A Dragon of a Different Color

by Rachel Aaron

  Algonquin bolted, abandoning her watery body under the Pit entirely as she rushed back to check on her lakes, but her fish were calm. This was no earthquake. Whatever was shaking, it only seemed to be affecting the city. It was still going when she returned to the Pit, animating her water there once again in a terrified rush.

  “Evacuate the Skyways.”

  Her commander’s head snapped up. “Lady?”

  “You heard me,” she snarled, flowing over the ground to the unmanned circle that still contained Myron’s sleeping body. “I want everyone out. Empty the city.”

  There was no backtalk this time. The commander didn’t even salute. She just started running for the trucks, yelling into her comm that they were now in Evac One, and this was not a drill. Algonquin shut her out after that, focusing all her water on the magic she could now feel rising from the ground beneath her like a fist.

  This will confuse your history, the Leviathan whispered, his deep, alien voice sliding through her water like oil. They will call you merciful.

  “What do I care how the humans remember me?” Algonquin said, expanding her water to surround the silver circle. “I’m not doing this to save them. I’m evacuating the city because a city without people is nothing but a shell.” And given the size of the magic bearing down on them, she was going to need every advantage she could find.

  You can’t win, you know, the Leviathan said, creeping closer through the dark. I warned you at the beginning that this was a losing battle. The humans are too many, and their fears are too strong. They will destroy everything you love. Only I can stop them. Only I can save you. His tentacles rose to wrap lovingly around her. Rest, Algonquin. Let me fight for you.

  “Not yet,” she growled, shoving him away as she called her water, raising Lake St. Clair to burst through the protective walls she’d built to stop the contamination and flood the Pit once more. “I’m not beaten yet.”

  You will be, he whispered, his tentacles brushing her once more before sliding away. But I am patient. I will wait for you, and when the time is right, you’ll be mine.

  “Good,” she said, pulling more water in. “Because until that happens, you’re still mine. Now keep your promise and help me hold this down.”

  The monster chuckled. As you command, my Lady of the Lakes.

  His whispering voice was mocking, but Algonquin had nothing left to put him in his place. Everything she had, all the water she could safely pull without stranding her beloved fish, was focused on pushing down the magic that was rapidly building toward critical inside the unmanned circle.

  “Not yet,” she whispered, bearing down with all her strength. “You haven’t won yet.”

  The trapped Mortal Spirit howled, an earsplitting cry of rage and vengeance that shattered every piece of glass on the armored convoy that was still peeling out of the Pit. Algonquin answered in kind with rage of her own, making the whole Pit tremble as she crushed it under a ten-foot wave of violent, rushing water.

  And far, far away, farther than even spirits could comprehend, the Leviathan bided its time.

  Chapter 9

  When he’d jumped down the bolthole in Bethesda’s closet, Julius had fully expected to end up in a panic room. Powerful as his mother’s paranoia was, though, even she couldn’t control physical space. The cramped quarters that came from living inside a mountain peak simply didn’t allow for a private bunker. As a result, Bethesda’s emergency exit dumped Julius, Fredrick, and Chelsie into Bob’s room one floor below.

  Through the ceiling. Of a dragon-sized cave.

  Naturally, Chelsie and Fredrick took the twenty-foot fall just fine, landing on their feet as dragons should. Julius’s descent wasn’t nearly so graceful. He didn’t quite plummet like a rock, but it was close. Thankfully, there was plenty of junk around to break his fall.

  He landed in a pile of old magazines, dusty Post-It notes, and at least a dozen boxes containing T-shirts for the New Mexico Carrier Pigeon Appreciation Society. He was struggling to get his feet under him when Chelsie grabbed his arm.

  “We have to keep moving,” she said, yanking him up. “I don’t think they’ll chase us, but that doesn’t mean I want to be here if they do.”

  She finished with a sharp shove toward the door, but now that he was back was on them, Julius planted his feet stubbornly on the stone. “We need to talk.”

