Chapter 11
Finding Chelsie was never an easy task. Even when you thought you knew where she was, she had a bad habit of vanishing whenever your back was turned. This was why, even though he’d just left her in Bob’s room, the first thing Julius did when he reached the mountain was pull out his phone to message Fredrick.
And was immediately rewarded. He’d barely hit send before Fredrick messaged back that he and Chelsie had retreated down the mountain to her room in the basement. Thanking him profusely for saving him a long and pointless climb, Julius started down the stairs, using his years of experience in hiding from his family to avoid all the emperor’s dragons and servants as he made his way down to Chelsie’s lair in the mountain’s roots.
Fredrick was waiting when he got there, camped out on the narrow couch in Chelsie’s cramped library where Marci had slept the one night she’d spent here. He rose to his feet when Julius walked in, his false-green eyes worried. “What’s wrong?”
Julius didn’t have time to explain Ian’s ultimatum, so he got right to the point. “Where’s Chelsie?”
“Asleep,” the F replied, tilting his head toward the closed bedroom door. “And before you ask, I wouldn’t suggest waking her.”
“But this is an emergency.”
“So is this,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Chelsie’s a bad sleeper on her good days. Exhausted as she is right now, she’ll take your head off before she realizes what’s going on.”
Julius scowled. Fredrick was always so dry, it was impossible to tell if he was being serious or not. Given that Chelsie herself had warned Julius multiple times never to wake her up, though, he was leaning toward not. He was trying to come up with a plan that would let him get to Chelsie while still keeping his head on his shoulders when Fredrick threw something at him.
Julius caught it by instinct. “What’s this?” he asked, examining the object in his hand, which looked and felt like a small brick that had been shrink-wrapped in white plastic.
“Emergency rations,” the F replied apologetically. “I know it’s not ideal, but the Golden Emperor’s servants have taken over all the kitchens. After what happened with the Empress Mother, I don’t trust them not to try and poison us, so I dug into Chelsie’s stash.”
He wasn’t surprised at all to hear Chelsie had a stash of emergency rations. She probably had ten years’ worth of everything a dragon could need squirreled away down here. Given the dust in the plastic’s wrinkles, the ration in his hands was probably older than him. Unappetizing as that was, though, now that the subject of food had been broached, his stomach was pointedly reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and freeze-dried food was a lot better than nothing.
“Thank you,” he said, ripping the plastic open.
Fredrick smiled. “I believe that’s my line. It seems I owe you another debt. Thanks to you, my clutch has a history for the first time in our lives. After six centuries of being Bethesda’s shame, we have a lineage with a mother and a father we can be proud of.”
“That wasn’t me,” Julius said, biting a chunk off of the tasteless, rock-hard ration. “You’d already figured out all the dots. I just happened to be there when they connected.”
“But you were the one who convinced Chelsie to own them,” Fredrick countered. “You got her to talk, which is more than I could ever do. You’d already freed us from being servants, but with this, you’ve freed us from Heartstriker as well, and for that we can’t thank you enough.”
He said this with absolute sincerity, but Julius was staring at him in horror. “Wait,” he said at last, swallowing the hard lump of ration. “What do you mean ‘freed us from Heartstriker?’ You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Why would we stay?” Fredrick asked, his not-quite-green eyes staring straight into Julius’s. “We were servants in this mountain for six centuries. To most Heartstrikers, that’s what we’ll always be. We were already dreading the fight for our rightful position as an upper-alphabet clutch, especially since we suspected we weren’t actually Bethesda’s children, but now we don’t have to worry about any of that. Thanks to you, we’re no longer the lowest clutch in Heartstriker, but the first clutch of the Golden Emperor.”
“We still don’t know how he’s going to take that.”
“It doesn’t matter how he takes it. It’s the truth. Even if he’s furious, unless the Qilin is ready to disavow us—and I think you’ll agree the dragon we met this morning is far too honorable for that—he has no choice but to welcome us as his children.” Fredrick broke into an excited grin. “Don’t you see? In one stroke, we’ve gone from servants in our own home to royalty. The children of an emperor! Do you know how much that will mean to my brothers and sisters? How much it means to me?”
Julius did now. The truth had come out so quickly earlier, he hadn’t stopped to think about what these revelations would mean to the dragons of F-clutch. He hadn’t even considered the idea that they would leave, which was ridiculous in hindsight. Who’d want to stay and fight for recognition in the clan that had always treated them like trash when they could have a new start as the children of an emperor? Assuming the backlash of the Qilin’s luck didn’t kill them all, Julius could easily see Xian being over the moon to discover he had children. Once he got over his shock, he’d probably welcome all of them with open arms, and to his shame, Julius wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
He should have been delighted. Ever since he’d learned the truth of their situation, he’d been fighting to free F-clutch, and what better future could he wish for them than one full of love and stability? At the same time, though, Julius had been really been looking forward to having at least one faction of Heartstrikers who didn’t view him only as a tool. He was also afraid of losing Chelsie, because if the Fs left, she would too, and why not? With the exception of Julius, their entire family hated and feared her. Without her children, she had no reason to stay, and selfish as it was, that made Julius incredibly sad. All of it did. Even if the cause was happy this time, he was so sick of losing the ones he cared about.
