The water moved deeper, winding through the coils of spellwork Myron hadn’t yet unwound to rest on the knot that was Emily’s heart. Not her literal heart—that had gone long ago—but the start of the spell that had given her new life. It was her very first knot, wound by Raven himself around a bit of twisted metal he’d plucked from the wreckage of her family home in Old Detroit. It was the core of the deal they’d struck all those years ago, and its battered surface still bore the scratched letters of Raven’s name. Letters Algonquin’s water was quickly scouring away.
“Farewell, carrion crow,” she said, her voice a singsong as her water wore away the last of the scratches. “And thank you for your contribution to our cause.”
“No!” Raven shouted through Emily’s mouth. “You can’t have her! She’s—”
His voice died as Algonquin scraped the last of his name away, leaving Emily alone in her head for the first time in over sixty years. She was still reeling when Algonquin’s water drained out of her.
“And that’s that,” the spirit said as the Leviathan’s tentacle uncurled, dumping Emily unceremoniously onto the stone at Myron’s feet. With no arms to catch herself, she landed hard, screaming silently as her spellwork began to slide out of control. If she’d been a mage, she could have stopped it, but as Myron had said countless times, she had no such power. Without Raven, Emily Jackson wasn’t the Phoenix. She was just another mortal. A dying one, her patchwork body disintegrating before her eyes. Then, just before she collapsed entirely, a new power scooped her up, folding her back together. She didn’t even recognize it as Myron’s Labyrinth magic until the glowing maze surrounded her completely, the neon forks forming an iridescent cage that held her in place. But while Emily was staring at her former partner’s sorcery, Myron was glaring at Algonquin.
“Some warning would have been nice,” he said, his chest heaving as he repositioned what was left of Emily into the center of his magic. “Did I not stress how important she was to our plan? Your tiff with Raven nearly destroyed our ticket!”
“She wasn’t our ticket so long as he lived inside her,” Algonquin reminded him, her watery face warping into an unflattering copy of Myron’s own. “Time to keep your end of the bargain, traitor mage. The Raven has been expunged, as promised. Now replace his name with yours and take control of his construct, and we shall see if you can live up to your boasting.”
Myron scowled one last time and turned back to Emily, but while his face was as haughty as ever, his hands were shaking. “I’ll do my part,” he said. “But are you sure you can do yours? We only get one shot at this.”
The lake spirit smiled his own smile back at him. “You’ll get your magic, have no fear. As I just told Raven, this is the only victory scenario we have left. If you want your share of it, mortal, you will do exactly as we discussed.”
“Of course,” Myron said after a moment’s hesitation. “Never thought otherwise.”
The Lady of the Lakes’ reflection smiled one more time, and then she let Myron’s face fall away, becoming just water again as she turned back to the gathered spirits.
There were no speeches this time. No warnings. The water lurking at the cavern’s edges simply welled up, flooding over the stone at the spirits’ feet.
A few fled when the lake reached them. The eel spirit in particular vanished so quickly he left a bubble under the water. Most of them, though, including Wolf, Eagle, and the other animals stayed put, their heads lowered in acceptance as Algonquin’s water rose higher and higher. It would have washed over Emily and Myron, too, but the Leviathan got there first, surrounding them in a protective cocoon of black tentacles.
Emily didn’t waste time after that. The moment the Leviathan hid them from Algonquin, she turned on Myron, opening her mouth in a last attempt to reason with him, but it was no use. Without Raven’s name to give her control, her body wouldn’t obey. All she could do was gasp silently as he set her down on the wet stone at his feet.
“Stop it,” he ordered, holding her still with his foot as he reached up to adjust the floodlights. “It’s over, Emily. This will be a lot easier on both of us if you don’t fight.”
Her answer to that was to spit at him, or at least try to. She was still trying to get her mouth to work when he knelt beside her again, leaning down to whisper in her ear.
