by Rachel Aaron
“Svena.”
Svena had already decided to ignore her, but there was an edge on Estella’s voice that made her look back. When she did, her sister was standing in front of the dressing room door, imperious as a queen. “You will not go.”
The command was sharp as cracking ice, and it called forth a rage Svena hadn’t felt in many years. “You may be acting head of our clan,” she said slowly, drawing herself up to her full height as well. “But this is not clan business, and you are dangerously close to overstepping your authority.”
“All business is my business,” Estella replied haughtily. “Especially yours. Other than myself, you are the greatest of us. Your actions echo through the entire family, and I cannot stand by while you permit yourself to be used in such a fashion.”
“It is I who am using,” Svena growled. “Ian is my amusement, and I will keep him for however long I like.”
Estella laughed then, a sound as beautiful and cold as the arctic sea they ruled. “Ian? Ian is a tool, a puppet too young and blind to even realize he’s dancing to someone else’s tune. I was referring to the one who pulls his strings. The dragon who plays all the Heartstrikers like a symphony while allowing that shallow peacock Bethesda to take the credit.”
Svena rolled her eyes. If this was about the Seer of the Heartstrikers again, she did not want to hear it. She opened her mouth to tell Estella as much, but before she could say a word, she noticed her sister had that odd gleam in her eye that warned she was no longer in the present, but lost in the hazy maze of possible futures that only seers could see.
“He taunts me,” Estella whispered, her voice shaking with frustrated fury. “He blocks me at every turn and takes what I hold dear purely out of spite. Even you.” She looked up, her blue eyes suddenly focusing as they locked with Svena’s. “Katya was always weak. Her loss is nothing, but you are our prize. I sent you here because I thought you would be untouchable, a mountain too great to even notice his foolish nudging, but no sooner did you arrive in this horrible city than your future began to vanish.” She closed her eyes with a little sob that cut right to Svena’s icy heart. “He is taking you away from me.”
“Oh, sister,” Svena said, her anger forgotten as she hurried to Estella’s side. “You are upset over nothing. I’ve never even met the Heartstriker’s seer.”
“You think that matters?” Estella said, her voice thick with a hatred so old and deep, Svena couldn’t begin to imagine how long it must have been growing. “He cannot defeat me, and so the coward strikes at you, tempting you through his brother’s whispers of power. They are all his pawns, and now he seeks to add you to his game as well. But he shall never have you.” She reached up to grab her sister’s shoulders, digging her nails into Svena’s flesh. “You are my pawn!”
Svena’s sympathy for her sister died in a freezing rush of rage. “I am no one’s pawn!” she roared, ripping out of her sister’s hold with a thrust of power that shattered the mirrors and sent frost spreading across the carpet.
Estella’s eyes widened at the blatant display, and for a moment, it almost looked like she would back down. Instead, she breathed out an icy breath of her own, and as the air left her body, the thin veneer of her humanity vanished along with it.
Svena gasped as the full weight of her sister’s power landed on the room with the force of an avalanche. Estella hadn’t changed completely—the dressing room was much too small for that—but the image of her dragon hovered over her like a specter, a pure white shadow of glistening scales and wings as thin and beautiful as frosted glass. Looking up at the ice-blue eyes she knew so well, Svena realized with a pang that she was no longer speaking to the older sister who’d taught her how to fly over the glacial seas. This was not the Estella she’d burned villages with so many centuries ago, laughing together as the little humans fled before them. This was the Northern Star, Seer of the Three Sisters and acting head of their clan, and the words that fell from her lips were law.
“You will not leave this room.”
The command landed like a blow. It had been years since Svena been ordered so directly, or so forcibly, and the shock was enough to make her consider fighting back. She was larger, her magic stronger. If it had been any other dragon, that would have been enough. But a seer always had the weight of the future on her side, and Svena knew better than to start battles she wasn’t certain she could win. She was proud, yes, but not stupidly so, and in the end, she dropped her eyes. “I will not leave.”
Estella smiled, and the power roaring through the room vanished as quickly as it had come. “Good girl,” she murmured, reaching up to brush Svena’s hair away from her face just as she had when they were young. “You will see, lovely, this is no loss. These Heartstrikers are nothing but grasping fools. They seek to divide us, to topple our clan and make room at the top. But we are ancient magic, as far above them as stars above the sea. We shall remain long after Bethesda’s lust for power has doomed them all, and you will thank me for my wisdom today.”
Svena said nothing. She simply stood and waited while Estella checked her phone again. Whatever she read there, it must have been good news, because her face lit up at once. “I must go. Everything will fall into place soon, you will see. All I need from you is that you stay here. Do that, and I promise I will have Katya back to us before midnight. Then, my dear sister, we will deal with these foolish Heartstrikers together. When we are finished, Bethesda and her horde won’t even be a memory.”
Svena smiled and held her tongue, allowing herself to be kissed before Estella walked out of the room. When the seer’s soft footsteps finally vanished down the hall, Svena walked across the suite to the window that overlooked the hotel’s front entrance. It was nearing sunset, and the glare off the skyway’s white buildings was blinding, but if she squinted, she could see the human doorman escorting Estella to her waiting limo. The moment her sister was safely ensconced in her car, Svena marched back into her dressing room and snatched her phone out of the litter of broken glass on the vanity.