He was still trying to work through that tangled knot of emotion when his phone went off in his pocket. Loudly, which was strange since he distinctly remembered muting it. Once the ringtone made it past the first three notes, though, he understood why. His phone was playing the Imperial March from Star Wars, which was the ringtone he’d assigned to the Unknown Caller.
Bob’s number.
Julius threw his half-eaten ration on the ground, grabbing the phone from his pocket as fast as he could. When the AR display popped up, though, he saw that it wasn’t actually a phone call. Bob had sent him a picture. A selfie, to be precise, and a bad one. His face was hardly in the shot at all. Instead, the focus was on the landscape behind him, which was one Julius realized with a jolt that he recognized. Bob was standing in the dirt lot under the Chance Street Skyway, just a couple blocks away from Julius and Marci’s old house in the DFZ. He was racking his brain over why Bob would send him a picture like this when the phone was snatched out of his hand.
There’d been no sound of a door opening, no footsteps on the stone floor, but given whose rooms they were in, Julius wasn’t surprised at all when he looked up to see Chelsie standing next to him with his phone clutched in her hands and a killer’s terrifying snarl on her face.
“Found you,” she growled.
“Chelsie, wait,” Julius said. “Let’s not jump to—”
But when had she ever listened? His phone clattered to the ground, flung from Chelsie’s hands as she lashed out at the empty space between them. Dragon magic followed the movement like a razor, slicing the air open like a claw through blubber before she dove into the gap, disappearing right in front of his eyes.
“No!”
Julius lunged after her, but all his reaching hands caught was empty air as the rip snapped shut again. When it was obvious she was really gone, he whirled on Fredrick. “What was that?”
“She teleported,” the F said grimly.
Julius had figured out that much already. “But how? She doesn’t have her Fang.” She hadn’t been carrying a weapon at all. Julius didn’t even think she’d been wearing shoes.
“She doesn’t need the Fang anymore,” Fredrick said proudly. “In case you couldn’t tell from all the wards she put on this place, my mother’s not a bad mage, and she used that Fang for six hundred years. That’s more than enough time for any reasonably clever dragon to reverse-engineer a spell.”
Julius still couldn’t believe it. “You mean Chelsie’s been able to teleport on her own this entire time?”
“How else do you think she manages to be everywhere at once?” Fredrick said with a shrug.
That would explain a few things. “So she can teleport at will to anyone in the family?”
“No, that part was the sword,” Fredrick said. “As a relic of the Quetzalcoatl, the Defender’s Fang is directly connected to Heartstriker’s clan magic, and all of us through it. On her own, Chelsie can only cut to places she knows, and she can’t transport others. Without a blade, the holes she cuts are only big enough for her, and only if she’s fast.”
“But she could teleport to the DFZ?”
“Easily,” Fredrick said. “But don’t worry. Sword or no sword, she won’t lose to Bob.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Julius said, reaching down to grab his phone off the floor.
The seer’s picture was still on the screen. Julius flicked it away, pulling up his news feed instead. Sure enough, the ongoing evacuation of the DFZ was the top story on every network, followed by warnings about the unprecedented elevation of ambient magic levels.
“This is bad,” he muttered, turning the screen so Fredrick could see. “I don’t know what or why, but something terrible is about to happen, and Bob just lured Chelsie right into the middle of it.”
Fredrick’s face went pale. “When did this happen?”
“Just a few hours ago,” Julius said. “I only found out because Ian came home, but the whole world’s going nuts about it. That’s why this is all so suspicious. Bob’s been avoiding Chelsie since I freed her. Now he pops up just in time to lure her into the heart of the biggest magical upheaval since the night it first returned? There’s no way that’s coincidence.”
“Nothing with seers is coincidence,” Fredrick agreed. “But what’s he trying to do?”
“I don’t know,” Julius said angrily. “But I’m pissed he used me to do it.” He scowled at the terrifying headlines calling for people all over North America to seek shelter. “We have to stop him. This is too dangerous. I don’t care if he can see the future. If he plays chicken with whatever Algonquin’s doing, he’s going to get someone killed.”
“He already got someone killed,” Fredrick reminded him.
“That’s why I need to go,” Julius said, whirling toward the door. “I already lost Amelia to this. I’m not losing anyone else.”
He was halfway down the hall before Fredrick grabbed his sleeve. “Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t.”
“What?”
“The Black Reach said the best way to foil Bob’s plans was not to do what he asked,” Fredrick explained. “He may not be directly giving you orders, but Bob sent that picture to your phone, not Chelsie’s. He has all of her numbers, even the secret ones. He could have easily sent that picture to her directly. The fact that he didn’t means he must have wanted both of you to know that he was in the DFZ.”
Julius stared at him in confusion. “How do you know what the Black Reach told me?”
“The door was very thin,” Fredrick said with a shrug.
“You eavesdropped on me?”
