A Dragon of a Different Color

by Rachel Aaron

  She shook her head. “I knew. Even before the seer removed all doubt, I knew the end was upon us. I knew that he would break, so I took it upon myself to make sure it happened in a place where it would only hurt our enemies.”

  By the time she finished, Julius could only stare in horrified awe. “That’s why,” he whispered, looking up at the evening sky through the jagged circle of the broken pavement. “I thought you were just being callous, but now I understand. You broke the news to him in the worst way on purpose. You used him as a weapon.”

  The Empress Mother said nothing, but she didn’t have to. The evidence was all around them. They were temporarily safe since there was nothing directly over their heads left to fall, but the Qilin’s bad luck was still raging through the city. Julius could actually feel the dragon magic like hungry, malevolent teeth on his skin. It had no target, no purpose. It was just fury blindly lashing out, and everywhere it struck, disaster followed.

  All over the city, more Skyways were crumbling, filling the air with the sound of cracking stone. Helicopters fell out of the sky as he watched, their engines just stopping as the emperor’s bad luck crashed into them. With every second that ticked by, the noise of crashes and collapse and disaster grew louder and louder and louder, until the whole city was consumed. Already, the adjacent Skyways down the river were starting to tilt as everything that could go wrong did. If this went on much longer, the whole DFZ would collapse, and as much as Julius hated Algonquin, he couldn’t let that happen. Not the city where he’d met Marci, and not to Xian.

  “I know that look,” Chelsie said quietly, moving closer to him in the water. “You’ve got a plan.”

  Julius nodded, glancing at Fredrick, who was grimly holding onto the bank beside them. “Can you get us up there?”

  He looked pointedly at the triangular shelter beneath the fallen road where the Empress Mother was standing above the collapsed Qilin with the baby dragon in her arms, and Fredrick scowled.

  “I can try,” he whispered back, glancing down at his Fang. “But this thing only works on Heartstrikers, so I’m not sure—”

  “It’ll work,” Chelsie said confidently. “She’s your sister, Fredrick. That makes her one of us.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “But—”

  “If you’re going to try, do it now,” Julius said, glancing nervously down at the water. “Because I don’t think this is going to be a safe zone much longer.”

  It hadn’t seemed important during all the other disasters, but since they’d been in it, the river had dropped several feet. Julius wasn’t sure if that was due to the Qilin or because of the other magical weirdness going on in the DFZ, but it was getting worse by the second. Just in the time he’d been talking to the Empress Mother, the water by the bank had sunk from his chest to below his waist, and he couldn’t imagine it was due to anything good.

  “Go,” he whispered, grabbing on to Fredrick. “Now.”

  With a final nervous look, Fredrick obeyed, slicing his Fang through the water under their feet. Since he’d done it right beneath them, they didn’t even have to step through this time. They simply fell from one place to another, dropping out—along with several gallons of icy river water—onto the pristine, still-untouched dirt directly behind the Golden Emperor, and directly in front of his mother. Her red eyes were still widening in surprise when Chelsie lunged forward, arms shooting out to snatch her daughter away from the old dragoness.

  It happened so quickly, the Empress Mother had no chance to dodge. Or at least, that was what Julius assumed when she failed to move. As Chelsie’s arms extended, though, he realized that he was wrong. The Empress Mother hadn’t failed to dodge. She hadn’t needed to, because the moment Chelsie reached out, a car had slipped off the collapsed road above them, and was now plummeting straight down toward her head.

  If Chelsie had been alone, that would have been the end. It took more than a car to kill a dragon even in human form, but it would definitely have knocked her out. Probably worse with the Qilin’s terrible luck making everything go so catastrophically wrong. For once, though, Chelsie wasn’t alone. Fredrick was right behind her, and he yanked her out of the way at the last second, spinning them both to the side as the car plummeted past. Unfortunately, this put the two of them directly in the path of the truck that fell immediately after, crushing both dragons into the mud.

