by Rachel Aaron
“Not at all,” Estella replied with a smile of her own. “I was simply enjoying the moment before your fall.”
“My fall?” Bethesda laughed. “I see you’ve finally gone senile. I won’t be the one who…”
Her voice trailed off as magic began to build in the air. Not Estella’s magic, either, but a power Bethesda knew perfectly well, as evidenced by the pleasingly ashy pallor of fear that washed over her face. “Frieda!” she barked, dropping her glass as she jumped back. “Now!”
Nothing happened.
“Now!” Bethesda yelled again, her green eyes wide as they went to the throne room doors. Doors that weren’t opening.
“They can’t hear you,” Estella said slowly, enjoying every moment of the Heartstriker’s fear as Amelia’s building magic reached a crescendo. “No one can.”
Bethesda turned with a hiss, making a break for the hidden door behind her throne, but she was miles too late. The portal was already opening in the air beside her, creating a perfect doorway through space as Chelsie, Conrad, and Amelia stepped into the room.
“Chelsie!” Bethesda screamed, the name sharp with magic as the Heartstriker stabbed her finger at Estella. “Kill her!”
But whatever power was behind that order, it didn’t work, because when Chelsie drew her Fang, she pointed it straight at her mother. Conrad followed suit, drawing his massive sword as he moved to block off any escape through the balcony. But despite the swords pointed her direction, Bethesda had eyes only for eldest daughter.
Amelia, of course, ignored her. She simply walked to Estella’s side and lifted her hands, filling the room with magic once again as she covered the wards Bethesda had been boasting about only seconds before with an even stronger barrier of her own.
“There,” Estella said, looking down on her cornered prey. “That should prevent any interruptions.”
Bethesda’s green eyes flicked to the various exits, and then she straightened to her full height. “It won’t work,” she said haughtily, like she was still the one with power. “I don’t know what you’ve done to achieve this compliance, but these are my children. My dragons in every way.”
Estella smiled, letting her true hatred show on her face for the first time since she’d arrived. “Not any more.”
Chelsie stepped closer as she said this, and Bethesda’s confident sneer began to waver. “You’re bluffing,” she snapped as her hand crept behind her back. “Did you think that I, of all dragons, would not have safeguards in place against treason?”
“Quite the contrary,” Estella said, enjoying this to the hilt. “I’m counting on it. Let’s put them to the test. Conrad?”
The Heartstriker Champion stepped forward, raising his sword in a smooth sweep. He was about to bring it down on her head when Bethesda’s arm, the one she’d snuck behind her back, shot out again, and Conrad’s sword went flying, clattering away across the throne room’s stone floor before sliding to a stop inches from the balcony’s sheer edge.
“What did I tell you?” the Heartstriker crowed, lifting her hand to show Estella the bone-colored sword clutched in her fingers.
Estella arched a pale eyebrow. Even with her seer’s perception, she had no idea how Bethesda had hidden a sword in that flimsy excuse for a dress, but there was no question that the weapon in her hand was a Fang of the Heartstriker. “I should have guessed you’d keep one for yourself.”
“Of course,” the dragon scoffed. “Who do you think I am? The Fangs of the Heartstriker are the teeth of my clan. Who else should hold the strongest one but me?”
“But I,” Estella corrected with a smile, enjoying the dragon’s confusion at her lack of fear.
Why should she be afraid? Bethesda’s supposed trump card actually made her life a great deal easier. Even for a seer, the Fangs of the Heartstriker were difficult to pin down. This was partially because, as body parts of a dead dragon with no future, they didn’t follow the normal rules, and partially because Brohomir had taken enormous pains to hide them. It was common knowledge that one belonged to the clan’s Champion, one to the Enforcer, and one, the Fifth Blade, to whatever idiot Bethesda conned into being her knight. But even counting the sixth Fang that had never actually been pulled from the Quetzalcoatl’s head, that still left two Fangs of the Heartstriker unaccounted for even with Estella’s now perfect knowledge of the future. Now that Bethesda had revealed her hand at last, though, total victory over the Heartstriker had just become one Fang simpler.