“Be still and listen,” he ordered, pressing her down until she stopped twitching. “I know how this looks, but I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t the only way. Algonquin’s right. The Mortal Spirits are rising. Marci Novalli’s cat was just the first, and you saw what a terror he was. The others will be worse. If we don’t get control of this situation, the spirits of the land won’t be the only ones in trouble. Trust me, Emily. This is for the best. I might not have come to it in the usual way, but I’ll be the Merlin this world needs. I swear it.”
Since she couldn’t speak to tell him what a load of bull that was, Emily looked away, clenching her teeth as Myron placed his hand inside the hole Raven’s absence had left in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Brace yourself. This will probably hurt.”
She was trying to get enough control for one final rude gesture when Myron’s maze of magic pulled tight, yanking every line of her spellwork with it until the world went white with pain.
Chapter 5
“Idon’t like this,” Julius muttered. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Congratulations,” said Bethesda, tossing back the last of her cognac as her body sank lower into the pile of gold she was using as a makeshift couch. “We’ve finally found something we can agree on.”
Julius’s answer to that was a long sigh. It had been four hours since the Golden Emperor and his court had accepted Julius’s offer to stay at the mountain until Ian returned. When he’d suggested the idea, he’d assumed everyone understood this meant the Chinese dragons would be theirguests, but the Golden Empire must have had a different definition of the word “hospitality.” The moment she’d gotten inside, the Empress Mother had taken over, directing her dragons to spread out and occupy every abandoned inch of the Heartstriker’s ancient fortress.
It wasn’t just a draconic effort, either. The emperor hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d brought his own things. Not ten minutes after Julius invited them in, planes full of supplies, furniture, and human servants had begun arriving, crowding the airstrip and filling the once-empty mountain to bursting again. But while the new influx had at least fixed their staffing problem—particularly in the kitchens, which were now working overtime to feed a mountain full of dragons—the Heartstrikers were not included.
While the Chinese court had made themselves at home, taking over the rooms normally reserved for upper-alphabet Heartstrikers, including, to Bethesda’s great upset, the throne room and her apartments, which had now been claimed as the personal quarters of the Qilin and his mother, their “hosts” had been pushed further and further down. The guest rooms, the human staff wing, the garage—all were apparently vital to assuring the emperor’s comfort. In the end, the only part of the mountain their “guests”didn’trequire were the overflow vaults in the storage sub-basement, which was how Julius found himself sitting with his mother and Fredrick on top of the piles of gold that had once been the Heartstriker’s treasury.
“At least my gold is safe,” Bethesda said for the thousandth time. “I stayed up all night making what was left of the staff move it down here so it would be well guarded while we were on the run. Never thought I’d be locked down here with it, of course, but at least we’re together.” She ran her hands lovingly over the yellow coins before refilling her drink from the only bottle from her private liquor cache Amelia hadn’t polished off. “Here’s to forethought.”
“You should have had the forethought to check your informants,” Fredrick growled, pacing the clear spot in front of the vault door as he’d been doing for the last hour. “An entire dragon clan flew across half the world to invade us, and we were still caught unawares. Gold can’t fix that.”
“We were invaded by the living embodiment of good fortune,” Bethesda said with a shrug. “If I had his luck, no one would see me coming, either. And why are you yelling at me? Julius is clan head now, too. That makes this debacle his fault as much as mine, but I don’t see you snipping at him.” She finished her drink in a single gulp. “And for the record, gold helpseverything. We might be trapped now, but Heartstriker is still a rich and powerful clan. Just you wait until Conrad, Justin, and the others are in position. We will rain down vengeance on the Golden Emperor like he’s never seen! Let’s see him luck his way out ofthat.”
She cackled at the thought, and Julius sighed again. Part of him was terrified by her words. An open clan war was the worst of all possible outcomes. But the cynic in him saw his mother’s behavior for what it was: the drunken ravings of a desperate dragon who was utterly and thoroughly trapped. Theyallwere. This delay had been his idea, but Julius was all too aware that Heartstriker was already conquered in all but name. The fact that they were locked in the basement of their own fortress was just the icing on the cake.