  “No!” Julius screamed, rushing forward. He was trying desperately to push the truck over when it moved on its own, quivering and then launching out of the way entirely as Chelsie tossed it aside. She was muddy and bloody but alive. So was Fredrick, though he looked decidedly more shaken. The Empress Mother just looked smug, smiling at the two of them with the insufferable confidence of someone who knows they’ve won.

  “Care to try again?” she said, beckoning them closer to her safe position beside the silent, kneeling Qilin. “Charge me all you like. The end will always be the same for the emperor’s enemies.”

  “How are we his enemies?” Julius said angrily. “You’re the one who did this!”

  “I did nothing but tell him the truth,” she said, glaring at him. “I am his mother and his empress. It is my duty to tell him what he needs to know when he needs to know it. Xian understands and respects that. The duty he owes me has been drilled into him since birth. I could spit in his face, and his magic still wouldn’t allow me to be harmed, but you’re another matter entirely.”

  Her red eyes flicked to Chelsie. “You are the source of his suffering, and your children are living proof of his greatest failure. Now that he knows, his luck will correct the problem, and none of you will leave this city alive.”

  Chelsie’s face was ashen by the time she finished, and for once in his life, Julius knew exactly why. What the empress described was exactly what Chelsie had been afraid of all this time. But while everyone else seemed convinced this was the only end, Julius refused to give up.

  “He won’t kill them.”

  The Empress Mother snorted and looked pointedly at the truck that had nearly crushed Chelsie and Fredrick. “Don’t be delusional.”

  “You’re the one who’s delusional,” Julius growled. “You might not care about your son, but I know you need your emperor. You want to talk about ruining him? How do you think he’s going to react when he snaps out of this and realizes you let his luck kill Chelsie and his son?”

  “Nothing worse than what’s already happened,” the empress said with a shrug. “But you misunderstand what’s happening here, whelp. I’m not doing this. He is. Look.”

  She bent over, reaching down to brush the Qilin’s long, dark hair aside. When she lifted the curtain, though, the emperor’s face was a stranger’s. His beautiful features were completely slack, as though he were asleep, but his golden eyes were wide open and terrifyingly blank.

  “And now you know the truth,” she said, letting the emperor’s hair fall back into place. “The Qilin’s magic has never been controllable, and my son is the strongest yet. He can rein it in to a point, but when he encounters something that goes too far, breaks too sharply, the luck takes over. Once that happens, he’s as good as gone, and he won’t come back until his magic has eliminated everything that makes him unhappy.”

  “You mean eliminated everything period,” Julius said, voice shaking.

  The empress shrugged. “It’s not a precision tool, but one suffers the bad to enjoy the good, and who knows?” She flashed Julius a cruel smile. “Maybe when your hateful sister finally dies, he’ll get over her at last.”

  “Or he could break entirely.”

  “She saw to that already,” the empress growled, turning to glare hatefully at Chelsie’s bloody face. “But no matter what comes of this, I won’t let the Heartstrikers win. By breaking him here, I’ve snatched a measure of success from our clan’s greatest disaster. My son may never be the same, but at least he’ll have destroyed you, this city, and all of Algonquin’s lands in the process. When this is over, the world will be a better, safe
r place for our empire, which, if Xian were aware, he would agree is the only thing that matters.” She laid a proud hand on the emperor’s motionless shoulder. “I raised him well.”

  “No, he came out well despite you,” Chelsie snarled, her eyes locked on the little girl clutched in the crook of the empress’s arm. “What about our daughter? Will you sacrifice her, too?”

  “Of course not,” the empress said. “You ruined the line of the Golden Empire forever. We are owed recompense, and Brohomir has informed me that this little urchin is the next seer. A fortune teller who reeks of Bethesda is no replacement for a Qilin, of course, but in times of trial, one must take what one can get.”

  Chelsie growled low in her throat. Julius felt the same way. He had no idea what game Bob was playing here, but he’d never felt more betrayed in his life. Working with the Empress Mother was bad enough, but to give her his niece—their niece, because as Chelsie’s daughter, she was Julius’s niece as well—it was unforgivable. He was as bad as Bethesda, throwing away his family like pawns for his end game, and now, as always, Julius had had enough.

