Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  Instead of answering, Brohomir opened his hands to show her the small egg-shaped object.

  “What’s that?”

  “I have no idea,” he said giddily. “But the Nameless End agreed to come with me, so I assume it’s—”

  He stopped as the object began to shake. It cracked wide open a second later, the mottled shell splitting apart as a wet, ugly, spindly hatchling forced its head through.

  “What the—” Amelia recoiled in horror. “That’s a Nameless End?”

  Brohomir nodded, his green eyes wide with wonder.

  “What’s it supposed to be? A chicken?”

  He breathed in deeply. “Smells more like pigeon to me.”

  His sister looked scandalized. “I risked death and worse to help you bring the Final Future—the death of our home plane—into this world, and it’s a pigeon?”

  “Don’t call her that,” he snapped, cupping the newborn chick in his hands. “She can be whatever she likes.” He smiled. “I think she’s beautiful.”

  And she was. The scope was much smaller, but when he looked at the bird in his hands, he saw the same stunning emptiness he’d witnessed in the void. She had the same calm as well, staring up at him with black eyes deeper than any mortal animal could possess. As Brohomir stared back, he felt the tiny tendrils of her chains spreading like roots through his mind, tying them together. When she was anchored deep, she spoke again in his mind, only this time, the words came out in an actual voice.

  I’m here, she said, her new tone excited as the baby pigeon looked around. When do we begin?

  “Right now,” Brohomir said, scrambling to his feet. “Come on, Amelia!”

  Amelia rolled her eyes, grumbling under her breath about the dangers of physical exertion after performing miracles as she pushed off her knees, brushed the sand from her trousers, and starting jogging down the moonlit beach after her brother.

  Chapter 1

  Julius woke to the alien feeling of absolute contentment.

  He was still in his old room in the DFZ, squeezed into his narrow twin bed with Marci cuddled up against his side. He had no idea what time it was, and he didn’t care. If his arm hadn’t been falling asleep, he would never have moved again. He was trying to ease the offending limb into a different position when Marci’s brown eyes fluttered open.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Marci just smiled and rolled over, flattening herself against his chest with a contented sigh. Julius sighed too, running his now freed hand up her naked back with a shiver of wonder. He’d been here for all of it, but it still didn’t seem real that Marci was here with him, whole and alive again. She didn’t even have a scar, a fact that he knew firsthand after the rampant nakedness of the previous hours.

  That thought made him blush beet red. But while he’d been able to ignore the obvious questions during the rush of getting the person he loved most back from the dead, this wasn’t something he could put off much longer. Now that the initial out-of-his-mind joy at getting Marci back had faded to a more manageable level of extreme happiness, Julius’s number-one concern was keeping her. It felt like bad form to question a miracle, but he’d sworn he was never letting her go again, and if he was going to make good on that, then he needed to know exactly how this miracle had occurred.

  “Marci?”

  “Hmm?”

  Julius tightened his arms around her. “How did this happen?”

  Her lips curved in a mischievous smile. “I’m pretty sure you started it.”

  “Not that,” he said, turning even redder. “I meant this.”

  He brushed his fingers over the place on her unmarked back where General Jackson’s shot had passed through. He could still see the horrible wound in his mind: the smoking edges, the way scarlet blood had spread like spilled ink across her shirt. The memory of her death was one he’d never shake no matter how long he lived, so now that it was suddenly undone, he couldn’t relax until he knew.

  “Is this real?” he whispered, clutching her. “Are you really back?”

  She laughed. “Do I need to prove it to you again?”

  “I’m serious.”

  He must have sounded it, because Marci stopped laughing. “That’s a complicated question,” she said, pushing up on her elbow so she could look him in the face. “The short answer is yes, I’m back, and I’m human. A mortal, just like I was before, only minus the holes.”

  She smiled down at her healed chest like that was a joke, but Julius was shaking. “How?” he asked again. “Last I checked, humans didn’t come back from the dead.”

