by Rachel Aaron
“Where are they?” Julius hissed, pacing faster. “What is Fredrick doing?”
“Relax,” said Bob, who was sitting on the cracked porch step, eating an apple he’d found who knew where. “They’ll be here before you know it.”
Julius looked at him hopefully. “Did you foresee that?”
“No,” Bob said, biting a chunk out of the fruit with his sharp teeth. “I’ve been too busy searching the future for an exit ramp to worry about nonessential details like arrival times. But Fredrick is loyal to you to an unhealthy degree. If he told you he’d bring them, he’ll make it happen. In fact, I bet we’ll hear something…” He paused, mouth moving silently like he was counting in his head. “Now.”
Sure enough, Bob’s brick of a phone began to vibrate in his hands. Grinning, he offered the device to Julius, who snatched it up, slamming the antique to his ear with a rush of relief. “Fredrick!”
“Not quite,” replied a cruel female voice.
As always, the sound made his stomach clench, and Julius closed his eyes with a silent curse. “What are you doing, Mother?”
“That’s my question,” Bethesda replied idly. “Planning a war without telling me, Julius? That’s not very democratic. Aren’t you the one who’s always going on about how we’re an equal council and no one should make decisions on their own?”
“This was an emergency,” Julius said sharply. “And I was trying to bring you in. Fredrick said he would—”
“Fredrick’s done quite enough,” Bethesda snapped. “Fortunately for you, David’s already handled everything. But we’ll discuss your pet F’s almost-treason later. For now, be an obedient child for once and hand me to Amelia.”
Julius almost dropped the phone. “You want to talk to Amelia?” He glanced at his oldest sister, who looked as shocked as he was. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Less talking, more doing,” Bethesda replied, snapping her fingers—or maybe her teeth—into the phone. Unsure what else to do, Julius handed Bob’s phone to Amelia. She snatched it up with a bloodthirsty smile, bearing all her teeth as she said in her sweetest voice, “Hello, Mother, this is your new god speaking.”
Julius wasn’t above blatantly eavesdropping on this conversation, but even his sharp ears couldn’t hear what Bethesda said in reply to that. As best he could tell, she’d ignored it entirely and was now rattling off instructions very quickly. Utterly unacceptable instructions if the look on Amelia’s face was anything to go by.
“Have you gone senile?” Amelia snarled into the phone. “Why, in any world, would I lift a claw to help you?”
“Because it helps you as well,” Bethesda said, her smug voice finally loud enough for Julius to hear. “A mother knows her children, and you’ve always been more greedy than vindictive. Too greedy to throw away your chance for a grand display of power and a fast solution to your problem just to spite me.”
She must have hit the nail on the head, because Amelia swore in several languages before hanging up the phone and tossing it back at Bob, who caught it without looking. Julius was opening his mouth to ask what was going on when his sister suddenly turned to him. “Do you know what a hype man is?”
Julius stared at her in bewilderment. “You mean the guys who whip up crowds at concerts? Yeah, but what does that have to do with—”
“Great,” Amelia said, reaching up to tie back her thick, wavy black hair. “Get in there and start hyping.”
“Hyping what?” he said. “What’s going to—”
“Not going,” she said, pushing curious dragons out of the way as she cleared a large spot on the gravel drive. “Coming, and in hot.” Amelia spread her hands. “You’ll see in a second. Just go tell the other big shots that Heartstriker is here.”
That was going to be a hard sell considering Heartstriker was most definitely not here. But if this whatever-it-was was big enough to convince Amelia to work with Bethesda, it was too big for Julius to fight, so he threw up his hands and did as she asked, jogging over to the circle of fed-up looking clan heads.
“What is taking so long?” Svena snapped when he got close. “What’s the Heartstriker doing? Taking a nap?”
“They’re on their way right now,” Julius said, hoping that was true. “My whole clan should be here in just a—”
A surge of power cut him off. Behind him, Amelia’s magic clenched like a snapping jaw. This was followed by a giant whoosh of air as the Planeswalker threw up her hands to tear a gaping hole in the air directly above her head.