  “She doesn’t belong to you,” he snarled, taking a menacing step forward. “She’s a Heartstriker. One of us. She’s not recompense.”

  “I won’t let you have anything,” Chelsie said at the same time, reaching down to snatch a broken length of steel rebar off the ground. “My children, Xian, they’re mine. I won’t let you touch them!”

  “Then you should have thought about that before you carelessly destroyed what was mine,” the empress snarled back, moving closer to the emperor. “But what’s done is done. Everything is already broken beyond repair. All I can do now is try to make something out of the ashes.”

  “Or save it before it becomes ashes.”

  Julius and Chelsie both jumped. The growling voice had come from behind them, but it was so angry, Julius didn’t even recognize it as Fredrick’s until he stepped forward, sword in hand.

  “You did this to us,” he growled, the words so low and bloody that even the empress stepped back. “You are a terrible empress and a worse mother, but awful as you are, it doesn’t have to end this way. The Qilin’s line is broken, but we’re still here. Our two clans, the biggest in the world, are united by blood now. We have a seer and a Qilin who’s still alive. I don’t care what Brohomir told you—we can still change our future if we work together.” He narrowed his golden eyes at her. “Grandmother.”

  “You have no right to call me by that name!” she roared, crouching over her son. “You’re an embarrassment! Your mother and the Broodmare who bore her were both grasping, selfish harlots, and you’re just more of the same. The only blood of yours I’m interested in is when it’s spilled on the ground.”

  She spat at his feet as she finished, and Fredrick growled menacingly, but it was too late. The empress had already reached down to grab the Qilin’s motionless shoulders, clutching him like a rock in the sea as she cried, “Save me, Xian!”

  As always, the Qilin didn’t move, but when his mother cried his name, the rampaging magic jerked. For a terrifying second, Julius could feel it rising up like a viper readying to strike. Then, just like before, the magic snapped, and the whole world shook.

  Julius covered his head instinctively, but it wasn’t the Skyways he had to worry about this time. Those had already fallen, and no amount of bad luck could lift them up again. But though the ground was shaking, the roar in the air wasn’t coming from collapsing buildings or breaking cement. It was coming from the river.

  The water had been sinking since they’d first dived into it to avoid the falling Skyways. When Julius looked back now, though, the entire half-mile-wide Detroit River had shrunk to the size of a stream, leaving acres of mud, debris, and flopping fish exposed to the air. Julius had no idea what had caused the dry-up, but the Qilin’s magic must have reversed it, because the missing water was now rushing back down the empty riverbed straight toward them in a wave of violent, muddy water twenty feet tall.

  It was wide, too. That was the noise Julius had heard. The wave wasn’t just coming down the river. It was crashing through the riverside Underground like a bulldozer, picking up everything in its path—fallen debris, dumpsters, even whole cars—and sweeping it downstream, straight toward them.

  “Chelsie,” Julius gasped, grabbing his sister. “We need to—”

  He never got to finish. He barely had time to brace before the building-sized wave was on top of them, crashing over the collapsed bit of Skyway that protected the Qilin and his mother to slam down on Chelsie and Fredrick, but not Julius. By a stroke of luck, he was still standing where he’d been when he’d moved closer to the Empress Mother, which meant he was in the lee of the collapsed hunk of Skyway. The water didn’t even touch him thanks to the perfect angle of the fallen road overhead. It just poured down like a waterfall behind him, hiding Chelsie and Fredrick as they were washed away.

  “No!” he cried, lurching forward before he came to his senses. The wave was still crashing. If he walked into it, he’d just be washed off, too. The only reason he hadn’t been swept away already was because he’d happened to be standing in the exact right place. Because of luck, and the moment he realized that, Julius knew what he had to do.

  Ripping himself away from the still-falling wall of water that had eaten his sister and Fredrick, Julius made a break for the kneeling emperor. He moved so fast, he actually made it to Xian’s side before the empress grabbed him.

