by Rachel Aaron
He trailed off, the words crumbling, and Chelsie sighed. “You were always the sharpest one, Fredrick,” she said as she turned back around. “So I won’t insult you by lying. The day I found out I was pregnant was the worst day of my life. I thought I’d ruined everything: my future, Xian’s future, a hundred thousand years of carefully cultivated magic. Everything. That’s why I ran to Bethesda. I didn’t just need a bigger dragon to hide behind. I needed a fix for what I’d broken, and horrible as she is, my mother’s the greatest expert on dragon eggs alive. I thought if she could teach me how to change the eggs before I laid them, I could still salvage the situation. But new dragon fire catches hot and fast, and even with Bethesda’s help, I was decades too young to control it. I couldn’t even condense your fires into fewer eggs, much less the single male egg needed for a Qilin. I couldn’t do anything.”
“I see,” Fredrick said, his eyes sinking to the floor. “So you didn’t want us.”
“That’s not what I said,” Chelsie said sternly. “I was in a panic trying to fix what I’d broken. When I realized I couldn’t, I decided then and there to spend the rest of my life making sure you suffered as little as possible for my stupidity. I swore to keep you secret so the Qilin’s curse could never touch you. I would have saved you from Bethesda, too, if I could, but it was already too late on that score. The moment she learned the truth, you became the rope she wrapped around my neck. There’s no force in the world that could’ve stopped her from abusing that, but I did everything I could to lessen your suffering. I know the last six hundred years have been miserable, but I’ve kept every single one of you alive. I didn’t get to choose how you began, but you’re still my son, and I love you.”
A strange expression came over her face as she said that, and Julius realized with a start that that was probably the first time Chelsie had ever spoken the truth out loud.
“My son,” she whispered, reaching up to cup Fredrick’s face. “My oldest, cleverest son. I hate the events that brought you into this world, but I’ve loved every single one of you from the moment you hatched, and I…”
Her voice cracked after that, but Fredrick didn’t say a word. He just stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his mother. Chelsie held out for a few more seconds, and then, like a dam breaking, she threw her arms around him as well, her whole body shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Fredrick. All of you. Your suffering was all my fault, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Fredrick said, hugging her hard. “You were the one who protected us. When the rest of the clan treated us worse than the human servants, you cared for us and taught us and kept us together. Even before we suspected the truth, you were always our mother.”
That last part set Chelsie sobbing all over again, and Julius decided it was time for him to go. This was a private family drama, but it wasn’t his anymore, and he didn’t want to intrude. But while that was a perfectly polite excuse, the truth was that he didn’t want to deal with painful, irrational jealousy that came from seeing Fredrick hugging a mother who honestly and wholeheartedly loved him. He might not envy the F any other part of his life, but Julius would have traded mothers with him in a heartbeat.
He was still brooding over that as he stepped into the dark hallway outside Bob’s room. But as he leaned against the wall to wait, his phone buzzed in his pocket. For an irrational moment, he hoped it was Bob. This was the sort of dramatic timing the seer lived for, and even if the source couldn’t be trusted anymore, Julius would gladly welcome any hint at the future.
When he pulled the phone out of his pocket, though, the ID that popped up wasn’t the Unknown Caller. It was the one that never failed to make his heart sink, and Julius couldn’t even look at it now without feeling like the target of some special brand of universal irony as he raised the phone to his ear.
“Hello, Mother.”
The greeting came out even sourer than usual. But while he was sure Bethesda noticed, she gave no sign that she cared. “Where have you been?”
“With the Qilin,” he answered, which was true enough. “I met his mother first, but then—”
“Never mind that,” she said impatiently. “Get to the main hangar as fast as you can. I’m already on my way down.”
“Why?” he said, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” she said with a mirthless laugh. “But at this particular moment, it’s Ian. He’s coming home.”
“Now?” Julius said, checking the time. “But it’s only six. The surrender’s not until nine a.m. tomorrow. Didn’t you send him the message to stall?”
“Oh, I sent it,” she growled. “But it seems there’s been a change in plans. Considering how badly the rest of the sky is falling, though, there’s a chance this might actually work in our favor.”
Julius didn’t see how that was possible, but he knew better than to ask over the phone. His mother would tell him when she was ready, which would probably be as soon as Ian arrived with whatever undoubtedly bad news he was bearing. “I’ll be right there.”
“Hurry,” she snapped. “Main hangar. Five minutes. Don’t be late.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “And Mother…”
“What?”
Julius sighed. “Nothing. I’m on my way.”
She hung up before he could finish, leaving him standing alone in the empty hallway, talking to no one.
***
The main hangar was one of Heartstriker Mountain’s many side buildings. Located just off the runway Bethesda had built to keep her remote desert citadel connected to the rest of the world, it was big enough to house both of the clan’s private jets. But since Ian had taken the newer plane to Siberia, and Conrad had made off with the backup last night, the giant metal building was empty when Julius walked in except for Bethesda herself.
“Took you long enough,” she snapped, tapping her alligator-skin stilettos in a nervous rapid fire against the cement. “Did you crawl down here?”
