by Rachel Aaron
“Don’t blame me,” Bob said. “This is your fault. I told you not to set her free. If she’d still had her Fang, this would have been an entirely different fight. She’s used that sword for hundreds of years. Fighting her with it would have been like following a script. Barehanded conflict wasn’t nearly as predictable, as you can see.”
He nodded at his bloody leg, but Julius had had enough.
“You should be grateful you’re alive to complain,” he snarled, growing more furious by the second. “This was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do. You nearly got us all killed! You did kill Amelia, and you almost killed yourself just now by—”
Bob slapped a hand over Julius’s mouth, cutting him off. He pressed another finger to his own lips next, flicking his green eyes pointedly at their sister. Julius had been so caught up with Bob, he hadn’t even noticed Chelsie getting to her feet. She was on them now, though, her whole body poised to run as she eyed the Qilin. But while everything about her reminded Julius of a violent cornered animal, the Golden Emperor was still staring at her as if she were the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen.
“You…” he said at last. “You look well.”
Chelsie’s jaw tightened. “You never were much of a liar.”
“But you were,” he said, stepping closer. “Julius told me the truth, Chelsie. You did lie the day I banished you, but not about what I thought. You lied at the end, when you said it was all a ploy. Your brother claims he doesn’t know why, but I’ve decided I don’t care. I’m sick of living in the shadow of things that happened six centuries ago. I want to be alive now. I want to be happy again. I want…”
He trailed off, holding his breath like he was waiting for something to break. “I want you,” he finished at last. “Only you. Always.” He put out his hand. “Please give me a chance.”
Julius stared at the emperor in shock. That was not how he’d expected this to go. He’d thought the Qilin would demand answers, but it seemed he’d underestimated his own words earlier. Apparently, Xian really did just want to be happy again. Chelsie, though, looked more afraid than ever.
“I can’t.”
The emperor flinched. “Will you tell me why?”
“No,” she said sharply, crossing her arms tight across her chest. “I know how tempting Julius’s sweet talk can be. He got to me, too, but our past isn’t something we can just write off. It’s easy to say you don’t care when you don’t know, but—”
“Then tell me,” Xian said, taking another step closer. “I’m not afraid, Chelsie. Whatever happened, we’ll work through it. I know we can, because we’ve already tried the alternative, and it was awful. I have no illusion that this will be easy, but if I’m going to be miserable, I’d rather be miserable with you. Just tell me what happened.”
“I can’t,” Chelsie said, her voice starting to shake. “And you don’t want me to. You’ve got this idea that things can be okay again, but even if I told you everything, it wouldn’t make a difference. We can never go back to how we were before, because I’m not…” Her words trailed off as she curled her bloody hands into fists. “I’m not the girl from your paintings anymore.”
“So what?” the Qilin said angrily, taking another step. “You think I’m the same? It’s been six hundred years. Of course we’ve changed.” Another step. “I want to know who you are now, Chelsie. I want to talk to you again, see you again. I miss you. You can throw that back in my face if you want, but I’m done pretending that I don’t love you. That I don’t still think about you every single day. That’s why I’m not afraid, because there’s nothing you can say, no secret you can tell me that could hurt me more than all the years I spent thinking you didn’t care.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Try me,” he growled, closing the final distance. “Tell me the truth, Chelsie, and we’ll work from there, but don’t write me off before we even start. You owe me that much.” He smiled down at her. “And you never used to be a quitter.”
Chelsie cringed at that, but she didn’t back down. She was actually leaning toward the emperor now, her hands fisted hard at her sides as if she was struggling to keep them from reaching out for his. But then, just as she seemed to be losing the fight, a new voice cut through the dark.
“An emperor shouldn’t be so quick to promise pardon before he knows the crime.”
The Qilin’s head whipped around like a shot. Chelsie jumped, too, turning to look at something across the road. Fredrick and Bob were already looking, which meant Julius was the last one to turn and see the Empress Mother stepping out of a dark car hidden behind the Skyway support by the river.