  “What is it with you and talking?” Chelsie snapped, turning to Fredrick. “Grab him and let’s go.”

  Fredrick clenched his jaw and moved toward Julius, but not to grab him. Instead, he took up position at Julius’s side, turning to face Chelsie with his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.

  “Seriously?” Chelsie said.

  “Yes,” Fredrick growled back, his not-quite-green eyes gleaming in the dark. “Julius is right. You have a lot to explain.”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Then we’ll make time,” Julius said. “Because this is important.” He stared pleadingly at his sister. “What are you doing, Chelsie?”

  “What I always do,” she snapped. “Saving your tail feathers.”

  “Not that,” he said angrily. “I meant what are you doing down here? Why aren’t you upstairs right now talking to the Qilin?”

  “Because that’s a terrible idea.”

  “Why?” Julius demanded.

  Chelsie’s reply was a silent death glare before turning away. She was walking to the exit when Julius said, “I know what happened in China.”

  “I know,” she said, yanking Bob’s door open. “I’ve been stalking you, remember? How do you think I got there in time to save you?”

  Julius hadn’t actually thought about that. He was so used to her just appearing behind him, he hadn’t realized what that meant. “So then you heard the Qilin say—”

  “I heard enough,” Chelsie growled, sticking her head into the hall. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”

  “We’re not going anywhere until we settle this,” Julius said stubbornly. “He still loves you, Chelsie.”

  She stepped back from the door with a long, bitter sigh. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you were in love with the Qilin,” he said. “I know he was your Chinese dragon, the one who painted the picture in your bedroom. I also know that he’s doing all of this for you. Stopping Algonquin was never anything but an excuse, because even though he thinks you betrayed him, he couldn’t bear to let you die. All he wants is for you to be safe, and I don’t understand why you keep running away.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she muttered, glaring at him over her shoulder. “Drop it, Julius.”

  “No,” he snarled, clenching his fists. “Can’t you see? You’re our way out of this mess! Whatever happened in the past, it’s obvious you both still care for each other. That’s why you’ve been doing this stupid dance. But if you’d stop running for five minutes and talk to each other, this whole invasion could be over.”

  He stopped there, waiting for an answer, but none came. The whole time he’d been talking, Chelsie had been pulling into herself, folding her arms over her chest and hunching her shoulders until they were up to her ears. Even her eyes were down, locked pointedly on the floor as she muttered, “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Julius demanded.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

  “No,” Fredrick said. “But you do owe me one.”

  Julius looked at the F in surprise. He wasn’t sure what Fredrick was referring to, but Chelsie must have known, because her face went from angry to spooked. “Stay out of this, Fredrick,” she warned, voice shaking. “This isn’t your business.”

  “This is all of our business,” Fredrick growled, taking another step forward. “Mother.”

  The room went silent. Even Julius was stunned speechless, his brain racing as he looked back and forth between Fredrick—eldest of the six-hundred-year-old F-clutch who’d been kept in the mountain and treated like a dirty secret since birth, despite Bethesda’s
frenzy to boost her ranks—and Chelsie, who’d returned from China also six hundred years ago after running away from her lover with no explanation. Returned with Bethesda, who’d supposedly laid F-clutch within days of returning despite not being pregnant when she’d set sail and not flying a mating flight in China…

  Julius slapped his hands over his mouth. That was it. That was the secret. “You’re F-clutch’s mom!”

  The words exploded out of him, but no one was listening. While he’d been putting the pieces together, Fredrick and Chelsie seemed to have forgotten he existed.

  “Who told you?” she said at last.

  “No one,” Fredrick said with a sneer. “We’re not stupid. Bethesda might have frightened everyone else into not asking questions, but we were the ones who were told that our birth was the reason we’d been sealed and trapped in servitude. Naturally, we investigated, and once we started digging, the truth became obvious pretty quickly. The only thing we didn’t know was which member of the Golden Emperor’s court was our father.”