  “Not normally,” Marci agreed. “But it’s amazing how flexible the rules get when multiple immortals need your help. Amelia always intended to bring me back with her, but Raven was the one who did the actual hauling. He flew me back from the other side so I could reclaim my body and do my job as Merlin.”

  Then Julius owed Raven a debt he could never repay. “Could he do it again?” Because if people could be brought back from the dead, then the greatest problem of falling head over heels in love with a human had just been solved.

  “If you mean ‘Are you immortal now?’ I’m afraid the answer is no,” Marci said, shaking her head. “Happy as I am that it worked this time, the whole ‘rise from your grave’ thing was the product of highly unique circumstances that probably shouldn’t be repeated. But don’t worry. I’m not planning on dying again any time soon.”

  He kissed her in thanks for that. Then he kissed her again, just because he could. He was about to kiss her a third time when Marci started in with questions of her own. “What about you? How did you end up in the DFZ with the Dragon Emperor of China? And why does Chelsie have a baby now? I wasn’t gone that long.”

  “The baby’s not actually new,” Julius said, racking his brain to think of a shorthand way to explain what had happened with Chelsie and the Qilin, or Chelsie and Bob. He couldn’t come up with one that made any kind of sense, though, so he wound up telling her the whole story of Chelsie’s ill-fated journey to China and the fallout that had haunted his clan for the last six centuries. Marci listened raptly all the way through, though her eyes got really wide at the end.

  “So the Qilin thanking you was what caused that golden hammer thing at the end?”

  “I don’t know about a hammer,” Julius said, confused. “But it was definitely a luck bomb.”

  Marci shook her head rapidly, making her short hair fly. “No way. Bombs are bad things. This was an enormously good thing. When we were in the Heart of the World, Amelia kept saying that Bob had warned her not to let any of us charge into the fight until we got his signal. Trouble was, she had no idea what that signal would be. We were about to go anyway—because things were getting really bad—when we felt this huge surge of amazing dragon magic, and suddenly everything went right.” She grinned. “That must have been you! Bob clearly knew it was coming too, which was why he told Amelia to wait. He knew we’d need imperial levels of magical good fortune on our side to make everything work.”

  The mention of his brother’s name made Julius flinch. “I’m not so sure Bob is on our side anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marci said, incredulous. “He and Amelia planned this whole thing. The fact that I’m alive and with you right now is mostly due to him.”

  “He’s also why you died in the first place,” Julius said angrily. “I’m not arguing with the results, but his methods are not good, Marci. Bob used us all. He let Chelsie and her children suffer for six centuries. He could have ended it all at any time just by telling Bethesda to stop. Mother always listened to him.”

  “Would Chelsie, though?” Marci asked. “You just told me it was her idea to keep her children locked in the mountain so they’d be safe from the Qilin. Even if Bob had freed them all early, she still wouldn’t have let the Fs go for fear of her ex. Don’t get me wrong. I agree it was all terrible, but I don’t think anyone was trying to be cruel. It just sounds like a lot of desperate dragons trying
to do the best thing in bad circumstances. But while he’s definitely pulled some sketchy stunts, I know Bob is on our side. Amelia trusted him with her life and death, and she doesn’t trust lightly.” She shrugged. “We just have to have faith that Bob knows what he’s doing. He can see the future, after all.”

  “I’ve never questioned that,” Julius said. “I’m just worried about what he’s willing to do to the present to get there.”

  “Well,” Marci said, snuggling closer. “If this is Bob’s chosen timeline, I’ve got no complaints. It sucked for a while there, but now I’m back, Amelia’s back, and Chelsie’s free and reunited with her boyfriend, which will hopefully make her less snappy. We’ve even got a bona fide lucky dragon on our team! That’s a huge deal, because the way things are looking, we’re going to need all the luck we can get.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the window, where the rainbow glow of the rising magic was still shining like the Northern Lights through the lowered blinds.