“Mother,” the emperor said, clearly as surprised by this as the rest of them. “What are you doing…”
His words trailed off. The Empress Mother was carrying something in her arms. As she stepped into the light of the lone street lamp, Julius saw it was a child. A little girl, barely more than a toddler, with a head full of straight, fine, ink-black hair. She was dressed haphazardly in striped leggings and a purple sweatshirt with a pigeon embroidered on the front, but while the clothes were human, the child was obviously not. Julius had never seen a dragon that young in human form before, but there was nothing else the little girl could be, and she smelled of his clan. It wasn’t until the child raised her eyes, though—giant, beautiful eyes that flashed like golden coins in the orange glare of the streetlight—that he finally understood.
“No,” Chelsie whispered, her face pale as ashes when she whirled on Bob. “What did you do?”
“Seems to me that question should be turned around,” the Empress Mother said, thumping across the dirt with her cane in one gnarled hand and the little girl clutched tight against her hip with the other. “What did you do, daughter of the Heartstriker?”
Chelsie cringed, eyes flicking nervously to Xian, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring at the baby dragon like he’d never seen one before.
“Who is that?”
“I see the shock of her betrayal has blinded you, my emperor,” the Empress Mother said sadly. “Allow me to make her crime clearer.”
She swept her gold-handled cane at Fredrick, who was also staring at the child in speechless wonder. Magic followed. Not much, not even enough to label a spell, but with Fredrick’s illusion already on the edge, a flick was all it took to shatter his false green eyes completely. He cursed as the magic snapped, which only made things worse, because it made the Qilin look, and there was no hiding the truth after that.
“You, too?” he whispered, staring into the mirror image of his own golden eyes before finally turning back to Chelsie. “What is this?”
There was no accusation in his voice, no anger. He just sounded lost. Lost and terrified and clearly counting on Chelsie to say something that would explain what he was seeing, but Chelsie couldn’t even look at him. A fact that did not escape the empress as she moved in for the kill.
“I warned you,” she said, clutching the little girl so tight she squirmed. “I told you the Heartstriker was using us. Now, at last, we see how.” She bared her teeth. “Like mother, like daughter.”
The emperor held up his hand, silencing her, but his eyes never left Chelsie. “What is she talking about?”
Chelsie took a shuddering breath. Again, though, she couldn’t seem to find the words, and again, the empress took her chance.
“She was pregnant,” the old dragoness said. “That’s why she ran, and it’s why she wouldn’t accept your forgiveness just now. Even she knows there can be no pardon for this crime. She stole your children, my emperor. She lied to you and secreted them away to Bethesda’s mountain in the Americas, where they lived as Bethesda’s Shame.” She pointed her cane at Fredrick. “Your son works as Julius Heartstriker’s servant. Your eldest son.”
“No,” the Qilin said, taking a step back. “That can’t be true.”
“It is true,” the empress said firmly. “Look on him, great emperor, and see for yourself. Se
e with your own eyes what she has taken from us.”
She pointed her cane at Fredrick until, at last, the Qilin dragged his eyes away from Chelsie and turned to face him. Fredrick stared right back, his golden eyes locked on his father’s. Face to face like this, golden eye to eye, it was impossible not to notice how alike they looked. You’d have to be blind not to see the family resemblance, but the emperor seemed determined to try as he turned to face Chelsie once again.
“Is it true?”
She lowered her head and said nothing, which only made him angrier.
“Is he your son, Chelsie?”
Everyone was looking at her now, but despite the naked fear on her downturned face, her voice was clear when she said, “He is.”
“But he can’t be,” the Qilin said desperately. “I’m still alive. There’s only ever one Qilin.” He lurched forward, grabbing Chelsie’s shoulders in his hands. “Tell me you’re lying! Tell me he’s not—”
“I can’t!” Chelsie yelled at him, her head coming up at last. “I can’t lie anymore, Xian. Fredrick is my son, the first of my clutch.” She took a deep breath. “And yours.”
