The emperor held up his hand, silencing her, but his eyes never left Chelsie. “What is she talking about?”
Chelsie took a shuddering breath. Again, though, she couldn’t seem to find the words, and again, the empress took her chance.
“She was pregnant,” the old dragoness said. “That’s why she ran, and it’s why she wouldn’t accept your forgiveness just now. Even she knows there can be no pardon for this crime. Shestoleyour children, my emperor. She lied to you and secreted them away to Bethesda’s mountain in the Americas, where they lived as Bethesda’s Shame.” She pointed her cane at Fredrick. “Your son works as Julius Heartstriker’s servant. Youreldestson.”
“No,” the Qilin said, taking a step back. “That can’t be true.”
“It is true,” the empress said firmly. “Look on him, great emperor, and see for yourself. See with your own eyes what she has taken from us.”
She pointed her cane at Fredrick until, at last, the Qilin dragged his eyes away from Chelsie and turned to face him. Fredrick stared right back, his golden eyes locked on his father’s. Face to face like this, golden eye to eye, it was impossible not to notice how alike they looked. You’d have to be blind not to see the family resemblance, but the emperor seemed determined to try as he turned to face Chelsie once again.
“Is it true?”
She lowered her head and said nothing, which only made him angrier.
“Is he your son, Chelsie?”
Everyone was looking at her now, but despite the naked fear on her downturned face, her voice was clear when she said, “He is.”
“But he can’t be,” the Qilin said desperately. “I’m still alive. There’s only ever one Qilin.” He lurched forward, grabbing Chelsie’s shoulders in his hands. “Tell me you’re lying! Tell me he’s not—”
“I can’t!” Chelsie yelled at him, her head coming up at last. “I can’t lie anymore, Xian. Fredrick is my son, the first of my clutch.” She took a deep breath. “And yours.”
The whole world fell silent. There were no cars on the Skyways, no people on the street or noises from the city. Even the river behind went still as it waited for the Golden Emperor to realize what this meant.
“No,” he said softly, releasing Chelsie’s shoulders as he stumbled away. “No.”
“Yes,” the Empress Mother said, turning to glare at Chelsie with pure, naked hate. “Our line is destroyed. The work of generations, a hundred thousand years of magic,gone. You are now the last Golden Emperor.” She bared her yellowed teeth. “And it’s all her fault.”
That was going too far, but Julius didn’t get a chance to come to his sister’s defense. The Qilin was already falling to his knees on the broken street, and as he landed, a tsunami of dragon magic rose to meet him. It was the same pressure Julius had felt before at the mountain, but exponentially bigger, and growing by the second. Then, just when he was sure it couldn’t get any worse, the spiking pressure snapped, and it did.
From the moment the Qilin arrived at the mountain, Julius had been warned over and over of what could happen if the emperor got upset. He’d thought he’d understood the danger. He even thought he’d experienced it for himself. It wasn’t until now, when it was far too late, that Julius finally realized he’d had no idea at all. There was nothing—no magic, dragon or otherwise, no single force he’d ever felt—that could have prepared him for the tidal wave of misfortune that crashed into them as the Qilin’s magic crashed.
It wasn’t just that the ground shook—it washowit shook, twisting and moving exactly as needed to hit each tiny weakness in the Skyway supports’ earthquake-ready joints. Even then, the supports didn’t merely break. They crumbled like rotten wood, falling away from their steel cores in huge chunks that crashed to the ground like boulders ahead of a landslide.
With nothing left to support them, the Skyway bridges began to buckle next, the giant slabs that supported the buildings, sidewalks, and roads of the DFZ’s famous upper tier cracking like plates before sliding into the city below. They would have slid right down onto Julius’s head, but while he was transfixed by the collapse going on above him, other dragons had better instincts. By the time Julius realized he should probably run, Chelsie was already screaming.
“Go!”
She crashed into him like a train, knocking him out of the way seconds before a garbage-truck-sized chunk of Skyway landed where he’d been standing. And that was just the first. Whole buildings were collapsing now as the Skyways gave out beneath them. This time, though, Julius didn’t stay to watch. He was already running, feet barely touching the ground as he raced across the empty lot toward the safety of the river, diving headfirst into the swift water beyond the stony bank.
The cold of the November water nearly shocked him numb. For a terrifying moment, he was tumbling blind in the dark current, and then his feet found the muddy ground. He pushed up, breaking the surface with a gasp. When he turned to see what had happened to the others, though, all he saw was dust.
The empty lot was gone, crushed completely beneath a block-sized chunk of the upper city. For several heart-stopping seconds, Julius was sure everyone else had been crushed as well, and then he saw Fredrick burst out of the water several feet downstream. Chelsie was right beside him and already swimming for the bank. Bob, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Now that he thought about it, Julius realized he hadn’t seen the seer since the Empress Mother had appeared. Whether he’d sneaked off while everyone was distracted or fled during the crash, though, Julius didn’t know and didn’t have time to find out. Bob could look out for himself. Right now, Julius was far more concerned about the Qilin.
Given that he’d been directly below the Skyway when it fell, he should have been crushed with everything else. That would have been the logical outcome, but logic didn’t seem to touch the Qilin any more than dirt did. For all the chaos all around him, the Golden Emperor was perfectly safe beneath a slab of roadway that, miraculously, had landed sideways, plunging into the dirt at the perfect angle to create a thick shelter of cement and asphalt above his head. His mother was there as well, smiling at the Heartstrikers’ misfortune with the golden-eyed girl in her arms. A smile that only grew wider when Chelsie pulled herself out of the river.
“Youhag!” she snarled, lunging at the empress. “Give me my daughter!”
The scream was still leaving her throat when a car-sized boulder that had been hanging from the ledge above them by a thread of steel rebar suddenly broke free. Chelsie dodged being crushed, just barely, but the force of the falling rock’s impact knocked her right back into the river.
“You deserved that,” the Empress Mother said when Chelsie came back up with a gasp. “All of you.” She turned her red glare on Fredrick, who was helping Julius to the bank. “Your horrible family has destroyed everything I sacrificed for centuries to build. Thanks to you, the line of the Qilin is broken, and this world is forever diminished.” She lifted her chin haughtily. “You deserve everything you get.”
Chelsie bared her dripping teeth, but Julius grabbed her shoulder. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because she took my child!” his sister roared.