The portal was enormous, a perfect rectangle that spanned the entire width of the shelter created by the spiraling on-ramps. It happened so fast, Julius didn’t even get a look at what was on the other side before a feathered dragoness in golden armor swept through.
She was unspeakably beautiful. As large as Conrad with rainbow-colored plumage brighter than a bird of paradise’s, Bethesda the Heartstriker was famous for a reason. Her colors were so vibrant, she seemed to glow in the dim light of the cavern, an illusion that was flawlessly enhanced by the gleaming golden battle armor covering her chest, claws, and neck. Armor that was clearly mostly for show since her glorious, long-feathered tail had been left completely exposed, but at least her head was protected by the diadem of her transformed Fang.
Unlike Julius’s sword, which formed a bone-colored crown at the front of his head when he was a dragon, Bethesda’s encircled the back, catching the enormous crest of feathers that fell like a waterfall down her neck. The result looked a bit like a hairpiece, or an evil queen’s high collar. Either way, between the plumage, the gold, the crown, and her own impressive size, his mother looked every inch the feathered goddess she’d once been worshiped as. Even Julius, who’d seen her like this before, had his breath stolen as she folded her huge wings to land in the wreckage of his house, crushing the last standing pieces of his home flat as she wrapped her tail around her feet like a colorful, smug cat.
“You can all stop worrying,” Bethesda announced in the shocked silence. “The Heartstriker has arrived!”
“After everyone else,” Svena snapped, glaring up at the dazzling dragoness. “Is this why you’re late? Needed time to fluff your plumage?”
“My plumage doesn’t require fluffing,” Bethesda said, running her claws over her glossy rainbow feathers. “Unlike you sad snowflakes, I always look this good. But that’s not the tone you should be taking with your savior, White Witch.”
“Mother,” Julius hissed, “stop it.”
“Why should I stop telling the truth?” Bethesda asked innocently. “Heartstriker is now officially the greatest clan in the world! No other family has ever united the clans as Julius has, and no dragon has ever produced a god.” She nodded pointedly at Amelia, who shrugged as if she couldn’t argue with that. “Add in the fact that we now control two of the world’s three seers, and there’s no denying that Heartstriker is on top in every way.” Her brilliant green eyes slid over to the Qilin. “What was that your mother said? ‘Breeding will tell?’”
“Mother!” Julius snarled, but as usual, Bethesda ignored him, turning her triangular head to gaze out at the crowd of dragons watching her like she was the center act of a three-ring circus.
“Who’s the broodmare now?” she crowed triumphantly. “You’ve all looked down on me and my children, but we’ll see how your tune changes when my clan—the largest dragon army ever assembled—swoops in to save all of your scales.” She lifted her head to the portal. “Justin!”
The moment she bellowed her second knight’s name, Amelia’s portal flickered like a slide projector flipping images, and Justin hopped down in human form with his Fang in his hands. He’d scarcely landed before all of Heartstriker came through after him. Unlike Bethesda, they were all human—the space couldn’t possibly have held them otherwise—but it was still an incredible sight. Even Julius, who’d seen his whole family gathered just a few days ago, had never witnessed them like this. Every Heartstriker was armed and ready to fight, their face
s grim as they moved to stand in formation around Bethesda. Fredrick led his siblings out last, hopping down with his hand on the hilt of his sword as he led the Fs to Julius’s side.
Conrad came out last, and then the portal flipped again to Ian, who jumped down from the ruins of Heartstriker’s throne room without a word. Conrad met him at the bottom, eying the assembled dragons warily as he escorted the final Council member to Bethesda’s side. When everyone was through, Amelia closed her portal with a flourish and returned to her place in the leader’s circle. When Ian motioned for Julius to come join him in their mother’s shadow, though, the youngest Heartstriker missed the signal due to the palm he’d pressed over his face.