The whole world fell silent. There were no cars on the Skyways, no people on the street or noises from the city. Even the river behind went still as it waited for the Golden Emperor to realize what this meant.
“No,” he said softly, releasing Chelsie’s shoulders as he stumbled away. “No.”
“Yes,” the Empress Mother said, turning to glare at Chelsie with pure, naked hate. “Our line is destroyed. The work of generations, a hundred thousand years of magic, gone. You are now the last Golden Emperor.” She bared her yellowed teeth. “And it’s all her fault.”
That was going too far, but Julius didn’t get a chance to come to his sister’s defense. The Qilin was already falling to his knees on the broken street, and as he landed, a tsunami of dragon magic rose to meet him. It was the same pressure Julius had felt before at the mountain, but exponentially bigger, and growing by the second. Then, just when he was sure it couldn’t get any worse, the spiking pressure snapped, and it did.
From the moment the Qilin arrived at the mountain, Julius had been warned over and over of what could happen if the emperor got upset. He’d thought he’d understood the danger. He even thought he’d experienced it for himself. It wasn’t until now, when it was far too late, that Julius finally realized he’d had no idea at all. There was nothing—no magic, dragon or otherwise, no single force he’d ever felt—that could have prepared him for the tidal wave of misfortune that crashed into them as the Qilin’s magic crashed.
It wasn’t just that the ground shook—it was how it shook, twisting and moving exactly as needed to hit each tiny weakness in the Skyway supports’ earthquake-ready joints. Even then, the supports didn’t merely break. They crumbled like rotten wood, falling away from their steel cores in huge chunks that crashed to the ground like boulders ahead of a landslide.
With nothing left to support them, the Skyway bridges began to buckle next, the giant slabs that supported the buildings, sidewalks, and roads of the DFZ’s famous upper tier cracking like plates before sliding into the city below. They would have slid right down onto Julius’s head, but while he was transfixed by the collapse going on above him, other dragons had better instincts. By the time Julius realized he should probably run, Chelsie was already screaming.
“Go!”
She crashed into him like a train, knocking him out of the way seconds before a garbage-truck-sized chunk of Skyway landed where he’d been standing. And that was just the first. Whole buildings were collapsing now as the Skyways gave out beneath them. This time, though, Julius didn’t stay to watch. He was already running, feet barely touching the ground as he raced across the empty lot toward the safety of the river, diving headfirst into the swift water beyond the stony bank.
The cold of the November water nearly shocked him numb. For a terrifying moment, he was tumbling blind in the dark current, and then his feet found the muddy ground. He pushed up, breaking the surface with a gasp. When he turned to see what had happened to the others, though, all he saw was dust.
The empty lot was gone, crushed completely beneath a block-sized chunk of the upper city. For several heart-stopping seconds, Julius was sure everyone else had been crushed as well, and then he saw Fredrick burst out of the water several feet downstream. Chelsie was right beside him and already swimming for the bank. Bob, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Now that he thought about it, Julius realized he hadn’t seen the seer since the Empress Mother had appeared. Whether he’d sneaked off while everyone was distracted or fled during the crash, though, Julius didn’t know and didn’t have time to find out. Bob could look out for himself. Right now, Julius was far more concerned about the Qilin.
Given that he’d been directly below the Skyway when it fell, he should have been crushed with everything else. That would have been the logical outcome, but logic didn’t seem to touch the Qilin any more than dirt did. For all the chaos all around him, the Golden Emperor was perfectly safe beneath a slab of roadway that, miraculously, had landed sideways, plunging into the dirt at the perfect angle to create a thick shelter of cement and asphalt above his head. His mother was there as well, smiling at the Heartstrikers’ misfortune with the golden-eyed girl in her arms. A smile that only grew wider when Chelsie pulled herself out of the river.
“You hag!” she snarled, lunging at the empress. “Give me my daughter!”