  “What are we going to do?” Julius whispered, pulling her closer. “I couldn’t follow all your theory talk last night, but I know visible magic rising from the ground like backward snow is not good.”

  “Actually, the magic itself is fine,” Marci said. “It’s not like we pumped the system full of new power. This is just the magic the ancient Merlins stole from the rest of the world finally flowing back to where it belongs. I always meant to return it. Not in one big blast, of course, but while this situation sucks in the short term, over the long haul, I think this will actually turn out to be a very good thing.”

  “Is there going to be a long term?” Julius asked quietly. “Not to be a pessimist, but everything Amelia and Raven said about the Nameless Ends made it sound like our only hope was to stop Algonquin from falling into despair, and we didn’t. We failed. There’s no way to know how much since we’re trapped in the house until the magic clears up, but I can’t imagine Algonquin’s been idle. She’s probably bringing that thing into our world right now. How do we face that?”

  “The same way we face everything else,” Marci said, smiling down at him. “How many times have we done the impossible, Julius? We are always punching above our weight class, and yet we always pull it out in the end. This time will be no different. Our enemy might be a giant creature that eats worlds, but the only thing he’s eaten so far is Algonquin, and she’s small potatoes these days.” She pointed at the glowing window. “The magic is back! We’ve got two Merlins with fully amped Mortal Spirits. We’ve got Raven and Amelia and a bunch of really scary dragons, not to mention a legit luck god.” Marci flashed him a grin. “I bet we kick that Nameless End’s butt.”

  That statement was so ludicrously overconfident it bordered on delusional, but the optimism was just so her, Julius couldn’t help but grin back. He’d missed her so much. Just like always, Marci was ready to go. Ready to fight beside him against anything, and he loved her for it.

  He kissed her then, pulling her down to him with the desperation that still hadn’t gone away. She kissed him back just as fiercely, wrapping her arms around his neck. He was losing himself in the wonder of having Marci all over him again when someone knocked.

  They both froze, turning in unison to look at the door, which was still locked. That wouldn’t mean much to a dragon, but dragons didn’t usually bother with knocking. Julius was working up the will to ask who it was when Emily Jackson’s voice filtered through the wood.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “Raven and I are calling an ops meeting. Be downstairs in five minutes.”

  Julius bristled. It was a perfectly reasonable request, but her tone still irked him. He might be a Nice Dragon, but that didn’t mean he took orders from humans. Especially not the one who’d shot Marci in the back.

  “Who put her in charge?” he muttered as Emily’s footsteps vanished down the stairs.

  “She is a general,” Marci reminded him, climbing out of bed, much to his dismay. “Being in charge is her default. General Jackson’s no fool, though. No one interrupts a happy dragon unless they have to. If she’s pushing, there’s a reason, which means we need to get moving.” She tapped her bare foot on the moving rainbows the magic from outside was casting across his scuffed wooden floor. “Can’t hide in here forever.”

  Julius would have been happy to stay in this sheltered room with Marci until he died, but she was right. They’d had a reprieve, but now it was time to go back to the real world, so Julius hauled himself reluctantly out of bed and began climbing into his clothes as slowly as he could. Marci was done way before he was, dressed in one of his sweatshirts and what had been her favorite pair of jeans. She’d also dug up a spare plastic bracelet to replace the ones she’d melted, and while Julius didn’t see any spellwork written on the inside yet, the chunky pink band made her look like herself again.

  When he was finally decent in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, he kissed her one last time, wrapping his hand around hers as they unlocked the door and headed downstairs to jump back into the fight.

  ***

  Marci clutched Julius’s hand the whole way down, clenching her jaw to keep from grinning. It was hard, but they were in the middle of what could be a world-ending event, and she was the Merlin. Grinning like a lovestruck idiot was not allowed, so she forced herself to keep her eyes off of Julius—whom she could touch now, anytime she wanted—and on the stairs ahead of them, where Fredrick was waiting at the bottom.