It wasn’t that he begrudged his mother her gloating. Bethesda had been the butt of the dragon world’s bawdy jokes for centuries. As horrible as she was, Julius couldn’t say his mother didn’t deserve a moment of glory now that the clan she’d taken so much heat for breeding was one-fourth of the world’s entire dragon population. He did, however, wish she’d been more tactful about it. Lording victories over your enemies was one thing, but they were supposed to be coming together as allies, and the looks the other dragons were shooting her definitely didn’t trend in that direction. Even the Qilin looked pissed, a very bad turn since Julius had been secretly counting on his continued good luck to help them do the impossible. He was trying to think of a way to stop his mother before she blew everything up in his face when she hopped off the house, transforming in midair to land beside him in a puff of bitter smoke and clattering of gold.
“There,” she said, casting off her now comically oversized armor to reveal the equally glittery, human-sized gold mesh dress hidden beneath. “Now we can begin.” She stuck her now sword-shaped Fang of the Heartstriker into the gold chain at her waist and turned to Julius. “What’s the plan?”
“Why are you asking me?”
The question popped out before Julius realized how silly it was. He’d been at the center of this thing from the start, of course he’d be the logical person to question. But as much sense as it made… his mother never asked him for advice or input. She hardly spoke to him unless it was an order or an insult. To have her staring at him now like she expected competence threw Julius seriously off his game. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Amelia was there to back him up.
“Because you’re the poor chump in the middle, Baby-J,” the Planeswalker said, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. “I tie the dragons together, but you’re the one with his claws in everything. The Merlins, the UN, the spirits, us—we’re all here because of you. Also, your human’s the one who came up with this plan, so unless you want to cede Marci to me—which I’d be totally cool with, by the way—that makes all of this your responsibility.”
The gathered dragons nodded as though that were the only logical explanation, and Julius slumped in defeat. He didn’t even bother trying to explain that Marci wasn’t his human, because that never worked, and he didn’t feel like wasting his breath again. Time and dragon attention spans were too short as it was, so since everyone was looking at him now anyway, Julius launched into a carefully pared-down explanation of their situation and the plan to fix it that he’d been rehearsing in his head since Marci left. He thought he had a pretty good wrap-up of everything, but by the time he was through, the dragons looked angrier than ever.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” said Arkniss, who looked even more treacherous in his human form than his black-scaled dragon had been. “Algonquin got duped into screwing us all over, and now you want us to clean up her mess?”
“Yes,” Julius said, nodding. “Because we’ll all die if we don’t.”
“How like a spirit,” the old dragon muttered, blowing out a line of acrid smoke. “And we’re going to be working together with the Phoenix?” When Julius nodded again, Arkniss glanced over at General Jackson, who’d set up camp in the corner by Myron’s unconscious body. “Strange bedfellows, indeed. But then, you Heartstrikers never were discriminating.”
“What was that?” Bethesda asked, cupping a hand to her ear. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my children saving your piebald hide.”
“Considering some of those children are mine, I think I have a right to complain,” Arkniss snapped. Then he gave her a smile. “Though I always did like your sharp tongue.”
Julius’s face went scarlet as his mother blew the black dragon a kiss, and Amelia rolled her eyes. “Can we save the inappropriate innuendo until after we get out of mortal peril?” she groaned. “If we have to wait around for all the ‘your mom’ jokes, the Leviathan’s going to eat us before we get off the ground.”
“I agree,” said Marlin Drake, stepping forward, which made Julius step back.
It was a silly reaction. As leader of the clanless dragons, Marlin Drake had no family magic of his own. He was merely the head of a coalition of outcasts, most of whom had only banded together to keep stronger clans from hunting them down. The other dragons in the circle were far more powerful, but while Drake’s pedigree was technically the lowest, he was still the most famous individual Julius had ever met in person.
As the first dragon to go public after the return of magic, Marlin Drake had rocketed to worldwide fame with countless movies and television shows. Sixty years later, he commanded his own media empire, running three major networks in addition to hosting what was still the world’s highest-rated weekly talk show. Bethesda watched religiously and had been a regular guest on the program for decades. Even Julius, who tried his best to stay out of politics—draconic or human—had seen more episodes of Saturday Night With Marlin Drake than he liked to admit. But despite his mother’s patronage, he’d never actually met the ludicrously famous First Dragon in Television. That made seeing him now surprisingly intimidating since Drake was even more charismatic in the flesh than he was on his show, a feat that didn’t seem physically possible.