“What’s the matter, white snake?” Bethesda taunted. “Can’t you see the future? Because you wouldn’t be smiling like that if you could.”
“It’s precisely because I can see that I’m smiling,” Estella replied, shaking her head. “A sword in your hand makes no difference, Broodmare. You’re still outnumbered.”
“It makes all the difference,” the Heartstriker snarled, lifting her blade high.
The moment her arm was fully extended, Chelsie gasped in pain, dropping her own sword, which immediately flew to Bethesda. Conrad’s Fang did the same, flying from where it had fallen moments before. By the time Bethesda lowered her sword again, both of her children’s Fangs were floating behind her like familiars, their tips pointed directly at Estella’s heart.
“Didn’t see that one coming, did you, seer?” Bethesda crowed, her face split in a triumphant grin as she held up her sword for Estella to see. “Every Fang of the Heartstriker has its own abilities, but mine is the First Fang that controls them all. Now, you’re going to feel their bite. All of them.”
She raised her blade to her lips as she finished, and the room flooded with magic as Bethesda began to change. Behind her, the swords she’d taken from her children pulled closer, the blades already sparking with her father’s green fire. If Estella hadn’t been prepared, the display would have been truly terrifying. Bethesda alone was nothing, but three Fangs of the Heartstriker were no laughing matter. But while Estella hadn’t foreseen this specific bit about the swords, Bethesda’s plan to change into her true form would have been obvious even without her knowledge of the future, and the counter she’d arranged was probably Estella’s favorite part of the night.
“Amelia,” she said sweetly, stepping back to avoid the green flames licking at Bethesda’s feet. “Now.”
The Planeswalker obeyed instantly. Bethesda didn’t even have time to react before her daughter’s hand shot out, launching a wave of fire that sent the Heartstriker, and all her swords, flying.
With the perfect irony that only came from properly executed seer work, Bethesda landed on her throne, crashing into the stone chair so hard it cracked. She was still pushing herself up from the wreckage when Estella climbed up to join her. “Tell me again, Heartstriker,” she cooed. “Why should I be afraid?”
Bethesda’s only reply was a challenging growl as she tensed. A growl that faded to a whimper when nothing happened.
“What?” she roared, staring down at her hands. Her still human hands. “Why am I not a dragon? What did you do?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” Estella asked, her eyes wide with feigned innocence. “I got the idea from you.”
Bethesda’s fury turned to horror as the truth finally dawned. “You sealed me!”
Her scream was music to Estella’s ears. “I told you the sword wouldn’t do any good,” she said, turning to Conrad, who’d just climbed up the short set of stairs that surrounded the throne’s raised dais to join them. “Restrain her.”
“No!” Bethesda cried, fighting like a wildcat as her massive son grabbed her. “I am your clan head! Your mother! You can’t do this!”
Again, magic pounded through the orders, and again, her children ignored her completely. Not that it stopped Bethesda from trying. She screamed the whole way down, fighting like a wild animal, but it did no good. Now that Amelia had sealed her dragon, she was little stronger than the human she appeared to be. Conrad handled her with ease, dragging her back down the steps and forcing her onto her knees on the ground at Es
tella’s feet.
“Now this is a sight I’ve always wanted to see,” Estella said, yanking Bethesda’s head up by her long, perfect, ink-black hair. “I was contemplating plucking out those famous eyes, but after seeing your collection in the hall, I think I’ll leave them in. They’ll be so striking when I turn your head into a taxidermy trophy.”
“Try it and see,” Bethesda snarled. “I won’t go down like this. You can’t kill me so easily.”
“Please,” Estella scoffed, letting her go. “If I’d just wanted to kill you, I could have done that at any time. But I didn’t trade my future for something as cheap and tawdry as your life. Even now, killing you is just a means to an end. One more step in a long plan. Though, of course,” her lips curled in a bloodthirsty grin, “that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it.”