  “Why does that matter?” Julius asked, genuinely confused. “None of us knows who our dads are. I certainly don’t know mine.”

  “It doesn’t matter to you because you’re Bethesda’s actual son,” Fredrick said bitterly. “She cared enough about your clutch not to want to share, but we were different. Despite claiming to be our mother, Bethesda never treated us like she did the rest of you. We were servants to her, not dragons. She didn’t even bother trying to manipulate us.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Chelsie said.

  “Is it?” Fredrick snapped, glaring at her. “Why do you think we searched so hard for our father? Given how you left China, we knew he wouldn’t be happy, but however unwanted we might have been, no dragon would tolerate his children living as slaves in another’s house. He would free us out of pride, if nothing else. For centuries, that was our hope. Even after the others gave up, I kept searching, but I never found him. Now, at last, I understand why. I was looking too low. When I saw the emperor’s unveiled face, I knew.”

  Julius frowned. “How did you know?”

  Instead of answering, Fredrick reached up to brush his fingers across his face. Dragon magic bit down as he moved, and when it faded, Fredrick’s eyes were no longer Heartstriker green. They weren’t even the wrong color green they’d been all morning. They were gold. The perfect, warm, buttery, metallic color of golden coins.

  The moment she saw them, Chelsie recoiled. “How?”

  “How do you think?” Fredrick said angrily. “We were Amelia’s guinea pigs, remember? She was just trying to show up Svena by breaking Bethesda’s green-eyed curse, but the moment she saw my eyes, she started laughing. I pleaded with her to tell me what the gold meant. I begged, but she refused. Brohomir wouldn’t say anything, either. No one would.” He lifted his fists, his body shaking with rage. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Chelsie shook her head. “I couldn’t take that risk.”

  “What risk?” Fredrick cried. “He’s an emperor! And he loved you! I always assumed you ran away because our father was dangerous, but the dragon I met with Julius today isn’t like that at all. His mother is, but even she has to obey the Golden Emperor. Everyone does. He could have saved us! Why did you run from him?”

  “Because he was dangerous!”

  This whole time, Chelsie had been clinging to calm, but the more Fredrick, the more her son accused her, the more she cracked.

  “Do you think I wanted this for you?” she yelled. “Stuck with me under Bethesda’s boot? If there was any other way, I would have killed to get it, but there wasn’t. I didn’t keep this from you because I wanted to. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, because keeping you secret was the only way I could keep you safe.”

  “Safe from what?” Julius asked.

  Chelsie shot him a lethal-caliber version of the stay out of this glare, but Julius refused to be put off. Everyone had stayed out of this problem for far too long. It was going to be painful, but if they were ever to have a shot at actually fixing this mess, he couldn’t spare the wound.

  “Fredrick’s right,” he said firmly. “The Qilin’s not a vengeful dragon. If he’d known he had children, I’m certain he would have come for them, and for you. He might have been upset about being lied to, but he wouldn’t have been violent.”

  “Xian is never violent,” Chelsie said, her voice faltering when she spoke the emperor’s name. “It wasn’t him I worried about. It was his magic. I heard him tell you how Qilin’s luck works, but do you know why he has that power?”

  “He inherited it from his father,” Julius said.

  “Exactly,” Chelsie said. “The Golden Emperor’s magic is unique among dragons. When a seer dies, their power is reborn into whatever dragon of the appropriate sex happens to hatch first after their death. With the right timing, any dragon clan can have a seer, but Qilin’s power is different. It was cultivated. Xian told me that his clan has always had a tradition of fortune magic, but the power wasn’t reliable. To solve this problem, his ancestors bred their lines together, consolidating their clan’s magic into one perfect dragon, the first Qilin.”

  Julius had his own thoughts about the “perfection” of the Qilin’s magic, but Chelsie wasn’t finished.