  Now there was a dragon she did not understand. From Julius’s story, Marci was pretty sure Fredrick was the dragon equivalent of the crown prince of China. Someone needed to tell him that, though, because he was still acting like Julius’s butler. He even had the younger dragon’s jacket in his hands, which he held out for Julius to put on as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Julius looked as awkward as Marci felt, but he let Fredrick put the jacket on him anyway, probably because the house was freezing. It was November in Detroit, and they hadn’t run the heat in days. Even global warming couldn’t take the edge off that chill. They were lucky it wasn’t snowing actual frozen water instead of just magic.

  When Julius was properly attired, Fredrick handed him a sword that looked like a tooth. It was the same kind of blade Fredrick wore at his own side, a Fang of the Heartstriker.

  Julius took the blade with a shocked look. “How did you get this?”

  “The Diplomat’s Blade is far more forgiving than the Defender’s,” Fredrick said with a smile. “You dropped it when you went after your mortal. I thought you would need it, so I picked it up. It didn’t transform for me, of course, but it was courteous enough to allow me to carry it in its sleeping form. I would have given it back to you earlier, but I didn’t wish to interrupt.”

  From the smirk on his face, Fredrick knew exactly what he would have been interrupting. Marci smirked back, but Julius just turned red again, though that didn’t stop him from reclaiming Marci’s hand the moment the sword was belted around his waist. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Waiting for you in the kitchen,” Fredrick replied. “They wanted to start earlier, but I refused to let them begin until you arrived, sir.”

  He hid it well, but Marci swore Julius winced at the “sir.” “Thanks, Fredrick.”

  The F beamed. “You’re welcome, sir,” he said proudly. “And happy birthday.”

  Marci whirled toward Julius with a gasp. “You didn’t tell me it was your birthday!”

  “I completely forgot,” Julius said, looking bewildered.

  A lot had been going on, but… “How do you forget your birthday?!” Marci cried, gaping at him. “So you’re twenty-five now, right?”

  He nodded, a smile spreading over his face. “Same age as you.”

  Two months ago, Marci would have considered having a dragon boyfriend who was the same age as herself slightly disappointing. Now, though, she was too happy just having him to care. “Happy birthday,” she said, rising up on her toes to
kiss his cheek.

  He blushed again, lifting their tangled hands to his lips to kiss the back of her fingers before turning them down the hall that led to the kitchen. “Shall we go hear the bad news?”

  She motioned for him to lead the way, clamping down on the grin that was threatening harder than ever to take over. It was serious game face time now, but when they walked into the kitchen, the sight waiting for them was comically surreal.

  There were three dragons and two spirits sitting at their kitchen table. Chelsie had her human-shaped daughter in her lap, brushing the girl’s fine black hair with her fingers while the toddler struggled to fit an entire personal pizza into her mouth. The Qilin was right beside them, looking as perfect as ever, his golden eyes full of happy wonder as he watched his child eat. On the other side of the table, Amelia was tipped back in her chair, deep in conversation with Raven, who was perched on her shoulder. The only ones who weren’t sitting down were General Jackson, who was pulling another round of frozen pizzas out of Marci and Julius’s tiny electric oven, and Myron, who was standing in front of the back door, staring through the window at something behind the house. The disconnect between the powers in front of her, any one of which could be considered a national threat, and the cozy domesticity of the scene was so bizarre, Marci didn’t even realize they were two short until she noticed that Myron was standing alone.

  “Where’s the DFZ?” she asked, alarmed. And for that matter. “Where’s Ghost?”

  Just the fact that she had to ask made Marci feel like a failure. She’d been so busy with Julius, she’d completely forgotten about her own spirit, which she was pretty sure made her the worst Merlin ever. She fully expected Myron to call her on it too, but the older mage beckoned her over instead, pressing a finger to his lips with one hand while he tapped against the glass of the back door’s window.