The scream was still leaving her throat when a car-sized boulder that had been hanging from the ledge above them by a thread of steel rebar suddenly broke free. Chelsie dodged being crushed, just barely, but the force of the falling rock’s impact knocked her right back into the river.
“You deserved that,” the Empress Mother said when Chelsie came back up with a gasp. “All of you.” She turned her red glare on Fredrick, who was helping Julius to the bank. “Your horrible family has destroyed everything I sacrificed for centuries to build. Thanks to you, the line of the Qilin is broken, and this world is forever diminished.” She lifted her chin haughtily. “You deserve everything you get.”
Chelsie bared her dripping teeth, but Julius grabbed her shoulder. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because she took my child!” his sister roared.
“Not you,” he said quietly, grabbing the rocky bank so he could face the Empress Mother without being pushed downstream. “Why are you doing this?”
He pointed at the Qilin, who was still doubled over on the ground at her feet. “That’s your son who’s suffering. He told me how much he respected you, what a good mother you’d been to him. Just hearing him talk about you was enough to make me jealous, which is why I can’t understand what you’re thinking now.” He looked around at the destruction. “What kind of mother does this to her child?”
“A fine question, coming from a Heartstriker,” she snarled back. “But I do not do this as a mother. I do this as an empress.”
She stabbed her cane into the dirt and reached down to place a gnarled hand on the Qilin’s back. “My son is the heart of our power. I raised him to be incorruptible, to always put duty first, as I did. And in almost every way, he was perfect, but he had a secret weakness. By the time I realized what it was, your sister had already ruined him.”
“Ruined him how?” Julius demanded. “Love made him happy. That’s when his luck is greatest, isn’t it?”
“Why do you think I tolerated it for so long?” she growled. “Do you know how relieved I was when Bethesda took her away? I thought here, at last, was my chance to get my son back, to pry her hooked claws out of him. But I did not yet understand the extent of her crimes. When I heard the Heartstriker had laid a new clutch within a year of the last, all became clear.”
Chelsie went still. “You knew?”
The empress sneered. “I’m not stupid. Even the Broodmare can’t manage two clutches in two years, not to mention she hadn’t been pregnant when she’d l
eft China. By the time I heard, though, your ill-gotten spawn were already a year hatched. Even if my worst fears were true, everything was already lost, so I buried my worries and pressed on. I had an emperor to console and lands to manage, and there was no proof. I didn’t think of you again until the seer called me.”
“Seer?” A cold lump formed in Julius’s throat. “What seer?”
The old dragoness gave him a pitying look. “Which do you think?”
There was no question. Even if Julius had been willing to delude himself into thinking she was talking about the Black Reach, the little girl in the empress’s arms made it impossible. There was only one egg that child could have hatched from, and Bob had taken it. Right before the Golden Emperor had landed on their heads.
“Why?” he said, his voice cracking. “Why did he betray us?”
The empress shrugged. “I didn’t bother to ask. All I cared about, all I have ever cared about, is my empire. Really, though, Brohomir’s treason just confirmed what I’d always known in my heart: that your sister is a grasping snake who cares nothing for others. She already broke my son once with her selfishness, and that’s before we knew the depths of her sin.” She looked away with a sneer. “It’s only fitting she die for it here.”
Julius couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You think Chelsie wanted this?”
“I don’t care about what she wanted,” the empress snapped. “I care about what she did. She broke my son and destroyed my clan!”
“If that’s what you think, why are you finishing the job?” he yelled back, pointing at the Qilin. “Maybe he is the last Golden Emperor, but your son was fine until you got here. You did this to him. Why?”
“Because he was already broken!” she roared, red eyes flashing. “No matter what I did, no matter how I tried, he never got over her! He should have been the strongest Qilin ever born. Fortune should have rained on us from the heavens, and yet we have no more than we got under his father. No new conquests, no new lands, nothing. For six centuries, the Golden Empire has been stagnant, and then he suddenly announces his intention to conquer Heartstriker?”