One Good Dragon Deserves Another

by Rachel Aaron

  “And I respect you for that,” Marci said, lifting her chin high. “I’m a firm believer that when you do the work to get someone over a barrel, it’s your right to shake them as hard as possible, but that’s not what’s happening here. In a negotiation, the person who can walk away is the one with the power, and that’s me.”

  “You mean walk to your death,” Amelia scoffed. “You know as well as I do that it’s impossible for you and that whelp to defeat Algonquin’s Hunter on your own.”

  “I’m a mage,” Marci said haughtily, clinging to her pride like a shipwrecked sailor would cling to a rock in a stormy sea. “Doing the impossible is my vocation. But you’re the one who messed up, Amelia.”

  “Really?” the dragon drawled, her brown eyes narrowing to slits. “And how do you figure that?”

  Marci breathed deep. Here went nothing. “Because you let me know how badly you want Ghost. That means I’m holding the cards, and if you don’t want the human attached to the world’s first Mortal Spirit to end up as a notch on Vann Jeger’s spear, you’d better come up with a new offer.”

  Amelia’s jaw dropped. “Damn,” she whispered, shaking her head. “That was good. You turned my own threats back on me. I’m… actually very impressed.”

  “I’ve had a bit of experience with dragons,” Marci said smugly. “So if you’re looking for a pushover slave, I suggest you find another human.”

  “You are utterly wasted on Julius,” Amelia said, breaking into a grin. “Fine, you win. I can’t let a chance like you die. I’ll kill Vann Jeger, and then we’ll renegotiate, because I am not giving—”

  She froze mid-word, her whole body going still. If she’d been a cat, her ears would have been swiveling. Marci was about to ask what was wrong when Amelia suddenly leapt at her, tackling her to the ground just in time as a spear of ice blasted through the storage unit’s flimsy door.

  Chapter 10

  Marci didn’t even get a chance to scream. She was too busy protecting her face, hiding behind the shelter of Amelia’s arms as the hail of metal scraps and broken ice landed around them. As soon as she was sure she wasn’t going to lose anything vital, she wiggled out of the dragon’s grasp and scrambled to her feet, sucking magic out of the air and into her bracelets as she turned to help Amelia face… whatever it was that had just happened. When she saw what was waiting, though, Marci’s hopes of being useful vanished like frost in the sun.

  Two tall, blond women were standing in the blasted-out shell of what had once been the storage unit’s metal door. Marci recognized the one on the left immediately, but the one on the right was new, though she didn’t doubt for a second that they were both dragons. Nothing human could be that beautiful, or that scary. Unfortunately, Svena didn’t seem to recognize her at all. Her pale blue eyes were locked on Amelia, who’d already rolled back up to her feet. But even though the blast of ice had clearly been Svena’s doing, she didn’t attack again. Instead, she moved back, clearing the path for the unknown dragoness, the one with hair like snow and a smile like a razor, to step forward.

  “Estella.”

  Marci flinched. In hindsight, she supposed it should have been obvious. But scary as it was to be within reach of the seer whose plans she, Julius, and Justin had ruined just last month, Amelia’s reaction was what really petrified her. Even when Justin had been roaring and breathing fire, Marci had never heard anything as predatory or draconic as that growled name.

  “Let me guess,” Amelia said, moving to stand between the new dragons and Marci. “You foresaw your own death today, so you came here to make sure it was quick. That’s the only logical reason I can think of for why you’d approach me.”

  “I did, in fact, foresee a death today,” Estella replied with a coy smile. “But it wasn’t mine.” She tilted her head toward Svena behind her. “It seems you and my sister have unfinished business, Planeswalker.”

  “Really?” Amelia drawled. “That’s funny, because I thought our business was quite finished. As I recall, the last time we met, the White Witch ended up swimming for her life because I burned off both her wings.”

  She glared at Svena as she said this, clearly daring her to reply, but the dragoness said nothing. She just stood there, staring at Amelia with oddly detached hatred, like her face had been frozen that way. If her silence was supposed to be a scare tactic, though, it was working. Even Amelia looked taken aback before she turned away with a huff.

