“‘We’re coming.’”
Bob blinked. “Is that all?”
“There’s another bit promising death to you and all your clan, but that’s the general gist,” Raven reported.
“Marvelous,” Bob said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Then yes. I’m ready.”
Raven looked more worried than ever. “You’re playing with a lot of lives, Heartstriker. Are you certain this is going to work?”
“The future is never certain,” Brohomir said honestly. “But I’ve been setting up this domino chain for nearly my entire life, so I’mprettysure. On the upside, though, if I’m not right, we’llallbe dead, and I won’t have to listen to you say ‘I told you so.’”
The bird tilted his head, and for a brief moment, Bob felt what it was like to have every raven in the world staring at you at once. “This is no time for jokes, seer,” the Spirit of Ravens rumbled. “I’m taking a big gamble trusting you.”
“We’re all gambling,” Bob assured him. “But that’s all we can do. The future is a moving target. You can make all the careful plans you want, but nothing is ever certain until the moment actually comes. Even then, the whole world can turn on a heartbeat. That said, if you follow my instructions to the letter—to theletter, mind—we stand a very decent chance of achieving the age-old dream of having our cake and eating it, too.”
Raven blinked his beady black eyes. “You are a very strange sort of dragon.”
“Nonsense,” Bob said. “I’m just a dragon, as greedy and ruthless and results-oriented as any other. But that’s why you can trust me. All of this is to my benefit even more than it is to yours, which is as close to Scout’s honor as my kind gets. And speaking of results, you’ve got your marching orders, which means it’s time to fly away home. I know you true immortals have a flexible relationship with time, but the rest of us are on a schedule.”
Raven shot another dark look at Bob’s pigeon. “None of us has much time if you mess this up.”
“Then let’s make sure Idon’tby keeping our timetable,” the seer said, tapping the bare spot on his wrist where his watch would be if he’d been wearing one. “Hop hop, blackbird.”
With a final roll of his black eyes, Raven spread his wings and flew away, vanishing between one flap and the next. When he was gone, Bob looked back down at the little dragon, who’d spent the entire conversation rolling in the dirt at his feet. “Shall we be off, too?”
As usual, the girl didn’t even seem to hear the question, but her head shot right up a second later when the sound of a car engine broke the desert quiet. She scrambled up into the tree as the noise got louder, changing back into a dragon so she could snake through the tangled branches to get a better look at the SUV full of mortal tourists that had just pulled over at the trailhead down the hill.
“Right on time,” Bob said cheerfully, holding out his hand to his pigeon. When he had her comfortably nestled on his shoulder again, Bob started down the hill. “Come, love,” he called. “It’s time for you to learn the joys of grand theft auto.”
The dragoness scurried down the tree, kicking her feet in the loose dirt as she ran after him down the desert hill toward the unsuspecting humans and the car that would soon be theirs.
***
At that same moment, Julius Heartstriker, youngest son of Bethesda the Heartstriker and founder of the newly formed Heartstriker Council, was still trapped in the most frustrating meeting of his life.
“For thelast time,” he growled, glaring at his mother across their new three-sided Council table. “We will not vote to unseal your dragon until you vow—vow, inblood—that you will never try to undermine this Council again.”
“And for thelast time, I’ll vow to do no such thing,” Bethesda said with a toss of her glossy black hair. “Future rebellion is my right as a dragon. What sort of deposed clan head doesn’t try to take back her power?”
“None,” Ian said quietly, his newly brown eyes gleaming with barely restrained violence. “Which is why deposed clan heads are usually rendered headless. But Julius showed you mercy, and you took it. Don’t cry now because it’s time to pay.” He stabbed his finger down on the pledge sitting on the table in front of her. “Sign it. Or you’ll never fly again.”
That was harsher than Julius would have gone, but he didn’t say a word. It’d been two hours since they’d freed Chelsie and the Fs and moved on to the unsealing of Bethesda, and his willingness to tolerate his mother’s antics was long gone. He’d never expected her to meekly accept her fate—he wasn’t sure Bethesda the Heartstriker knew what ‘meek’ meant—but he hadn’t thought it would takefifteen draftsto find a version of “promise you won’t try to undermine the new system again and you can have your dragon back” that she would sign.
“We’ve been more than fair,” Ian reminded her. “But it’s over. The Heartstriker Council is here to stay, and if you want to stay on it as anything more thanthis”—he pointed at her sealed human body—“you’ll stop being stubborn.”
The Heartstriker gave him an ugly look. “This is extortion.”
“Then you should be used to it,” Ian said, growling deep in his throat. “Sign it, Mother.”
Bethesda’s face grew sullen, and then she reached out to grab the paper off the table. “Fine,” she snarled, stabbing her razor-sharp nail into the pad of her thumb. “You want to cement the doom of this clan? On your heads be it.”
She stabbed the bleeding wound down on the paper, sealing the deal with her blood. When it was done, magic bit down sharp as her teeth, making them all gasp. Still, it was over, and Julius couldn’t help letting out a sigh of relief as he took the signed vow back from her. “Thank you.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she snarled, licking the blood off her finger. “It doesn’t matter what you make me sign—this enterprise is doomed. Dragon clans are ruled by fear and fire, not councils. If I can’t rebel, someone else will, and when the inevitable finally comes, the last thing you’ll hear is me saying ‘I told you so.’ Right before I bite off your heads.”
Technically, that was exactly the sort of threat she was no longer supposed to be making, but Julius was too sick of arguing to care. He just signed his name at the bottom of the bloody contract with a normal ink pen as fast as he could before passing it to Ian, who did the same. When all three of their names were signed, magic bit down again. The Council’s magic this time, not Bethesda’s. As powerful as clan magic was, it couldn’t force a dragon to act against her own self-interest. Only blood oaths could enforce behavior, which was why they’d had to go through all of this. Now that her blood and their names were on the same contract, though, they were bound together. Bethesda was now forbidden from undermining the Council’s authority by her own fire, which meant they couldfinallymove on.
“Now that’s finished,” Ian said, waving the bloody contract to dry it before placing it in his leather dossier, “I motion to unseal Bethesda the Heartstriker. All in favor?”