“How am I supposed to serve you if I don’t know what’s going on?” Fredrick snapped. “Of course I listened. Better than you did, apparently, because I remember that the last thing the Black Reach said was ‘See you in Detroit.’ He knew Bob would lure you there, which tells me that you shouldn’t go.”
That was a good point. Still. “I can’t let Chelsie go into that alone,” Julius said. “The DFZ’s more dangerous than ever, and she’s too angry to make good decisions. She needs our help, and if Bob really is headed down some kind of dark path, then so does he. We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“I’m not saying we should,” Fredrick said. “But you should have more faith in Chelsie’s ability to take care of herself. Brohomir is older and a seer, but he’s never been a fighter, and he stole her egg. Chelsie is Heartstriker’s most deadly dragon, and I’ve never seen her as angry about anything as she’s been over this. If Bob gets in her way, she’ll gut him like a fish, and why would he risk that?”
“Why would he do any of this?”
“To lure you!” Fredrick yelled, grabbing Julius by the shoulders. “Haven’t you been listening? You’re his focus. Whatever power play Bob’s making, you are undoubtedly at the heart of it, which is exactly why you need to stay away from this. He’s not luring Chelsie. He’s using her to lure you, and if you believe the Black Reach, then the only way to stop this is not to go.”
That argument made a tremendous amount of sense, but Julius couldn’t follow it. The image of Amelia’s ashes piled on her divan was burned into his brain, and she was the one Bob had loved most. If he was willing to kill the sister who’d been a mother to him for his plots, what would he do to Chelsie? He’d known everything, and he’d been perfectly fine with leaving Chelsie and her children in slavery for six hundred years. Surely he wouldn’t stop at killing her now if that was what it took, and as good as Chelsie was, no one could beat a seer.
“I have to go.”
Fredrick bared his teeth. “Why?”
“Because I’m not losing anyone else!” Julius cried, yanking out of his grip. “It doesn’t matter who wins. If Chelsie fights Bob, we lose.” And he was so sick of losing. He had no idea what choice was right, what he should do. It was all just plots inside of plots, spiraling down forever. Bob was obviously pulling his strings, but Julius was too angry to fight it. He was sick of death, sick of tragedy. If Bob was counting on him to try and save Chelsie, then Julius was going to play right into his hands. He’d lost too much to do anything else.
“We’re going to the DFZ.”
Fredrick growled deep in his throat, but Julius didn’t give him a chance. “My mind’s made up,” he said as he marched out of Chelsie’s bunker. “I know this is a seer plot, I know I’m falling for it, and I don’t care. I won’t sit here and play the long game while my family kills each other.”
“But what are you going to do?” Fredrick asked, running after him. “Chelsie can teleport. We can’t. Even if Ian’s brought the suborbital jet back, flying to the DFZ will take—”
“I know,” Julius said, picking up speed as he ran down the Fs’ hall and into the stone tunnel that led to the stairs. “But I’m not going to fly.”
“Then where are you going?”
Julius flashed his nephew a grim smile over his shoulder. “To see if I can’t get lucky.”
Fredrick’s face paled, but if he had more to say, Julius didn’t hear it. He was already bounding up the spiral service stairs toward the top of the mountain.
***
Though knowingly walking into a seer’s trap might suggest otherwise, Julius wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly how big a bullet he’d dodged when Chelsie had saved him and Fredrick in the hallway. So, since it wasn’t likely the Empress Mother had changed her mind about killing him in the last hour, Julius decided to try the diplomatic approach: grabbing one of the emperor’s human servants off the stairwell and calmly but firmly refusing to let the man go until he called Lao.
“You have a lot of nerve,” the emperor’s cousin growled over the phone when Julius identified himself. “Can you even comprehend how much trouble you’ve caused?”
“Nothing like what’s going to happen if you don’t let me talk to him.”
He didn’t even realize how terrible that sounded until Lao snarled, “Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s an emergency,” Julius said quickly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve got some information he’s going to want to know, but it’s not the sort of thing I can explain over the phone, and I can’t go up there with the empress trying to kill me. I just need you to let me talk to him for five minutes without dying.”
The blue dragon sighed, and then there was a click as he put Julius on hold. Thirty seconds later, Lao’s voice snapped back into his ear. “Come up.”
“What about the empress?” Julius asked nervously. “Can you send us an escort to make sure we don’t get beheaded on the way or—”
“You don’t have to worry about the Empress Mother,” Lao said, his voice hurried. “Just get up here. The Qilin will see you in the throne room.”
He hung up after that, leaving Julius staring at the terrified servant’s phone in confusion. “What was that about?”
“A trap would be my guess,” Fredrick said, looking up the open stairwell. “But at this point, what isn’t?”
“No way to know except to try,” Julius said, putting a hand on the place where his sword should have been before remembering he’d left it upstairs. One more reason to go back. “Let’s go see how far we can get.”
Fredrick scowled, but he followed Julius up to the very top, where the spiral servant stair discreetly ended behind the elevator at the end of the now-empty Hall of Heads. When the hidden doorway slid open, though, two red dragons were waiting on the other side.
