“I appreciate you speaking with me,” he said, inclining his head. “It’s been…informative.”
“Of course,” Julius said automatically, hopping up as well. “But before you go, can you tell me anything? You said you knew where Bob was going to be. If you told me, maybe I could find him. Talk to him. He’s a smart dragon. I’m sure I could—”
“No,” the Black Reach said firmly. “Giving you his location does nothing. You’re his pawn. If I move you, he’ll just move you back.” He thought a moment more, and then he shook his head again. “No. At this stage, I think it’s better for you to continue as you’ve been, though if hedoesask you for something, keep my advice in mind.”
“I will,” Julius promised, biting his lip. “But it’d be a lot easier if you could give me some kind of hint about what it is he’s trying to do. If you’re after him, it’s got to be something to do with selling the future, but why? What’s he trying to make happen?”
“I can’t tell you,” the Black Reach said, clearly frustrated. “Not because I don’t trust you, but because he hasn’t done it yet. I’ve actually pushed the boundaries of my position a great deal just by coming to speak to you today. If I push further, I risk tipping my own hand, and that’s not a chance I can take. But rest assured, I would not be here if the threat were not great. You know what’s at stake now. If you’re the dragon I believe you to be, you’ll do everything you can to stop Brohomir before he dooms himself, which is all I can ask.”
“But how will I know?” Julius asked. “I don’t even understand what I’m trying to stop.”
“You will,” the Black Reach promised, opening the door. “When it happens, you’ll know, because you’ll be at the heart of it.” He ducked his head to Julius one last time before stepping into the hall. “See you in Detroit.”
“Wait!” Julius cried, running after him. “What happens in…”
The words died on his lips as he burst into the hall. The long,emptyhall. Julius couldn’t even smell the Black Reach anymore save for a faint hint of old ash. He searched anyway, walking all the way back to his mother’s vault before he gave up. Whatever had happened, it was obvious the seer was no longer in the mountain. Defeated, Julius went back to his temporary room to try and think all of this through. He’d just settled himself down on the sheet-covered couch where the Black Reach had been sitting when he noticed Marci’s bag was no longer beside it.
***
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, sir,” Fredrick said gently. “But why would the Black Reach steal your human’s bag?”
“Why do seers do anything?” Julius whispered back, fists clenched in fury. “But her bag was in my room when we started, and when I came back, it was gone. No one else could have taken it.”
Fredrick heaved a frustrated sigh, and honestly, Julius couldn’t blame him. They were in the elevator on their way up to the mountain’s peak to try and talk with the Golden Emperor. If there was ever a time Julius needed to focus, it was now, but he couldn’t let this go. That bag was all he had left of Marci. “I have to get it back.”
“Was there anything in her bag that the Black Reach might have wanted?”
Julius had no idea. He didn’t even know what was inside it. He’d been too upset to go through Marci’s things when Chelsie had handed them over last night, and there’d been no chance this morning with the invasion. Other than the blood, though, her shoulder bag hadn’t looked or felt different from all the times he’d grabbed it for her back in the DFZ. The poor thing was still stuffed to the seams, despite all the times Marci had complained about never being able to find anything. He still remembered the exact tone of her voice the last time she’d sworn to get organized, or at least buy a bigger bag, trying in vain to stuff all her casting supplies into the—
He stopped, body shaking. As always, any thoughts about the past, even innocent ones, pushed him right back to the dark place he’d been before Chelsie had dragged him out. No matter how busy he kept himself, whenever he let his thoughts drift, Marci’s loss was still right there, like a knife in his side. In a perverse, selfish way, he was almost glad the emperor had invaded. It gave him an emergency, something bigger to distract his attention away from the yawning emptiness. He needed that right now.
He just wished the Black Reach hadn’t taken his last piece of her.
“I’m sure the bag will come back,” Fredrick said, giving him an encouraging smile. “Assuming he did take it, seers don’t do things without reason. But if you need some time—”
“No,” Julius said firmly, pulling himself together. “Buying time was my idea. So was going to talk to the emperor. If I’m not going to make good on those, we might as well do what Mother wants and sign the surrender now.”
“It doesn’t have to be all one or the other,” the F argued. “Ian won’t be back until early tomorrow. We have time if you need it.”
“I do need time, which is why I can’t waste it.” He closed his eyes and gave himself a shake, forcing the grief back to the corners of his mind to focus on the task ahead of them. “There,” he said when he’d finished. “I’m fine. Everything will befine. Let’s do this.”
Fredrick didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t push. He just moved closer to his youngest brother as the elevator rolled to a stop, the golden doors opening to reveal the hallway to the throne room at the top of Heartstriker Mountain.
Or what was left of it.
“What the—”
Fredrick recovered first, grabbing the elevator doors as he leaned over the panel to check the floor number, but there was no mistake. Thiswasthe top floor, it was just—
“It’s empty,” Julius said, stepping out into what had been Bethesda’s famous Hall of Heads.Hadbeen, because all the grisly trophies from their mother’s bloody rise to the top were now gone. Even the clean spots from the wooden mounting plaques had been scrubbed away, leaving nothing but empty stone walls from the elevator all the way to the throne room doors.
“How did they do this?” Fredrick whispered, his eyes wide. “Some of those heads were cursed, not to mention thousands of pounds.”
“I suppose anything’s possible with enough manpower,” Julius whispered back, keeping his eyes on the doors at the hall’s end, where a pair of terrifying men in traditional Mongolian dress were standing guard at the throne room doors.Identicalmen, who didn’t smell like men at all. They smelled like dragons, the same two red ones that had stopped him and his mother in the desert. The ones who were the same size as Conrad.
“Stay close,” he whispered, straightening the collar of the old-fashioned, ill-fitting suit Fredrick had dug out of storage for him.
The F did better than that. He was practically walking on Julius’s heels as they made their way down the now-headless hall, stopping a respectful distance from the silent guards.