The Heartstriker began to shake, though to her credit, it was with fury, not fear. “Do it, then,” she snarled, baring her white teeth. “If you can. I have a seer, too, remember.”
“I never forget my true audience,” Estella replied, stepping back. “That’s why I’ve arranged for your death to have a little pageantry.” She clapped her hands, and a new figure appeared on the other side of Amelia’s portal. A tall, angry dragon with eyes like green embers and a sword made of ice. He didn’t say a word as he stepped into his mother’s throne room, but by the time he reached Estella’s side, Bethesda looked truly afraid for the first time.
“Justin?” she said, her voice wavering. “Darling? What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Estella said, draping her arms over Justin’s shoulders. “Brohomir does so love his ironic twists, and what could be more ironic than the great Bethesda struck down by her most loyal son? Not that anyone could blame him. Being left to die at the hands of your greatest enemy because your mother is too proud and spiteful to say the one word that would spare your life does tend to shift your world view.” She glanced at Justin. “Don’t you agree?”
The young dragon said nothing. He just stood there, gripping his new sword in his white-knuckled hands and glaring down at his mother with such focused fury that even the shameless Bethesda cringed.
“I had to do it, sweetheart,” she said, her voice all innocence. “It cut me to the core to leave you there. I cried all night, but I had no choice.”
“It was one word,” Justin growled. “You didn’t even have to mean it.”
“It was lowering myself!” Bethesda growled back, dropping the hurt mother act as easily as she’d dropped him. “You don’t know what Algonquin’s like. If I’d given her an inch, she’d have taken the whole clan. I did what I had to do to keep us out of the mess you made, and you have the gall to be angry?”
“Typical narcissistic personality,” Estella murmured in Justin’s ear. “Trying to make her failings sound like your fault. This is exactly the sort of faulty reasoning you’d expect from someone who’d rather throw away their greatest weapon than even lie about saying please.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Bethesda cried, lifting her head as high as she could while still on her knees. “Justin Heartstriker, you are my son, a knight of the mountain! Don’t you dare fall for her lies.”
“But she’s not lying, is she?” Justin said, lifting his sword as he moved in to loom over her. “You’re right. I am a knight of the mountain, a guardian of what’s best for our clan, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Bethesda’s eyes went wide. “Justin, love, don’t do this,” she warned, her eyes on the icy blade as he lined the razor sharp edge up with her neck. “Not to me. Not to your mother.”
“Don’t worry,” Justin said, bracing for the strike. “I won’t.”
He stabbed as he finished, plunging the icy sword, not into his mother, but backwards at the seer behind him.
The seer who was no longer there.
Justin stumbled as his attack found nothing. He rebalanced at once, spinning around to try again, but he hadn’t even made it halfway before Chelsie tackled him to the ground. She had him disarmed a second later, sitting on his back with her knee stabbed into his neck as Estella stepped back into range.
“I wish I could say I didn’t see that coming,” she said, reaching down to retrieve the ice sword from the ground. “But we all know that would be a lie. Still, I have to admit I’m disappointed in you, Justin. The only reason I went through the bother of saving you was to give Brohomir a piece on the board through which to watch my inevitable victory. You were here to give him the chance at a final move, and that is all you can manage?”
Justin glowered, and she shook her head. “So disappointing. Where’s the grandeur? Where’s the drama? I even gave you my best sword in the hopes I’d see something worthy of the dragon who claims to be the best seer ever born, but alas. All I get is a sneak attack, and not even a clever one.”
“You think I care,” Justin growled, fighting ineffectually against Chelsie’s hold with everything he had. “The fact that you knew I’d turn on you even after you saved me from Algonquin just proves what I’ve been saying all along. I am Justin Heartstriker, Knight of the Mountain, the Fifth Blade of Bethesda, and I would rather die with my fangs in your foot than ever betray my clan.”
“Is that so?” Estella said, her voice bored. “Then by all means, let’s get it over with. Conrad?”
