missed the catch. “An F?” he cried. “Really? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely name, but if you were going to stick with Bethesda’s system, you should have gone for an A.”
“I didn’t choose it because of Mother’s stupid system,” Chelsie snapped, grabbing her daughter back before Bob could toss her again. “I wanted her to have a happy name. Maybe it will help her lead a happier life than the rest of us.” She threw the whelp up into the air herself, launching her almost all the way to the top of Ghost’s barrier as the little dragon squealed in delight. “Also, all of her siblings have F names, and I didn’t want her to feel left out. Or for the others to feel I favored her over them.”
“How thoughtful,” Bob said, watching Chelsie toss the little dragon higher and higher. “You really are an exemplary mother. I should send you a card.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious,” Bob said, and for once, he actually sounded it. “I didn’t enjoy hurting you, Chelsie.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I didn’t,” he said again. “I hated what I had to do, but it was the only way I saw to save you.”
“At the beginning, maybe,” Chelsie said bitterly. “But what about later? I can see sticking me under Bethesda’s boot in a pinch, but that didn’t make you leave me under it for six hundred years.”
“That was the only way I saw to save the rest of us,” Bob replied, his face falling. “I know you think I’m the villain, and from your point of view, I suppose I am. But everything I’ve done I did for our greater good. And for the record, I always meant to make it right. In the future I made for us, you spend ten thousand years as the golden apple of the Qilin’s eye. Surely that’s worth a few centuries of unpleasantness?”
Chelsie caught her daughter with a silent glare, setting the laughing whelp on the ground to catch her breath before turning to face her brother head on. “You don’t get to tell me what our suffering is worth,” she growled. “You weren’t on Bethesda’s chain with us. You weren’t there at all. You were always off in the future, leaving those of us in the present to clean up your messes. Ten thousand years of happiness is the least you can offer for what you put us through, especially since it’s not certain we’ll live past tonight.”
“The future is never certain,” Bob agreed. “I was going to make it that way, but now that we’re thirty minutes past my pre-marked expiration date, I’m afraid the future has changed too much for my guarantee to be good anymore.”
Chelsie blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means the one-in-multiple-billions future I was planning to trade all others for is gone, vanished into the streams of time with all the other timelines from before I convinced the Black Reach that killing me would be shooting himself in the foot. We’re in a new world now, with new futures. Ones I don’t know. But while most of those are very dark, I know we’ll get through this.”
“How?” Chelsie asked, arching an eyebrow. “Got another trick up your endless sleeves?”
“No,” Bob said with a sad laugh. “I’m afraid my tricks and sleeves ended half an hour ago. Frankly, I’m still celebrating the fact I spotted Lao’s phone call in time to make a cryptic comment and maintain my reputation.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes. “Then how can you say you know anything?”
“Because Julius isn’t the only one I needed to be himself,” Bob said, smiling down at her. “Every dragon, spirit, and human in this yard is here because I wanted them to be. Not because I foresaw they’d be useful at any one specific time, but because I knew them. I know you too, Chelsie. A lesser seer, one with more limited vision, would have connived and blackmailed you to bring you to this point, but I didn’t need such blunt tools. All I had to do was choose goals that aligned with your own, and you went after them all by yourself. That’s what separates a good seer from a great one, and it’s why I’m not worried now. I don’t need to see the future to know that we will get through this. Because I see you, and if you can’t do it, it can’t be done.”
That was the most sincere compliment Bob had ever given her. Maybe the only sincere compliment. But while Chelsie didn’t doubt that her brother was telling the truth, something about what he’d said still didn’t sit right. “If that’s how you feel, why do you still have her?”
She nodded at the pigeon sitting on Bob’s shoulder, and he raised his hand protectively, cupping his fingers gently around the bird’s feathered head. “She’s for me,” he said quietly. “My ace in the hole, especially now that I no longer know exactly where all the holes are. The cost of her help will be painfully high now that we’ve moved past the future I’d picked out, but there may come a time when cost doesn’t matter. Besides,” he turned up his nose, “a consort never abandons his lady. What kind of dragon do you think I am?”
Chelsie had a lot of answers for that one. She was about to give him the full, blistering rundown when Xian suddenly came back, his gold eyes bright as he told them to make room. The Dragons of the Golden Empire were coming in for a landing.
***
Julius watched Bob and Chelsie’s conversation with growing dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t like that they were finally talking—he was ecstatic—he just had no confidence it would stay that way. He knew firsthand how infuriating Bob could be, and the seer had only manipulated his life. He’d stomped on Chelsie’s, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t ready to let it go.
But fortunately, and very surprisingly, Bob didn’t seem to be antagonizing her. He actually looked sincere, almost apologetic. Not that he would ever actually apologize—he was too much of a dragon for that—but it was a marked detour from his normal behavior. Julius wasn’t sure if that was because the seer was off his script now or if Bob really did feel bad about what he’d put Chelsie and her children through, but whatever the reason, he was gla
d of it. One of his biggest motivations for agreeing to take over his clan was the chance to end Bethesda’s culture of violence, something that would be a lot easier if members of his family would stop trying to kill each other. He didn’t think they were there quite yet, but talking instead of hitting was definitely a step in the right direction. He just wished everything else were going as well.
At that, Julius’s attention jumped back to the other source of his anxiety: Marci. She was standing beside Ghost in the ruins of their house. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but Marci looked upset, which, of course, upset him. He wanted to go over and ask what was wrong, but he didn’t want to hover or make her think he didn’t trust her to do her job. She was the Merlin. He’d seen her do the impossible more than anyone else here, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. The stakes were just so high, and there were so many things that could go wrong on every front.
For example, Fredrick wasn’t back yet. Julius presumed he was still in DC, talking to Conrad, Justin, and the others, but he could be facing off against Bethesda for all Julius knew. Not that he could do anything about that if it was true, but the combined stress was enough to make a dragon crazy. Especially since the one part of the plan to stop the Leviathan that Julius was actually involved with wasn’t currently going anywhere.
Since he couldn’t actually help Marci with spirit stuff, Julius had volunteered to help Amelia and Svena bring in the other dragon clans. Seeing as they’d already agreed to work together, he’d assumed they’d get right to the portal making or magic circles or whatever it was they did. But other than moving to a relatively flat portion of Julius’s dirt yard, neither Amelia nor Svena had done anything except stand around staring at each other like enemies on the field of combat. No one had actually attacked yet, but they’d been at it for a good ten minutes now, and with the Leviathan growing more solid by the second, Julius wasn’t sure how much more they—or he—could take.