Julius froze, eyes going wide in surprise and fear. Fredrick was far more sensible. He grabbed the door, yanking Julius back into the stairwell as he slammed it shut on their enemies. He was about to lock it when one of the red dragons ripped the sliding door off its track and threw it aside. Julius was preparing to jump down the stairwell’s open center to get away when Lao pushed his way to the front.
“It’s all right,” the blue dragon said quickly, scowling at his fellow imperial dragons. “The clans of Mongolia obey the emperor.”
The two red dragons nodded, though they still looked like they were waiting for a reason to rip Julius and Fredrick apart as Lao ushered the Heartstrikers back into the hallway.
“Come,” he said, walking toward the throne room at a speed mortals would have called a run. “The emperor is not accustomed to being kept waiting.”
Julius didn’t have to be told twice. He sprinted after Lao, blowing past the two red dragons with Fredrick right behind him, reaching Lao’s side just as he threw open the throne room doors to reveal the Qilin sitting alone on the white-jade half of the two-seated golden dragon throne.
The moment he saw the emperor, Julius knew it was bad. Even with his veil down again, the angry hunch of the emperor’s shoulders said volumes. He actually looked even more upset than he had when he’d told Julius to leave, clutching the engraved arms of his throne as he waited impatiently for Julius and Fredrick to take their places.
“Thank you for seeing us again so quickly,” Julius said.
“Lao said it was an emergency,” the Qilin said, his deep voice clipped and sharp. “Though I should warn you, this is not a good time. My mother has gone missing, and I am anxious to find her.”
Julius blinked. “Missing? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” the Qilin snarled. “You think I don’t know where my empress is?”
Considering that was the entire problem, obviously not, but Julius didn’t have to say a word. The Qilin just growled and moved on, leaning hard on one arm of his throne as he tried to explain. “I don’t keep tabs on her specifically, but my mother has always been the one tied closest to my luck. Whenever I wanted her, she would appear, even before I knew I desired her company. This time, though, she hasn’t.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Julius said. “I just saw her here an hour ago.” And really, how far could the old dragon hobble in an hour? “But this is urgent. I—”
“You don’t understand,” the emperor snapped. “My mother needs me. She sacrificed nearly all of her fire to give me life, and what little she has left relies on my luck to remain stable. If we were safe at home, it wouldn’t be an issue, but in enemy territory, as I am now—”
The mountain rumbled, and the emperor stopped, his chest rising as he took a deep breath.
“Again, not a good time,” he said when the shaking finally stopped. “Unless you’re here to tell me where my mother is, it’s probably better if you deal with your emergency on your own.”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” Julius said, taking a deep breath of his own. Here went nothing. “We need your help.”
The Qilin laughed. A deep, mirthless sound. “You can’t be serious.”
Julius stared hard into the golden veil so the emperor could see just how serious he was. “Chelsie’s in trouble.”
The emperor slumped back in his throne. “Of course she is,” he growled, pressing his hand hard against his veiled forehead. “What else would she be? But you already know how to solve this problem. Surrender, embrace my rule, and—”
“I would at this point if I thought it’d do any good,” Julius said. “But this is no longer something we can solve with broad strokes. My sister’s gone to the DFZ, and I’m afraid—”
“The DFZ?” The emperor’s head shot up. “But terrible things are happening there.”
“I know,” Julius said, frustrated. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“Why did you let her go?” the Qilin snapped back.
“I don’t let Chelsie go anywhere,” Julius reminded him. “She’s free to do what she wants now, and she never listened to me even when she wasn’t. Anyway, she’s not there because she likes it. She was lured by Bob.”
The emperor tilted his head in confusion. “Bob?”
“He means Brohomir, Great Seer of the Heartstrikers,” Fredrick explained quickly. “Bob is his family name.”
The golden dragon seemed baffled. “Why would one of the three seers want to be called—” He shook his head. “You know, never mind. It’s not important. Why is Chelsie chasing your seer?”
Julius bit his lip. That was as good an opening as he was ever likely to get to tell the Qilin that Chelsie was chasing down the last remaining egg of the clutch she’d made with him, but the timing couldn’t be more wrong. The Qilin was already extremely upset, and while the truth would certainly get him moving, telling him the real reason Chelsie had run all those centuries ago now might be the straw that broke the dragon’s back. It certainly didn’t play to Julius’s plan to break things gently, so he settled for a half-truth instead.
“Bob stole something very precious to her,” he said, keeping his voice earnest and even. “He knows she’ll stop at nothing to get it back, and he used that to get her to chase him into the DFZ. Why or for what purpose, I don’t know, but the DFZ is the last place any dragon should be right now.”
“I don’t disagree,” the Golden Emperor said. “But what you’re saying makes no sense. Brohomir is the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers. Why would he work against you?”
“Again, I don’t know,” Julius said honestly. “There’s a good chance this is all part of his master plan for our clan, but that’s actually what scares me the most. He might be our seer, but I’ve seen Bob in action enough now to know that his idea of acceptable sacrifices doesn’t match mine. He’s already killed one of my sisters for his plots. I’m worried Chelsie is next.”