With no more emotion than he’d show a weighted training dummy, Conrad grabbed Justin out from under their sister and threw him clear across the throne room into the wall on the other side. The dragon hit the inlaid stone like a cannonball, cracking the gold and ceramic mosaic depicting Bethesda in all her glory from floor to ceiling. Before he could fall to the ground, Conrad was on top of him, punching him back into the stone wall so hard, his ribs cracked. Justin screamed in pain, but Conrad just kept going, pummeling the younger dragon like he was working a punching bag until Estella said, “Stop.”
Conrad stopped instantly, and Justin collapsed on the floor. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to be getting up again, the seer turned back to Bethesda, whose face was now as pale as the granite dust hanging in the air.
“There it is,” she whispered, reaching down to grab Bethesda’s head between her hands. “There’s the comprehension.” The dragon tried to turn away, but Estella wrenched her right back. “Look at him,” she ordered. “That is your most loyal dragon. That is your hope lying beaten on the ground, Heartstriker. That was your final chance. That is the difference between your power and mine.”
She released the dragon’s head, and Bethesda jerked away, her chest heaving like a frightened animal as Estella raised the icy sword she’d taken from Justin.
“I couldn’t kill you until I knew you understood,” she explained, taking careful aim at the Heartstriker’s neck. “I’ve paid too much for this to accept mere death. I had to see you break, just like your death is going to break your clan, just like I’m going to break everything Brohomir has ever touched. That’s what I went to our dead world to purchase. That is what I paid for. Not your death or the deaths of your children, but Brohomir’s utter defeat. I will smash his dreams to dust and grind his ambition under my feet, and when I am done, I will die satisfied at last, because I will have won.”
By the time she finished, Bethesda was shaking. “You are mad,” she whispered.
“And you are dead,” Estella replied, bringing her sword down.
But then, just as Estella began the strike that would cut the head off of the Heartstriker clan and begin the irreversible downfall of her most hated enemy, something landed on her hand. It was less than nothing, a tiny spattering of black, sandy dust, but it still made Estella freeze, because here, in the moment where every move was planned down to the smallest detail, the dust was a surprise. She was trying to decide if it was a significant one when the ceiling opened up, dropping a dragon and his human directly on her head.
***
After so long falling through the dark, the sudden burst of light hit Julius like a punch. But while it was inst
antly obvious he and Marci were finally back in some kind of world and no longer falling through…whatever it was Dragon Sees the Beginning had dropped them into, it took him an embarrassingly long time to actually recognize the huge, golden space as his mother’s throne room lit up by the evening sun. That was as far as he got before they crashed down on top of something wiry and wiggling that smelled like an icy sea.
“Get off me!”
Julius hadn’t even finished landing before the wiggly something threw them off again, launching them both across the room. Julius landed on his feet by pure habit, and then scrambled to catch Marci, who hadn’t had his training. When they were both safely on the ground, he finally looked around to see where, and also when, they had landed.
The answer wasn’t what he’d hoped. They were, indeed, in his mother’s throne room, but the Heartstriker wasn’t on her throne. She was on her knees, held there by Chelsie. Amelia was there too, as was Conrad, and, surprisingly, Justin, though he didn’t look good at all lying on the floor in front of the cratered wall that he’d obviously been thrown into. But worse than all of that by miles was Estella.
Julius swallowed. Apparently, she was the wiry thing they’d landed on, and she looked furious about it, glaring at Julius with murder in her eyes.
“You,” she snarled, her pale fingers curling into fists. “It’s always you! Why am I even surprised?”
Julius glanced at Marci, who shrugged.
“You’re always in his plans,” Estella went on. “Not that I know why. You are literally the lowest of your clan, the bottom of the bottom! If Brohomir wasn’t so obsessed with you, I wouldn’t even know you existed.” She bared her teeth. “What is it he thinks you’re going to do here? Talk me to death?”
“It’s not too late,” Julius said quickly, stealing a quick glance through the balcony at the sun, which was only inches away from the horizon. “We can still come to a mutual—”
“You must be joking,” Estella scoffed, flinging her hand out. “Kill them!”