Considering he’d made it all the way from Bob’s cave at the top of the mountain out to the hangar, a total journey of a mile and a half, in six minutes flat, Julius didn’t dignify that with a response. “Where’s Ian?”
Bethesda nodded through the open door at the brightly lit runway. “About to land.”
The words weren’t out of her mouth when Julius heard the low rumble of a jet coming in fast. That was all the warning they got before a plane broke through the low clouds like a rocket. It touched down a few moments later, skidding onto the runway faster than any vehicle should ever hit the ground. If it had been a traditional jet, that would have been the end, but Bethesda spared no expense with her private planes, and the custom AI pilot managed to save the landing by spinning the jet out into the soft dirt at the end of the runway. Proper dragon that he was, Ian had the rear door open before the almost-crashed plane finished moving, jumping the ten feet from the hatch to the ground as easily as a normal person would step off a curb.
“Do you mind?” Bethesda yelled over still-spinning engines. “That’s my custom suborbital Gulfstream you just put in the dirt!”
Ian shot her a murderous look. Everything about him looked murderous, actually, which was even more alarming than the botched landing. If the normally collected and calculating Ian looked this upset, things were a whole new level of bad. Even Bethesda picked up on it, stepping back to give her seething son space as he stalked down the pavement toward the hangar, motioning for them to follow him inside. Nervously, Julius did, ducking under the rolling door along with his mother before Ian slammed it down.
Bethesda eyed the jangling metal warily. “I take it things didn’t go well.”
“They didn’t go at all,” Ian growled. “Svena sealed herself inside her mothers’ ice fortress before I got there. I couldn’t even find the door.”
“So why did you come back?” Bethesda asked angrily. “Svena was always a long shot, but I thought I made it c
lear in my message that you being in Siberia was the only thing keeping the Golden Emperor from—”
“I am well aware of our situation,” he snapped. “I didn’t come back because I wanted to. I came back because I didn’t have anywhere else to run.”
Julius and his mother exchanged confused looks, and Ian rolled his eyes in disgust. “Does no one watch the news?” He had his phone out before they could answer, waving his hand over the screen to bring up a series of photos in the public AR, which he proceeded to shove in their faces. But though Julius’s field of vision was now crammed with floating pictures, he still didn’t understand what he was supposed to be looking at.
“That’s just the DFZ,” he said, flicking through multiple pictures of cars crammed like sardines onto the Skyways. “Traffic looks worse than usual, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“That’s not traffic,” Ian said. “It’s an evacuation. Algonquin ordered the entire city out.”
“What?” Julius grabbed his brother’s phone, flipping through the pictures with new horror. “Why?”
“No one knows,” Ian said, snatching his phone back. “But it’s got every mage in the world in a panic.”
Bethesda arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Human or dragon?”
“Both,” Ian said, his new brown eyes grim. “Svena’s still refusing to talk to me, but Katya says she’s moved their entire clan, including my children, into the Three Sisters’ old sleeping chamber beneath the ice. I’ve never been down there myself, but it’s supposed to be one of the most heavily warded locations in the world. It’s also the place Svena hates most, so if she’s down there voluntarily, she’s legitimately scared of something, and she’s not alone. I keep multiple human mages on call for my various businesses. We’re talking two dozen mages on three continents, and every single one of them has called me in a tizzy about some kind of mana surge building under the DFZ.”
“Mana surge?” Julius frowned. “Are you sure? I haven’t felt anything.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Ian said, disgusted. “You’re a dragon. Unless you’ve been studying magic all your life like Svena, the only magic from this plane that we can feel is the local ambient kind. This is much deeper, down in the primal magic, and it’s big. Ten minutes after Algonquin’s evacuation started, the United Nations issued an international casting ban, which includes magically augmented flight decks. Thankfully, I’d already decided to come back at that point, and the ban didn’t cover planes that were in the air. I’m just glad I took the suborbital jet. If I’d been in the old supersonic, I’d still be over the Atlantic.”
“So you just ran home?” Bethesda said angrily. “Without my eggs?”
“Yes,” he snarled. “Because if this is as bad as it looks, my children are safer under Svena’s wards. We should find a way to follow suit.”
“How?” Julius asked. “You’re talking about magic big enough to make Algonquin panic, but without Amelia or Svena, we’re helpless. We have no wards, no shelter. Even our staff mages didn’t show up for work. What are we supposed to do, hide in the panic bunker?”
“I don’t think the panic bunker’s going to be deep enough,” Ian said gravely. “That’s why I decided to come home. With me back, the Heartstriker Council is complete again, which means we can go ahead and surrender to the Golden Emperor tonight.”
Julius stared at him in horror. “Surrender?” he got out at last. “You’re the one who said you didn’t crawl your way to the top of two clans just to lose both!”
“I know,” Ian snapped. “I still feel that way, but the situation’s changed, and at this point, the Golden Emperor’s our best shot at surviving it. I read the surrender document you and Bethesda sent over, and while I agree it’s suspiciously generous, we don’t have time to be picky. Unlike us, the Qilin has mages, not to mention his luck. If we join his empire, we’ll get both. And let’s be honest, unless a miracle happened, we were going to surrender tomorrow morning anyway. We might as well do it now and get our protection from whatever this thing is in the bargain.”