Saying those words out loud felt like betrayal. No one was more aware of just how much he owed to Bob than Julius was. The changes he’d made in his family, the battles he’d won, the fact that he was still alive to keep pushing—it was all thanks to his brother. That constant support had earned the seer Julius’s blind faith in a lot of things, but when Bob had asked him not to free Chelsie, Julius had finally seen the line that divided them. That had always divided them. The same line Bob himself had warned him about every time he’d reminded Julius that he wasn’t nice.
“When I overthrew my mother, I swore I’d never let anyone in my family be thrown away ever again. That applies to Bob, too. Even if this is all part of a plot to make a better future, what’s the point if we have to throw away our family to get there? Even if I’m wrong about Bob, Chelsie’s mad enough to kill him right now, and I can’t let that happen. I don’t want anyone to die, especially not to another Heartstriker, so please. Please.”
He clasped his hands in front of him. “You already came all this way for Chelsie’s sake. Help me save her now. Lend me your luck, your magic, your fastest jet—anything. Just help me do something before it’s too late.”
He was begging by the time he finished, pleading so shamelessly, any proper dragon would have been appalled. But Julius had never been a proper dragon, and he’d never had much use for pride. If it would have gotten him to the DFZ faster, he would have crawled on his belly. He was about to try it when the Emperor heaved a long sigh, reaching up to remove the golden veil from his face so he could look Julius eye to golden eye. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Julius demanded.
“Because it’s not my problem,” the Qilin said calmly, rising from his throne. “If you want to surrender, then we can—”
“How is this not your problem?” Julius cried over him. “Chelsie’s the entire reason you came here! How can you abandon her?”
“Because I swore I wouldn’t do this again!”
The emperor’s shout was still echoing when the mountain began to shake again. Unlike before, though, this was no tremor. The throne room rocked under Julius’s feet, splitting open the patched cracks left in the floor from the battle with Estella. Cracks spread through the ceiling as well, setting the empty chains that had once held the Quetzalcoatl’s skull swinging wildly. One actually snapped, crashing to the floor directly behind Julius. If he hadn’t been so quick on his feet, the giant metal chain would have landed on top of him. He was on the watch for more projectiles when the shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and he looked up to see the Qilin hunched over on his throne with his head clutched in his hands.
He was so still, he looked even more like a statue than the golden dragon he was sitting on. He didn’t even seem to be breathing when the emperor suddenly slumped over the arm of his throne, his whole body shaking.
“You should leave,” he panted, his perfect face pale and beaded with sweat. “I’m not…I am not calm right now.”
“That’s okay,” Julius said. “I’m not calm, either.”
“So I’ve noticed,” the emperor said. “But when you get upset, you don’t do this.” He waved his hand angrily at the broken floor, but Julius just kept shaking his head.
“I don’t care if you wreck the throne room. I just want your help.”
“How do you not understand yet?” the emperor cried, shooting to his feet. “I want to help you. If I were anyone else, we would already be on the way, but I’m not. I’m the Qilin, the good fortune that upholds the Golden Empire and the bad fortune that will destroy it if I fail in my duty. I learned that the hard way because of your sister once before. I will not put my empire through it a second time.”
“Then why are you here?” Julius demanded. “Why are you bothering us at all if you won’t help Chelsie when she needs it?”
“Because I can’t!” Xian shouted, his golden eyes flashing with a terrible light. “I came here because I thought that I’d found a way to cheat the system. I thought if I conquered Heartstriker and put Chelsie under my luck, I could keep her safe without having to…without being weak. But obviously I can’t.” His eyes flicked to the damaged floor again, and he sank back down to his throne in defeat. “I should never have come.”
“But you did,” Julius growled, glaring at him. “You came here. You conquered our clan. You put this pressure on us. You did all of that because you didn’t want Chelsie to die. Now she’s in real trouble, and you’re going to turn your back on her because you’re afraid?”
The emperor’s jaw clenched. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should,” the Qilin growled, glaring down with a rage Julius had never seen. “I’ve made no secret of the love I have for your sister, but an emperor’s life does not belong to him alone. The last time I was selfish, my empire paid the price. Now you’re telling me to do it again, and you have the nerve to question my sincerity when I tell you no?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “Because I don’t think you’re saying it to be a good emperor.” His eyes narrowed. “I think you’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared!” the Qilin cried. “You’ve seen what I can do!”
As if on cue, a large chunk of the damaged ceiling chose that moment to fall, crashing to the ground directly between them. Julius jumped out of the way with room to spare, but when he looked up again, the emperor was hunched over his throne, defeated.
“You see?” he said miserably, looking down at the rubble. “It’s always like this. Even when I’m calm, I’m afraid, because I know the moment I get upset, I’ll destroy everything. When your sister left me, we had earthquakes every day for a year. All of Nanjing burned down. Twice. My maternal aunt, Lao’s mother, died of a heart attack after she mentioned Chelsie’s name in my presence. Dragons don’t even get heart attacks, but I gave her one. I caused it all, disaster after disaster, misery after misery, on and on and on.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t risk that again. You’re right when you say I love your sister, but that’s the problem. Love brought me lower than anything else before or since, and when the Qilin goes down, he takes everything else with him. That’s the truth of being the Golden Emperor, and it’s why I can’t help you now. Because no matter how much I love her, I can’t fix this problem, and I have no right to drag my empire through the mud with me again.”