As usual, Ian picked up before the second ring. “Changed your mind about dinner?”
Any other time, Svena would have happily strung him along. Tonight, however, she was in no mood for games. “Be at my hotel in thirty minutes.”
Ian didn’t answer at once, giving Svena time to ponder how he would react. A younger, less secure dragon would object to being commanded to appear, while a more experienced one would expect a trap and proceed with caution. As usual, though, Ian was a pleasant surprise.
“I’ll be there in twenty,” he said with all the confident ambition that had drawn Svena to him in the first place. “See you then.”
Svena ended the call and sank onto the couch Estella had vacated with a smirk. She might have no choice but to obey her eldest sister’s edict not to leave her suite, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do as she pleased inside it, and Svena was suddenly very inspired to do exactly as she pleased. Because no matter what Estella said, the White Witch of the Three Sisters was no one’s pawn, and if her sister could no longer see Svena’s future, that just meant she was free to make of it what she wanted for once.
And as she looked out the bedroom window at the glass and steel towers of the DFZ shining like torches in the evening sunlight, Svena was surprised by how very much she wanted.
***
Julius wasn’t sure what he’d thought the Heartstriker safe house would look like, but the building Bob stopped in front of definitely wasn’t it. Positioned at the southwestern corner of the Upper City, as far from the water as you could get and still be on the skyways, the modern three-story mansion looked more like an upwardly mobile couple’s urban showcase home than a dragon clan’s emergency lair. It didn’t even seem to have walls, just windows and brushed steel accents. It was, however, very conveniently located right off an exit ramp, and the enormous faux-cedar porch that wrapped around the house’s western face to poke off the edge of the skyway made an excellent emergency landing spot for
a dragon.
Bob dropped them off at the front gate, though he refused to actually go inside with them. When Julius asked why, Bob had declared he was the servant of “Great and Important Matters” and driven off, yelling out the window that he’d be back to pick them up “before the fun started.”
Since it was now go inside or hang out on the curb, Julius walked up the stairs to the red-painted front door with Marci right behind him. The house was locked, of course, and when no one responded to the doorbell, he knocked as loudly as he could. He was about to knock again when the door flew open to reveal a sweaty, shirtless, and barefoot Justin with a slice of pizza in one hand and the Fang of the Heartstrikers in the other.
His eyebrows shot up when he saw who was at his door, and he lowered his sword, taking another bite of his pizza before asking, “What happened to her?”
Marci’s hand instantly went to her throat, and Julius sighed. “Car wreck. Can we come in?”
Justin shrugged and stepped aside. “Your safe house, too,” he said, still chewing. “The human has to wait outside, though.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Julius said, lowering his voice. “Marci knows all about us now. Bob was the one who drove us over.”
He’d expected Justin be impressed by that last bit, but his brother just rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me the Pigeon Whisperer dragged you into one of his stupid schemes.” When Julius nodded, Justin shook his head. “Fine, the girl can come in, but if anyone asks, it was your idea.”
Julius pulled Marci inside before Justin could change his mind, closing the door quickly behind them.
The safe house’s interior was just as nice as its exterior, full of tasteful furniture that managed to look both modern and timeless, a sure sign that someone other than Mother had chosen the decor since Bethesda’s taste in interior design ran more to gilded skulls than designer tables. But while the vestibule and plant-lined back porch were immaculate, the living room was a disaster area of trash and beer bottles. Clearly, Justin had made himself at home.
“How long have you been here?” Marci asked, staring wide-eyed at what had to be fifty empty pizza boxes stacked against the sliding glass door to the back patio.
“About ten hours,” Justin said, walking to the open pizza box currently sitting in the middle of what had once been a pristine ecru couch. “I slept eight of those, though.”
Marci’s eyes went wider still. “You ate all of this in two hours?”
“Please,” Justin said, dropping down on the floor to start a set of one-armed push-ups. “Haven’t you ever seen a dragon eat? This took me ten minutes. I actually thought you were the pizza guy with my second order when I heard the door.”
Marci made a little choking sound and looked at Julius with new understanding. Justin, however, seemed to have written them off entirely. Clearly, it was time to stop making small talk and get to the point.
“Justin,” Julius said solemnly. “I need your help.”
Justin stopped mid-push-up, arching his neck back to stare at his brother. “My help,” he repeated. “You’re asking me to help you?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “Please.”
Justin thought about it for a second, and then he pushed off the ground, popping himself back onto his feet like a cork. “Okay.”
Julius blinked. “That’s it? You don’t even want to know what we’re doing first?”
“I told you I’d help last night,” Justin said, walking into the bathroom. “And anyway, how much trouble can you be in?”
Marci and Julius exchanged a silent look. “I think your brother has a chronically underdeveloped sense of danger,” she whispered.
Julius couldn’t argue with that. “Remember that dragoness I was trying to find?”
“The Three Sisters girl?” Justin said, his voice muffled by the towel he was using to dry the sweat from his hair. “You still haven’t found her?”