  “I don’t have time for this,” she grumbled, stepping back through her portal to the beach. “If you want a beating so badly, follow me and let’s get it over with. I have bigger fish to fry today.”

  Still silent, Svena stalked after her. Marci, however, could not believe what she was seeing. “You’re going to fight them now?” she cried, running as close as she dared to the portal’s edge. “But—”

  “Better to finish this here than have her hounding us,” Amelia said, marching past her beach chair to the edge of the surf. “And it’s not like you can run.”

  With those words, Marci became perilously aware of her position. Thanks to the curse, she couldn’t follow Amelia through the portal, and Estella was blocking her only way out.

  “I see you finally comprehend your position.”

  The whisper washed over her like ice water, and Marci whirled around to see Estella standing right beside her.

  “Hands off, Snow Queen!” Amelia yelled from the beach. “That one is mine!”

  “I would never stoop to using mortals as hostages,” Estella replied, looking down on Marci like she was a bumbling puppy. “Unlike your clan, we still have our honor.”

  Amelia’s snort eloquently expressed what she thought of that. “Honor must be all you have, then, because if you still had your foresight, you’d know better than to bring your sister to her death.”

  Estella laughed. “I see the Heartstriker’s arrogance bred true, at least.”

  “It’s not arrogance to speak the truth,” Amelia said, glaring at Svena, who had yet to say a word as she stepped through the portal to take up position opposite the Heartstriker heir on the beach. “But if you need another lesson in the dangers of challenging those greater than yourself, I’ll be happy to be your teacher.”

  “And I will be happy to finally see that smug mouth silenced,” Estella said, turning to her sister. “When you’re ready.”

  At this point, Marci was torn as to what to do. On the one hand, Svena and Amelia seemed to be getting ready for a straight up brawl. But while seeing a battle between two ancient dragon mages was definitely an item on her bucket list, this was a little closer to the action than she was comfortable being. Also, she might not know Svena personally, but they didn’t have to be best friends for Marci to notice that the dragon was acting really weird. Put those two together, and a call for outside assistance was definitely in order. She was scrambling to think how she could manage that with no phone and Ghost still dead asleep when a cold, hard hand grabbed her hair.

  “You,” Estella said, ignoring Marci’s gasp of pain as she yanked her off her feet, lifting her up into the air until she was at eye level with the much taller dragon. “You’re one of Brohomir’s little pawns, aren’t you?”

  Before Marci could recover enough to answer, Estella set her back down again, but she didn’t release her grip. “Watch,” she ordered, yanking Marci’s head back around to the beach where Svena and Amelia were faced off like gunmen at high noon. “Be his eyes so that he can see when my White Witch tears his beloved sister apart.”

  “Not going to happen,” Marci choked out, blinking back tears from the painful pressure on her scalp. “Amelia is the oldest Heartstriker. She’ll make dragon sushi out of both of you.”

  There was a pause, and then Estella burst into laughter. Not maniacal villain cackling either, but honest I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that giggling. If Marci hadn’t been sure Estella was laughing at her, it would almost have been endearing.

  “You really believe that?” the seer gasped,
wiping her eyes. “Foolish mortal. Svena was a legend before the Heartstriker was born. Her daughter is nothing, just another of Bethesda’s prodigies. But then, that’s why the Broodmare breeds so much. She’s playing the odds. Lay enough eggs and a few are guaranteed to hatch into winners. In the end, though, poor breeding will always show. The Planeswalker might be good for a Heartstriker, but Svena is the daughter of gods.”

  She knotted her fingers tighter in Marci’s short hair, locking her head in place. “Watch,” she ordered again. “We wouldn’t want the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers to miss a moment of this, would we?”

  Marci didn’t bother to answer. One, reasoning with the dragon was clearly impossible, and two, she was too busy staring.

  The whole time Estella was talking to her, Amelia and Svena had been standing on opposite sides of the beach, sizing each other up. Then, like the first shot in a fight, Svena changed.