“But you don’t even know what it is!”
“I know it’s more than we can handle,” Ian said, glaring at him. “I fought for this clan just as hard as you did, Julius, but it’s time to face facts. We’re in over our heads. There’s no point in standing firm if the ground’s washing out from under us. The Golden Emperor has offered us extraordinarily generous terms of surrender. I say we take them and use his luck to the hilt to keep ourselves alive. When this current disaster is over, we can rebuild and rebel at our leisure.”
“That’s what I said!” Bethesda cried. “Finally, another dragon who understands reason. Julius has been gone all afternoon, running after some crazy idea he thinks will save us.”
“It’s not crazy,” Julius growled. “I know why the Qilin is here now. I know what he wants, and I think I know how to help him get it, without conquering our clan.”
Bethesda rolled her eyes at that, but Julius kept his locked on Ian. “If there’s a way we can get through this without joining the Golden Empire, we need to try, because rebelling against the Qilin will not end well for anyone. Just give me until tomorrow morning.”
“We don’t have until tomorrow,” Ian snapped. “This disaster is happening now. I’m sure you think you’ve got the answer to everything, but do you realize how stupid it would be if we missed our shot at safety by a few hours because you were trying to have your gold and spend it, too?”
“But that’s exactly what we might get,” Julius argued. “If I can pull this off, the Qilin will be our ally, not our emperor. We can keep our clan and enjoy the shelter of his luck. Just give me an hour. I’ll go wake up Chelsie right now and—”
“Chelsie?” Bethesda said sharply. “She’s your plan?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “She’s—”
“Forget it,” the Heartstriker snarled, turning to Ian. “Don’t listen to him. Whatever his plan is, it’ll never work. I don’t know what delusion he’s under, but Chelsie would die before she’d do anything with the Qilin.”
“But she’s already agreed to talk to him,” Julius said frantically. “All I have to do is convince him to talk to her, too, and this whole thing could be—”
“Don’t listen to him, Ian,” Bethesda warned. “I can’t explain the details since someone made me swear not to, but trust me when I say that Chelsie and the Golden Emperor will never make peace. Normally, I’d be content to let Julius learn that lesson the hard way, but if things are truly as bad as you say, then upsetting the Qilin is the absolute last thing we want to do. We should be keeping Chelsie as far away from him as possible, not smashing them together.”
“But that’s what got us into this mess in the first place,” Julius said. “This may be our only chance to keep our clan intact, and we might just fix six hundred years of broken relations with the second-largest dragon clan on the planet in the process. We have to take it.”
“The only thing we have to do is stay alive,” Bethesda snarled. “I will not be told what to do by a whelp who’s never even—”
“Enough,” Ian roared, shocking them both into silence. When the echo faded from the hangar, he turned to Julius. “Can you fix the problem tonight?”
Julius nodded determinedly, and Bethesda threw back her head with a hiss. “This is suicide. You’re toying with a nuclear weapon. If Julius’s stupid plan upsets the Golden Emperor, he could cause the disaster, not stop it.”
“I know,” Ian said.
“You came home to prevent this,” she went on. “This entire thing was your idea!”
“I know!” he yelled. “But that was before I knew Julius had a plan.”
Bethesda took a step back. “You’re trusting him over me?” she said, eyes wide. “Who do you think built this clan?!”
“As of right now?” Ian jerked his head at Julius. “He did, and so did I. This isn’t your show anymore, Bethesda. It’s ours. I was prepared to bow if that was w
hat was necessary to save Heartstriker, but if Julius thinks he can do it without giving up what we’ve fought for, I’m willing to let him try. At this point, I’ve seen him do the impossible too many times not to.”
Julius broke into a grin, but the smile slipped off his face just as fast when Ian turned back to him. “You have until midnight,” he growled. “If the Qilin hasn’t agreed to shelter us as allies by then, my vote goes with Bethesda to surrender.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Ian said darkly. “Because if you screw this up for us, I will eat you myself, Fang or no Fang.”
Julius swallowed. He’d thought he was used to death threats, but Ian looked like he really meant that one. When it was clear Julius understood he was serious, Ian leaned down to grab the hangar door.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” he announced, throwing up the rolling steel. “And then I’m going to find someone to help me get my plane out of the dirt. Call me the moment you have something concrete.”
Julius nodded again, but his brother was already gone, leaving him alone with Bethesda, who looked as if she was going to be sick.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, shooting him a poisonous look. “Every time I think you couldn’t possibly ruin us more, you find a way.”
“I’m not ruining us,” he said angrily. “I’m—”
“I don’t care,” she said, pulling out her phone. “You do whatever you want. I’m going to check informants to see if I can pinpoint when we’re all going to die. If you need me, I’ll be in the bunker. The deep one. Maybe when you’re done destroying everything, I can come out and be queen of the mutants who remain.”
From anyone one else, Julius would have called that a joke, but Bethesda looked absolutely serious as she stalked out of the hangar as fast as she could without actually running. A few seconds later, Julius followed suit, except he did run, sprinting as fast as he could down the brightly lit runway back toward the mountain.