“No, we found her. That’s sort of the problem. We were taking her back to Ian’s when Katya’s sister Estella, the seer, arranged for her to be kidnapped by a human named Bixby in exchange for Marci’s Kosmolabe. He’s going to be contacting us in an hour, and if we don’t meet his demands, he’ll kill her.”
“The dragon or the human?” Justin asked, tossing the towel on the floor before walking back out into the living room.
“Both, probably,” Julius replied. “We’ve had one shootout with Bixby’s men today already. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a full—”
Justin nodded. “Got it.”
“How can you get it if I haven’t said it?” Julius snapped.
“What’s to get?” his brother asked, combing his short hair back into order with his fingers. “Kill humans, rescue dragon, done. Do we need to save this Kosmo-whatever, too?”
“Yes,” Marci said before Julius could answer. When he looked at her, she shrugged. “What? If Estella wants it, it must be important. We can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”
By which she clearly meant any hands other than hers. “I don’t want to give anything up that we don’t have to,” Julius said. “But Katya is our first priority.”
Justin was grinning by the time he finished. “Good to see you taking the initiative for once,” he said, smacking Julius on the back. “Never thought I’d see the day. Now, let’s get you a weapon.”
“A weapon?” Julius coughed, trying to get his lungs working again after his brother’s punishing hit.
“Of course,” Justin said, kicking the trash out his way as he walked across the living room to a maglocked door on the other side. “What, did you think they’d just surrender if you asked politely?”
Julius shot him a dirty look, but his brother was too busy punching a code into the door’s keypad to notice.
“You ask for my help, we do it my way,” Justin said when the door clicked open. “That means assault, and assault means you have to stop being a wuss and come get a sword.”
“No offense, Justin,” Marci said. “But I’m pretty sure Bixby’s men are going to have guns. Last I heard, you don’t bring a sword to a gun fight.”
“Then you haven’t heard of swords like these,” he said, pushing the door open.
Marci gasped, and Julius felt a little overwhelmed himself. Behind the door Justin had just unlocked, a small room glittered like an ancient hoard under tastefully recessed lighting. Though clearly meant to be a bedroom, the walls and windows had been been replaced with reinforced cement slabs lined with metal shelving, and on those shelves was a display of wealth greater than anything Julius had seen outside his mother’s throne room.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he whispered. “That’s not…”
“Of course it is,” Justin said, stepping high over a bag of gold coins stamped with the faces of long-dead kings. “You remember how Chelsie was always going on about how keeping all your treasure in one place was risky and stupid?”
Julius nodded. Even locked up in his room, there was no way he could have missed the fit his mother threw every time anyone suggested moving so much as a coin of her hoard.
“Well,” Justin continued. “Last year, Mother finally gave in and agreed to start redistributing some of her less valuable objects. Most of the safe houses have rooms like this now, alternate treasuries just in case something happens to the main hoard in the mountain, and they are not to be touched.”
This last bit was directed at Marci, who was rushing the door in her hurry to get to all the sparkly, shiny beauty.
“I’m not going to take anything,” she protested as she stepped inside. “I just want to look.”
“So look from there,” Justin snarled, picking her up bodily and setting her firmly back on the other side of the door. “Minor treasury or not, this is all property of Bethesda the Heartstriker, and even a human should know how serious dragons are about their treasure. She’ll know the second you touch so much as a dust bunny, so if you don’t want your mortal life to be even shorter than usual, you’ll keep your sti
cky fingers to yourself.”
Marci huffed with disappointment, casting Julius a pleading look. When he spread his arms helplessly, she pointed at the far corner of the treasure room where an amber carving of an owl in flight had been propped haphazardly on top of a pile of velvet jewelry boxes. “Can you at least tell me what that one does? I can feel the magic pouring off it from here.”
Justin’s answer was a low growl, and Julius decided it was time to move things along before Marci got herself in real trouble. “What did you want to show me?”
“Not show,” Justin said. “Loan.” He reached up to grab an enormous jeweled sword off the weapon rack on the far wall. “Here, give this a try.”
Julius stared at the six-foot-long bar of sharpened metal and magical ornamentation with a sinking weight in his chest. “Justin, I can’t even lift that.”
“Oh, right,” his brother said. “I forgot you have baby arms.” He returned the large sword to its bracket and took down a pair of ancient looking jade hook swords instead. “What about these?”
“No,” Julius said again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but I haven’t touched a sword since we were teenagers, and I wasn’t even good then. If you want to give me a weapon, how about a shotgun? Or a taser? You know, something point-and-click I can use without years of training?”
“Like Mother would ever keep anything so mundane in her hoard,” Justin said with a snort. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your training will come back once your life is on the line. Even if it doesn’t, you’re a dragon. We’re naturally good at killing stuff.”
“You’re naturally good at killing stuff,” Julius grumbled, leaning over Marci to look around the room for a weapon that would shut his brother up while still being light enough for him to actually carry. Unfortunately, everything in the corner by Justin was either huge or overly complicated. He was about to tell his brother to forget the whole thing when he spotted a familiar-looking golden hilt sticking out of a vase on the top shelf.
