The baby dragon chuffed, and Chelsie laughed again, but the happy look fell off her face when she looked up to see Xian watching the interaction with an expression that could have been wonder or terror.
“I have a daughter,” he whispered.
“Actually, you have several,” Chelsie said, lowering her eyes. “I thought this one was a dud, but apparently, Bob found a way to hatch her.” She heaved a long sigh. “I suppose I owe him for that.”
Considering what Bob had put them through, Julius didn’t think she owed him anything. He was about to say as much when Xian dropped to his knees in front of Chelsie.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s my fault. I was the one who ran.”
“Because you were afraid of me,” he said angrily. “I should never have made you fear. You were everything to me, and I let you go. I believed the lies, even when I should have known better. I left you alone with Bethesda, left you to suffer.” He clenched his hands. “I’msorry, Chelsie. I’ve done you so much wrong, and I can’t—I’m just—” He cut off with a frustrated scowl that quickly turned into a regretful one. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t make this all your fault,” she snapped, meeting his eyes at last. “I was the one who panicked and lied. I should have trusted you more. I should have told you.”
“You did what was needed to protect yourself and them,” Xian insisted. “Someone had to protect them from…”
He didn’t finish, but his haunted eyes said the rest, and Chelsie sighed.
“Maybe I did,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean it was right. So much of this could have been avoided if I hadn’t tried to do everything myself. Even if my intentions were in the right place, I had no right. After all”—she smiled at him—“they’re your children, too.”
Julius had said the exact same thing, but he never could have gotten the look of pure joy that spread over the Qilin’s face when she said it. “They are, aren’t they?” he said, his golden eyes going from Fredrick to the little dragon and finally back to her. “We havechildren.”
“If you can call six-hundred-year-old dragons children,” Chelsie said, her dark brows furrowing. “I’m not even sure where most of them are right—”
She didn’t get to finish, because that was the moment when the Qilin swept down, throwing his arms around Chelsie and the little dragon on her lap. By some serendipitous stroke, he managed to snag Fredrick as well, dragging the tall dragon down with him as he pulled them all into a tight embrace.
“It’s not lost,” he said in a voice that was neither controlled nor serene but vibrant with relief and happiness. “I have you. We have a family.”
No one could say anything after that. Xian was squeezing them too tight for words, but other than the little dragoness, who was wiggling fiercely, no one seemed to want to escape. They were all just…happy, which Julius took as his cue to turn around before he got all maudlin about missing another warm family moment, which he was absolutelynotgoing to do. They deserved their happiness, and he wished them nothing else. He just needed to look away for a while.
Thankfully, there was plenty to look at. The flood was receding now, the muddy river trickling peaceably back to its banks. He poked around the rubble for a bit in the vague hope of finding some trace of where Bob had vanished to, but the water had washed the seer’s scent clean away.
He was contemplating going to check on the Empress Mother’s car next. She’d made herself scarce once the baby had jumped ship, but Julius still wanted to make sure she’d really left and wasn’t waiting in the shadows to get revenge or anything stupid like that. He was about to walk over and check when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
It felt like Fredrick, but when Julius turned around, he found himself face to face with the Golden Emperor. It didn’t seem possible, but the Qilin looked even more astonishingly perfect now with his muddy robes and wild hair than he had when he’d landed in the desert. It was the smile that did it, Julius decided. He’d never seen anyone look as perfectly happy as Xian did right now, which made it even odder when the elegant dragon dropped to his knees.
“Julius Heartstriker,” he said solemnly, bending down to press his forehead to the dirt at Julius’s feet. “You have saved me and my family from my mother’s treachery. On behalf of the Golden Empire and all the dragons who benefit from my fortune, thank you.” His voice began to tremble, and he bowed lower still. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Julius cringed in horror. He hated when anyone bowed to him, but this went beyond anything he could have imagined. The only thing that saved it for him was the thank you.That,he would treasure for the rest of his life, but the rest of this experience made him want to sink into the ground.
He was trying to figure out how to make the Qilin stop when the emperor raised his head on his own. And as his eyes met Julius’s, the full power of the thankful Qilin’s magic landed on him like a golden mountain, knocking everything else away.
Chapter 14
If Marci had had a life left to lose, the last thirty minutes would have taken twenty years off it.
Not five minutes after she’d agreed to wait for Bob’s signal, the DFZ had started shaking like gelatin. The collapses came next. It started by the river, but within minutes, every Skyway in the city was either cracked or falling. It was the worst disaster since the original flooding of Detroit, and stuck here in the Heart of the World, she couldn’t do a thing about it.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“Bob will come through,” Amelia assured her. “Just wait.”
“If we wait much longer, there’ll be nothing left to save,” Myron said, clenching his fists. “We have to stop this.”
“But what do we stop?” Marci asked, pointing at the collapsing city. “Is this the DFZ’s doing or Algonquin’s?”
“I don’t think it’s either, actually,” Raven said, head tilting quizzically. “I’ve never felt magic like this before.”