  “Stay away, Heartstriker,” she warned, her red eyes glowing like coals. “I don’t know why his luck spared you, but it’s over. There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “There’s always something I can do,” Julius growled back, getting on his knees in the dirt beside the Qilin. “And it starts with talking to him.”

  “To what end?” the empress said, moving so that she was physically between Julius and her son. “He’s gone. There’s no one left to hear you.”

  “He heard you say his name just now.”

  “That’s different,” she snapped. “I’m his mother. You’re no one.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I try,” he said, reaching around her. But when he started to pull back the curtain of black hair that hid the Qilin’s face, the Empress Mother grabbed his wrist.

  “Stop.”

  Julius looked up at her, staring her right in the eyes. “No.”

  “Arrogant whelp,” she snarled, digging her nails into his skin. “You think I won’t kill you?”

  “Actually?” He shrugged. “I do.”

  The empress sneered, but Julius wasn’t finished. “You said it yourself: the Qilin’s luck isn’t a precision tool. It’s an instinct lashing out at cues, as it did for you just now when you cried for help. But unlike you and Chelsie and everyone else here, the Qilin doesn’t care about me. At least, not on the deep, personal level he feels for the rest of you. I’m just another Heartstriker, one who’s done him no harm, and that makes me invisible.”

  “And you think that will save you from me?” she growled.

  “No, I think that really was luck,” Julius said. “Actual luck, as in I was standing in the right place at the right time. The reason I think you won’t kill me is simple: you haven’t already.”

  “Then I will remedy that,” the empress hissed, letting go of his arm to wrap her hand around his throat. But even when her sharp nails bit into the soft flesh behind his windpipe, Julius didn’t flinch or fight. He just knelt there and took it, staring defiantly up at the empress until she was the one who looked afraid.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she cried. “Defend yourself!”

  “I am defending myself,” Julius said, letting his arms fall slack at his side. “The Qilin’s luck isn’t as uncontrollable as you claim. You’re trying to manipulate it right now. If I attack you, I make myself your enemy and get punished accordingly. But if I do nothing, I won’t be a threat, and his luck won’t care. You do, though, which is why I’m sure you won’t kill me, because if
you could, I’d already be dead.”

  The wrinkled hand on his throat began to shake. “That’s a dangerous assumption.”

  “Not really,” he said. “I mean, I’m taunting you, and you still haven’t done it. I think I know why, too.” He smiled. “You said that Bob was the one who sold us out, and I’m the one dragon Bob can’t kill.”

  The moment he saw her face go pale, Julius knew he was right. He still had no idea what game Bob was playing. For all he knew, the seer really had sold them all out. But if the Black Reach’s visit this morning had proved anything, it was that Bob’s investment in Julius was long term, and while his hatred of being a pawn was still very much there, Julius wasn’t above using it when the need was great.

  And right now, the need was very great. Two families were on the line, including the little dragoness, who was still in her grandmother’s arms, watching the flood with a child’s fearless interest. She deserved better than to be traded between clans like a war prize. They all deserved better than this, so Julius held firm, trusting in his brother’s manipulations, if not his intentions, until, at last, the empress let him go.

  “It seems you’re more of a dragon than you appear,” she said bitterly. “But knowing the rules of the game doesn’t make you safe. Brohomir warned me that if I killed you, Xian would die, but he never said anything about you falling victim to bad luck.”

  “But I’m not going to have bad luck,” Julius said confidently. “Because I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to hurt him.” He nodded at the motionless Qilin. “I’m going to do what you should have done. I’m going to help your son stop this, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “I don’t have to do anything!” the empress cried. “Don’t you understand? You’ve lost! Just because I can’t stop you from talking to Xian doesn’t mean he’ll listen. I raised him to be an emperor before all else, and now, thanks to your sister, he’s failed his greatest responsibility. The ancient line of the Qilin is dead, and there’s nothing you can say that will bring it back.”