He said that like it was the end. Like there was nothing more that could ever be said, but Julius shook his head. “You’re wrong.”
The emperor looked up. “What?”
“You’re wrong,” Julius repeated sadly. “Everyone calls you a luck dragon, but the more I learn about you, the more I realize you’re actually the opposite. You’re not lucky. You’re cursed, in a lot of ways. Your whole empire is built around capitalizing on your magical good fortune, but that fortune’s only good when you’re happy, and no one’s happy all the time. You go on and on about how it’s your responsibility to stay serene and bring good fortune to your people while overlooking the fact that it is utterly irresponsible to bet the fate of twenty dragon clans, hundreds of millions of humans, all the land in China, and now Heartstriker on the happiness of one dragon. Especially since you don’t even seem to be getting your fair share of the deal.”
“That’s absurd,” the Qilin said dismissively.
“Is it?” Julius crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. “When was the last time you were actually happy?”
The emperor’s jaw tightened. “I endeavor always to maintain the serenity—”
Julius held up his hand. “I didn’t say serenity. I asked about happiness. When was the last time you actually enjoyed being you?”
“I can’t remember,” the Qilin said irritably. “But that’s not the point.”
“It’s the entire point!” Julius cried. “You’ve been telling me since you got here about how it’s your responsibility to bring good fortune. That your all-powerful luck would rain down blessings and protection on us if we’d only agree to join you. But that’s not what I’ve observed. From what I’ve seen so far of how your empire runs, it’s mostly about avoiding the consequences of your unhappiness.”
He pointed over his shoulder at the closed throne room doors, where Lao was presumably still waiting on the other side. “Your cousin, your mother, the ones that you should trust most, they all treat you like you’re a living nuclear weapon, and they’re right. You’re a disaster waiting to happen, because no one’s life, not even the Golden Emperor’s, is devoid of suffering. Being alive means being unhappy at points, and yet the entire Golden Empire is based on the idea that you’re somehow exempt from that. You’ve built your entire civilization on a fallacy! The very concept of an eternally serene Golden Emperor sets an impossible standard, and you’ve bought into it. You tell yourself you’re just being responsible, just staying calm, but the reality is that you’ve become so afraid of your own magic, you’d rather let the love of your life go into danger alone than risk making yourself upset.”
His words echoed off the cracked walls, but the Qilin said nothing. Julius wasn’t even sure if the emperor was listening anymore. He just sat there on his throne with his head down and his fists clenched, and the longer Julius watched him, the more his heart went out to the Qilin.
“I know how tempting it is to give up your own happiness for others,” he said gently. “Believe me, I know, but that kind of thing only goes so far. It might seem good and noble, but there’s a point where self-sacrifice becomes a liability, not a gift, and I think you passed that a long time ago. You’ve spent so much of yourself trying to be a good emperor, it’s left you with nothing of your own. No happiness. No hope. No love. Since you arrived, I’ve heard the story of how you’re the most powerful Qilin ever born over and over, but what’s the point of all that power if you can’t use it to save the one you love?”
“Because it isn’t my power,” the Qilin said, looking up at last. “I have responsibilities. Dragons who depend on—”
“You have dragons who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves,” Julius said. “They’re dragons! Every other clan in the world survives without the Qilin’s luck. It’s perfectly possible to live a long, fulfilling life without the blessing of a magical emperor, so maybe it’s time you stopped worrying so much about your dragons and started worrying about you. What do you want? What makes you happy? And before you dismiss that as selfish, I think there’s a lot of evidence that a happy Qilin would do his empire a lot more good than one that’s merely calm. If nothing else, whatever damage you cause now by going to save Chelsie will be minuscule compared to the fallout of knowing you could have saved her but were too afraid to try.”
The Qilin closed his eyes with a sigh. “What you say makes sense,” he admitted. “But I don’t know if that’s because you’re actually right, or because I want to believe you so badly, I’m willing to twist logic.”
“Why can’t it be both?” Julius asked. “Not to sound like a stereotypical Heartstriker, but what’s the good of being emperor if you can’t do what you want now and again?”
Pale as he still was, Xian actually smiled a tiny bit at that. “I lied to you before,” he said. “When you asked about the last time I was happy. I do remember. It was when I was with your sister. With Chelsie.” His smile widened. “She also wasn’t afraid to argue with me.”
Julius smiled back. “Heartstrikers aren’t known for being meek.”
“No, you’re not,” the emperor agreed. “But that’s what I liked about her. She wasn’t afraid of upsetting me, wasn’t afraid of anything. I used to think that was reckless. Now, I wish I’d been reckless, too. How much of this could have been avoided if I’d acted differently?”
“We’ll never know,” Julius said. “But it’s not too late. Before Bob lured her out, I’d convinced her to meet you.”
The emperor’s eyes went wide. “You did?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been bottling things up for centuries,” Julius said smugly. “She wanted to talk, or at least make a start, but then Bob called and everything went wrong. She teleported to the DFZ, and—”
“She can teleport?” the Qilin said, amazed.