“It’s Julius, right?” the handsome dragon said, holding out his hand with a well-timed toss of his television-perfect blond hair. “With a J?”
“I don’t know what else you’d spell it with,” Julius said nervously. “But I—”
“How wonderful to meet you,” Drake interrupted, grabbing Julius’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “And nice work bagging the first Merlin, by the way. You must have a serious eye for talent.”
Julius’s face began to heat. “I—”
“I’d love to have her on my show when this is over,” Drake went on. “And you as well, since you’re the point man on all this. Speaking of, how long do you think it’ll be before your girl lands her banish? I’ve got a full helicopter camera crew ready to capture the whole thing for my exclusive report, but they’re grounded at the moment due to magical interference, and I’d hate for them to miss the action.”
“There’s nothing for your humans to miss, you vain idiot,” Svena snapped, stabbing her finger up at the towering, shadowy form of Ghost, who was still holding the barrier for them even though Marci was gone. “No one can fly right now, thanks to this mess. If it doesn’t clear soon, we’ll still be down here clicking our scales when Algonquin’s End kills us all!”
“It’d better hurry up,” Bethesda said irritably. “What’s the good of gathering everyone together if we can’t set a claw outside this dirt pit without getting crushed?” She looked down at the half-frozen mud coating her golden boots before turning her sneer on Julius. “Why did you live here again?”
Because she’d made him, and because it kept him away from her. “It was a good base,” he said instead. “It still is.” He nodded at the crowd of dragons surrounding them, none of whom were even pretending not to be listening. “We have every dragon in the world here now, and the Leviathan still hasn’t noticed us. I think that’s pretty impressive.”
“Or telling,” said She Who Sees, the dark-skinned dragoness whose extended family claimed most of the African continent. “He could be ignoring us because he knows we’re not a threat.�
�� Her sharp black eyes flicked to Julius. “You said that thing was from beyond our plane. Are you sure we can fight it?”
“Actually, the bigger it gets, the more effective we become,” Amelia said authoritatively. “Normally, the Leviathan would be outside of our ability to hurt physically. We’ve all tangled with it before in various scuffles over the DFZ, so I’m sure we all remember just how impossible those shadow tentacles were to fight. Now, though, it’s using Algonquin’s magic to shove itself into our plane. That means the Leviathan is covered in spirit magic, and we all know how well spirits burn.”
The other dragons smirked appreciatively at that, and Julius let out a breath in silent thanks that Marci wasn’t here. “The point is, we can damage it,” he said. “Maybe not enough to defeat it, but that’s not our job. All we have to do is keep the Nameless End from sucking up the last of Algonquin’s water for the few hours it will take Marci to prepare her banishment.”
“A few hours is a long time to fight something we cannot defeat,” the Qilin said warily. “Especially when we cannot even take off yet.” He lifted his golden head to the hole in the roof where the black tentacles were moving faster than ever. “It’s gorging itself on her magic as we speak. By the time we can fly, it might already be too late.”
“We can make it,” Julius said forcefully. “All the spirits and mages have assured me that the magical fallout is dropping, and there’s a lot of Algonquin left to drink. It doesn’t matter if we only stop him from getting one bucket’s worth of her water. So long as we keep that last gallon safe, the Nameless End can’t fully take over Algonquin, and we still have a shot.”
He hoped, anyway. This was Marci’s plan, and he trusted her with his life, but even as he sold her strategy to the others, something about it still didn’t sit right with Julius. No matter which way you cut the problem, Algonquin was always the one at the heart of it, and yet she was the one factor everyone seemed happy to ignore. Even Marci’s solution was only to banish her magic. It didn’t touch on the spirit herself. Considering Algonquin’s despair was the cause of this entire crisis, that felt like a mistake. But while Julius was torn, none of the other dragons suffered his misgivings.