  Marci had seen a dragon change twice before: once when Justin had reached the end of his patience and literally exploded into a giant, fire-breathing dragon, and again this morning when Katya had changed back into her human shape. Svena’s transformation was different from either. One second, she was standing on the beach at sunset in her white gown like she was modeling for a perfume ad. The next, she was engulfed in a pillar of blue-white fire so bright it whited out every other light, and so cold Marci could feel it from here. The flare lasted only a second, though it took several more before Marci could blink the glare out of her eyes. When she could see again, Svena was gone, and in her place was a white dragon.

  It was heartbreakingly beautiful, a white dragon with scales like new snow and wings as delicate as frost-covered glass. She was also enormous, easily three times as big as Justin had been, and that wasn’t even counting the trailing, feather-like tendrils of frost decorating the end of her long tail. Her curved talons were large enough to easily encircle a car, and her white fangs were as long as Marci was tall. Of course, given how old Svena supposedly was, that made sense. From the hints she’d picked up from Julius, Marci didn’t think dragons ever stopped growing, and since they made their own magic, this meant they only got larger and more powerful with age.

  This was bad news for Amelia, who was still standing in her human form at the edge of the surf with her neck craned back to look up at the enormous white dragon towering over her. But when Svena spread her glittering wings to block out the light of the setting sun and throw the beach into shadow, the Planeswalker smirked.

  “This is all you’ve managed?” she called, looking Svena up and down. “You’ve barely grown a foot since the last time we fought. I have little brothers bigger than—”

  A blast of blue-white fire cut her off. Svena opened her mouth to bathe the beach in freezing flames that turned the surf behind Amelia to ice mid-wave. But the unnatural fire only blazed for a moment before another flame, this one orange and bright as a summer sunset, burst through, melting everything again as Amelia emerged from the attack with smoke pouring from her human mouth.

  “That’s how you want it, eh?” she yelled, eyes flashing in fury. “No finesse, no challenge, just a brawl?” She spat on the ground, causing the sand at her feet to start smoking. “Fine.” Her eyes flicked to Estella, still standing with Marci on the other side of the portal. “You wanted to see the difference between us, Northern Star? Study closely, because it will be the last thing either of you ever see.”

  The air around her shimmered as she spoke, and then the beach exploded in fire. Orange flames washed over the sand, turning the surf to vapor and blackening the green foliage at the forest’s edge. Even Svena was forced into the air to avoid the blast, flapping up a dozen feet on her frosted wings. By the time she set down again, the entire beach was smoking, the sand hardened into a burned glass landing zone for the biggest dragon Marci had ever seen.

  Oddly enough, Marci’s very first thought was how much she looked like a Heartstriker. This dragon had the same feathered wings, serpentine body, scaly clawed feet, and crested triangular head as Justin. But where Justin’s plumage had been a tropical mix of greens and blues, Amelia’s feathers were pure, uninterrupted crimson. Likewise, her brown eyes were now the color of molten gold. Her scales, where they were visible, were black as volcanic glass, and her claws were even darker, like they’d been tempered in fire. But the most telling difference of all was her size.

  It was actually difficult for Marci to comprehend how large Amelia was. She was so big, she made the island trees look like models, so huge that Marci couldn’t actually see all of her through the portal. Even Svena, who’d looked enormous up to this point, suddenly looked like a kitten. The white dragon knew it, too, and for the first time since she’d appeared, her eyes widened in fear.

  Above her, the red dragon chuckled. “Now you see,” she said in a deep, terrible voice that Marci only recognized as Amelia’s because she’d seen her change. “Now you understand the difference between us.” She laughed again, landing on the beach with enough force to topple the nearby trees. “Foolish, Svena. While you wasted your time in this magicless plane, bowing and scraping for sisters too hide-bound to abandon their lands even as they became worthless, I knew better. I alone was brave enough to go to planes where magic still lived, and as you see—” she lifted her massive head, throwing the entire beach into shadow, “—I’ve reaped the rewards.”