“It was news to me, too,” Julius assured him. “But that’s not important. What matters is that Chelsie’s alone with Bob right now in the middle of whatever mess is going on in the DFZ. If you want to get a chance to talk to her, then we need to get there, too. Before things get worse.”
The Qilin lowered his eyes. He was clearly on the edge, but Julius could almost see the centuries of fear hanging from his neck like millstones, all the years of hard lessons that had made him a prisoner of his uncontrollable luck. If things had been less dire, he would have stepped back and left the emperor to figure it out on his own. There was no time, though, so Julius decided to give it one final push.
“If you weren’t a luck dragon, would you go to her?”
“Of course,” the emperor said without hesitation. “But—”
“Then do it,” Julius said, holding out his hand. “Your luck is supposed to make you happy, right? Make it earn its keep. Come with me. Use that luck to find and save Chelsie. Let it do something good for a change before we miss our chance forever.”
That must have been the final straw. Like a dam breaking, the Qilin let out a long sigh, and the tension that had been hanging over the room since the first earthquake melted away. “All right,” he whispered, stepping down from his throne to take Julius’s hand. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Julius said, gripping the Qilin’s elegant fingers.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Xian said nervously, pulling back his hand to take off his heavy outer robe in favor of the lighter and more mobile, though still very golden, inner one. “I just hope she doesn’t run again as soon as she sees me.”
“She won’t,” Julius promised, secretly hoping that was true. “So any thoughts on how we can get to the DFZ in a hurry?”
The Qilin froze. “I thought you had a plan.”
“Getting your help was the plan,” Julius said with a shrug. “You’re the walking miracle.”
The emperor muttered something under his breath in Chinese. “You do know I don’t control my luck?”
“But the things you want still tend to happen,” Julius reminded him. “And you want to save Chelsie, right?”
“More than anything,” the emperor said grimly. “Including, apparently, the safety of my clans.”
“And that’s why it’ll work,” Julius said quickly, before Xian could start talking himself back down into guilt. “If you want it, it will happen. All we have to do is wait and—”
A loud crash cut him off. Seconds later, a green dragon, one of the watchers who’d been perched on top of the mountain since the Golden Emperor’s arrival, came hurtling down past the open balcony with a jut of broken rock from the mountain’s peak still clutched in his claws. He righted himself quickly, but not before his snaking body crashed into the half-moon jut of stone that formed the balcony’s landing, snapping it clean off.
The crack echoed through the desert. Outside, the dragon grabbed the broken edge of the balcony and yanked himself back up, babbling what were clearly apologies and explanations in Chinese to his emperor. Xian dismissed the whole thing with a wave of his hand, sending the embarrassed dragon scrambling back up the mountain to his post.
“Did he slip?” Julius asked when he was gone.
“Ping doesn’t slip,” the emperor said. “The rock he was perching on broke beneath him.” And from his pained expression, Xian knew why. “We’ll repair the damage, of course. I just don’t understand why it happened. I’m actually calmer now than I’ve felt all day. I don’t know why my luck is still intent on breaking your mountain.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Julius said, breaking into a smile. “Look.”
He pointed at the balcony’s cracked edge. The falling dragon’s impact had broken the jutting slab neatly in two. But even a clean break puts pressure on the remaining stone. Though it hadn’t been hit directly, the surviving half of the broken balcony was still riddled with cracks, some of which were already crumbling. The biggest crack by far was right in the middle, a massive split that was getting wider by the second, and lying across it like a bridge over a canyon was Chelsie’s sword.
If Julius had had any lingering doubts this was the Qilin’s luck at work, what happened next would have buried them. The moment the emperor turned to look, the rock beneath Chelsie’s discarded Fang gave way, the cracked stone crumbling dramatically from both sides to drop the sword into the desert below. It had just started to fall when Fredrick darted forward, sprinting across the throne room just in time to snatch the sword to safety.
He jumped back the moment he had it, leaping off the damaged balcony seconds before the rest of it collapsed, the broken stones clattering down the mountain. Cringing at the near miss, Fredrick palmed Chelsie’s sword and backed away. He’d just gotten both feet back on the solid ground of the throne room floor when he looked back to see everyone staring at him.
“What?” he said defensively, clutching his mother’s unsheathed sword to his chest. “It’s an irreplaceable heirloom. I didn’t want it to fall.”
“Forget falling,” Julius said with a grin. “Fredrick, you’re holding a Fang of the Heartstriker!”
“So?” he said. “I’ve held it for Chelsie several times when she was injured.”
Julius stared at him in confusion. “You mean it never bit you?”
“No,” Fredrick said, looking nervously at the weapon in his hands. “Should it have?”
“Apparently not,” Julius said happily, turning back to the emperor. “I know how we’re getting to the DFZ.”
Fredrick’s face grew horrified as he realized what Julius meant. “No.”
“Fredrick—”
“No,” he said again, throwing the sword to the floor at his feet. “Absolutely not. I am not a Fang of the Heartstriker. I refuse.”