  “That perfection wasn’t natural,” she went on. “Like an ornate garden, it had to be carefully maintained. To make sure all the magic transfers from one generation to another, each Qilin fathers only one child, and only after an elaborate ceremony with a mate specifically chosen for her ability to complete the magical endurance run that is carrying a Qilin egg to term. Even then, the empress doesn’t actually lay the egg until the old Qilin dies to ensure that every bit of his fire is passed on.” She sighed. “I’m sure you can see where this is going.”

  Julius nodded, glancing at Fredrick, who was the oldest of a clutch of twenty and, despite his golden eyes, most definitely not a Qilin. “You laid too many eggs.”

  “That’s the least of what I did,” Chelsie said angrily. “When I got pregnant, I broke the line. Even with the Golden Emperor’s luck, it takes an insane amount of preparation to arrange the auspicious circumstances necessary to create a new Qilin. Each emperor only gets one shot at passing on his flame, and I took it.”

  “How can you say that?” Julius asked. “You’re acting like this is all your fault, but it takes two dragons to make a clutch, and it’s his line. I know you said you were young and stupid, but—”

  “Not that young and stupid,” Chelsie snapped. “I was your age when I went to China, but I knew where eggs came from. Dragonesses aren’t even supposed to be fertile until they clear a hundred. Even then it takes a mating flight, which is why Xian and I stayed in our human forms at all times. It should have been impossible for me to get pregnant, but apparently I’m Bethesda’s daughter in more ways than one, because it happened anyway.”

  “That still doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” Julius said gently. “Making the impossible happen is what the Qilin does.” And considering how happy he seemed to have been with Chelsie, his luck would have been running hot indeed. “Did he want children?”

  It was hard to see in the dark, but Julius would have sworn his sister blushed.

  “He told me once that he did,” she said quietly. “We both knew it was impossible. Maintaining the Qilin’s fire and passing it on to the next generation is the Golden Emperor’s most sacred duty, and Xian has always done his duty. But knowing something can’t happen doesn’t stop you from wanting it.”

  Her lips curved in the hint of a smile. “I thought it was sweet. When I told him I wanted children too, though, he freaked out. He told me never to say that, to never give him hope. At the time, I thought it was a lot of trouble for nothing, but that was before I understood just how little control Xian had over his luck. If he wants something—even subconsciously, even if he knows it’s a bad idea—the Qilin’s magic works to make it happen. So when he said he wanted a family…”

 
“He got one,” Julius finished with a sigh.

  Chelsie nodded, lowering her head to stare shamefaced at the floor. “I should have realized it sooner. I should never have encouraged him, but I didn’t understand. I thought so long as we were together, we could take on anything, but we couldn’t. Because of our selfishness, the Qilin’s line is broken forever. Even if Xian finds a perfect mate with perfect bloodlines and perfect control, there will never be another golden dragon.”

  “That’s terrible for them, I’m sure,” Fredrick growled. “But what does that have to do with us? The damage was already done. Why did we have to suffer for it?”

  “Because the damage isn’t over,” Chelsie said, her head shooting up. “Don’t you get it? The Qilin does not control his luck. That’s how I got pregnant even though it should have been impossible. Because Xian secretly wanted a family, so his magic gave it to him. Now, what do you think that magic is going to do when the Qilin realizes that he’s failed his most sacred duty?”

  Julius bit his lip. “It’s going to lash out.”

  “Exactly,” Chelsie said. “The Qilin’s luck exists to make him happy. That includes removing any causes of unhappiness. Xian was raised his whole life to believe he’s the custodian of a priceless gift. When he realizes that’s gone, it won’t matter that killing you won’t actually change a thing. So long as you and your siblings are the living incarnation of his failure, his luck will seek to remove you, and the only reason—the only reason—it hasn’t done so already is because he doesn’t know.”

  The whole time she was talking, Julius’s stomach had been sinking lower and lower. “That’s why you ran,” he said softly. “Why he thinks you betrayed him. You lied.”