  She stopped there, waiting for Svena to reply. As always, though, the white dragon remained silent, and Amelia bared her teeth in disgust. “Look at you,” she snarled “Look what you’ve let yourself become. But while you and your sisters were content to merely be the daughters of gods, I have hunted and eaten them. Now look at you. You’re nothing but shadows, arrogance without ambition.” Her amber eyes narrowed to glowing slits. “You do not deserve to be called dragons.”

  When she started, she’d been looking at Svena, but by the time Amelia finished, she was staring through the portal straight at Estella. The seer’s grip tightened on Marci’s hair in response, and Marci closed her eyes, hoping against hope that the dragons would remember they had reasons to not let her die. But to her amazement, no fire came. Instead, Estella released her entirely, lifting her hands to raise a glowing barrier around herself and Marci as she ordered, “Bring her down.”

  The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Svena obeyed. The white dragon launched into the air, leaving a blast of frost on the sand that melted immediately in Amelia’s heat. As soon as she was off the ground, Svena swung out over the sea, using the cool water to form massive spears of ice that shot from the waves as she passed. Each one moved faster than the speed of sound, creating little sonic booms as they rocketed toward Amelia’s sky darkening wings. But as the spears closed in, they began to shrink. Even at top speed, the heat was too intense, and by the time they actually reached Amelia’s feathers, the shots were little more than cold water.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Amelia teased, brushing her damp feathers. “You were better than this the first time we fought.”

  Svena’s answer to that was to launch another volley of ice, this time at Amelia’s head. Again, though, the shots melted before they reached her, the seawater falling harmlessly down onto the melted sand below. Amelia shook her head with a final, disgusted look and opened her massive mouth. Marci got a brief glimpse of a wall of teeth the size of support pillars before the dragon breathed a river of fire that made Justin’s green flames look like a sparkler.

  If Svena hadn’t been over the water, that would have been the end. Amelia’s fire consumed the entire bay. Orange flames stretched to the horizon, covering the water from one end of the beach to the other, leaving nowhere to run. But even that much fire couldn’t boil away the sea, and that was where Svena escaped, diving below the waves seconds ahead of the fire. Seeing her retreat, Amelia stopped her flames as quickly as they’d started, her glowing eyes watching Svena’s white shadow as she darted through the water as fast as a swordfish before exploding back to the surf
ace with her own blast of icy fire.

  At first, it looked like a pretty good shot, but the exit from the water must have spoiled her aim, because Svena’s attack missed Amelia entirely, blasting into the sand below her instead. Even though she was rooting for Team Heartstriker, Marci couldn’t help feeling bad about that. Whatever magic Svena had put into that attack, it was killer, creating a spire of ice that didn’t melt even though the sand around it had long since turned to sticky, black glass. If Svena was upset about the loss, though, she didn’t let it show. She just turned around and breathed on herself next, coating her scales in a protective shell of that same, unmelting ice, much to Amelia’s amusement.

  “Are you sure you want to waste that much cold?” she said, her voice booming over the waves as she swooped down to tap her claw against the pillar of frozen water below her. “That ice comes from your own life’s fire, White Witch. We both know you can only make so much, and the fight’s barely started.”

  Svena’s answer to that was to attack again, breathing a plume of white fire at Amelia’s claws. Again, though, she missed by miles. Amelia didn’t even have to dodge as the ice flew under her to crash harmlessly into the smoldering trees at the beach’s edge. But while this attack was just as ineffectual as the others, Amelia was no longer amused.

  “What are you doing?”

  When Svena didn’t answer, Amelia flapped her sky spanning wings, sending out a wave of super-heated air that hit Svena like a wall, throwing her down into the surf. Amelia was on top of her the second she hit, pinning the smaller dragon into crashing waves with her claws.

  “What are you doing?” Amelia snarled, sparks flying from her mouth as she bent low over her pinned enemy. “You’re better than this, I know you are. The White Witch doesn’t waste her life’s magic on missed shots. What has she done to you?”