“But it’s already done,” Julius pointed out. “The Quetzalcoatl’s Fangs bite every hand except the one meant to hold them. If Chelsie’s Fang hasn’t bitten you, that means her sword’s already accepted you.”
“Well, it can find someone else,” Fredrick growled, carefully avoiding eye contact with the Qilin, who was watching the whole thing with rapt interest. “I thought I’d made it clear I want nothing more to do with this family.”
“But it’s your family, too,” Julius said. “Like it or not, Heartstriker blood runs in your veins, and that sword was made to protect it.” He pointed at Chelsie’s Fang. “That’s the Defender’s Fang, the blade that guards the clan. Bethesda made Chelsie use it in all the wrong ways for centuries. Even so, it never bit her hand, because no matter what horrors our mother made her do, Chelsie’s goal was always to protect us. That must be why it’s never bitten you either, because deep down, you and Chelsie are the same.”
“But I’m not like her,” Fredrick said frantically. “She’s the deadliest dragon in the clan. I don’t even know how to hold a sword properly. Until you unsealed us, I was forbidden from touching a weapon unless I was carrying it for someone else.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Julius said. “As I learned from my own sword, Fangs don’t care about your experience. They care about your intent. Your character, not your skills, and in that, you’re Chelsie’s logical successor. Just like her, you’ve always done whatever it took to keep your family safe, even when the only way you could do that was by helping me. You’re both protectors, and the Fang respects that, because it never belonged to Bethesda. It’s a product of the Quetzalcoatl’s magic, just like mine. That’s why she could never give Fangs out to her favorites, because they weren’t hers to give. The swords choose the hand that holds them, and that one’s chosen you.”
“But I can’t use it!” Fredrick cried. “I…I might have tried once, and nothing happened.”
“Because it was still serving Chelsie,” Julius said confidently, nodding at the weapon on the floor. “Try it again. I bet you’ll be surprised.”
Fredrick blew out an angry plume of smoke. But though he clearly wanted nothing more to do with anything Heartstriker, his eyes kept going back to his mother’s sword.
“What does it do?” the Qilin asked curiously, crouching down to peer at the bone-colored sword that curved like a tooth. “I’d heard Bethesda’s Shade had a special weapon, but I never found out what it did.”
“Normal sword stuff, mostly,” Julius said with a shrug. “But it can also teleport the wielder plus anyone they touch to any Heartstriker in the clan, no matter where they are.”
“Then why aren’t we using it?” the emperor said, shooting back to his feet. “That’s our answer.”
“Because if I accept it, I’ll be tied to this clan forever,” Fredrick growled. “And I don’t want that.”
“But you’re already tied to us,” Julius said gently. “I know Heartstriker hasn’t been kind to you, and you have every right to hate us, but this is more than just our way to Chelsie. I think that you getting this sword is a stroke of good fortune for everyone. Wielding a Fang of the Heartstriker automatically makes you one of the most influential dragons in our clan. It gives you a vote on the Fang’s seat of the Council, and when I step down in five years, you’ll have my vote to replace me, and probably all the other Fangs’ as well. If you take them, that would make you, an F, one of the three members of the Heartstriker Council.”
“That won’t happen,” Fredrick said.
“It absolutely will,” Julius said, smiling wider. “Think of it, Fredrick. You’d be a clan head! I know that doesn’t make up for the last six hundred years, but as part of the Council, you’ll have the power to change everything. You can help make a clan where what happened to you and your siblings can never, ever happen again. At the very least, that Fang gives you the power to help Chelsie, who never hesitated to help you.”
Fredrick growled low in his throat. “For a dragon who claims not to like debts, you certainly know how to leverage them,” he said bitterly. But angry as he clearly was, he still reached down, wrapping his hand around the Fang’s hilt.
Julius didn’t bother hiding his relieved breath as the F picked it up. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Fredrick growled, hefting the sword distastefully. “I owe you our freedom, but even that debt doesn’t go this far. I thought nothing did, but apparently I meant it when I said I’d do anything for Chelsie.” He shook his head again before turning back to Julius. “You’d better grab your own sword.”
Julius nodded and ran to the door to what had been his mother’s rooms, startling several servants as he raced down the hallway, grabbed his Fang, which was still right where he’d left it leaning against the wall by the sitting room door, and raced back. By the time he got back to the throne room, Fredrick was looking grimmer than ever.
“I hope your luck is running hot,” the F said as he held out his arm to the emperor.
“I’m still not sure what just happened,” the Qilin replied, shooting a questioning glance at Julius, who motioned for him to grab onto Fredrick. “But my luck appears to be going fine, so far as I can tell.”
“Good,” Fredrick said, waiting for Julius to latch on as well before he raised the sword over their heads. “Because I’ve never done this before.”
The emperor’s golden eyes went wide, but whatever he was about to say was lost in the sharp bite of dragon magic—Fredrick’s, not Chelsie’s—as the Fang came down, slicing cleanly through the air in front of them. That was all Julius had time to see before Fredrick dragged them through the hole, following Chelsie’s scent into an empty city on the edge of bursting.