A few minutes later, it was no longer just a matter of looks. Shewasa rat. A huge, black, obviously unearthly one with beady eyes that flashed orange like water under a streetlight. It was absolutely terrifying, which, from the evil looks she kept shooting him, was undoubtedly the point. But no matter how much the DFZ changed shape, the collar around her throat never budged. So long as that was true, Myron was still in control, a fact he was tempted to remind her of when the spirit suddenly found whatever she’d been digging for.
She stopped at once, lifting up her paws to show Myron a wide, filthy disk. Between the dirt and the dark, it took him several seconds to realize it was a manhole cover. But while it made sense that there would still be sewers here—Grosse Point had been an affluent suburb before its destruction—the tunnel she’d unveiled didn’t look like any sewer maintenance shaft Myron had ever seen. It didn’t even have a ladder, just a round hole going straight down into blackness.
“Are you sure that’s it?”
You told me to show you the way,the rat reminded him.This is mine. If you’re too chicken to jump, that’s your problem.
Myron glowered. Another time, he would have stopped everything and dealt with her rudeness right there. If things went the way he hoped, though, theirs would not be a long relationship, so he didn’t bother. He just held out his hand and said, “After you.”
With a final dirty look, the spirit scurried down the hole, her massive body sliding through the much smaller opening like a garden slug going down a straw. With a deep breath and a final look over his shoulder at the blinding wall of magic that hid Algonquin, Myron jumped after her. It wasn’t until he started falling, though, that he realized he’d left his body behind. He could actually see it falling over at the edge of the shrinking hole with Emily’s head still clutched in his hands. That was all Myron was able to catch before the DFZ’s tail wrapped around him, dragging him down into the churning magical dark.
Chapter 7
“It’s you.”
The Qilin’s golden eyes flicked back to him questioningly, but Julius couldn’t explain what he still couldn’t believe himself. Even with the proof staring him in the face, the idea that Chelsie’s disastrous affair in China hadn’t been with some random noble son, but with theGolden Emperorhimself seemed ludicrous. How had she managed to pull that off? How had they even met?
But crazy as the whole thing sounded, at least this explained why the Qilin had stopped to look at her back in the desert. At the time, Julius had written off the emperor’s interest as caution. Chelsie was famous for being Bethesda’s backstabber, after all. Now, though, he realized that was stupid. The Qilin was luck incarnate—he had nothing to fear from Bethesda’s Shade. He’d been looking up at her in longing, the same longing that was plain on his face right now as he turned back to the unfinished painting. A painting that was obviously from the same expert hand as the picture Chelsie kept hidden in her room.
“Itwasyou,” Julius said with an excited grin. “You’re her Chinese dragon!”
“Spoke of me, did she?” the emperor said, crossing his arms tight across his chest. “I’m surprised. One would think she’d tire of bragging about a six-hundred-year-old conquest.”
The bite in his voice was enough to make Julius take a physical step back. “Whoa,” he said putting up his hands. “I don’t know what you think’s going on, but she definitely wasn’t bragging.”
“Why shouldn’t she brag?” he said bitterly. “I was her greatest conquest.” He glanced over, clearly expecting Julius to agree. When it was obvious the younger dragon had no idea what he was talking about, though, the Qilin’s angry scowl faded into confusion. “You really don’t know what happened?”
“No,” Julius said, shaking his head wildly. “You have to understand, no one tells me anything. Chelsie almost took my head off once just for mentioning China. That’s not hyperbole, either. She literally had me pinned on the ground.”
A smile ghosted over the emperor’s lips. “That sounds like her.”
“Then you know how stubborn she can be,” Julius said desperately. “Please, I’m begging you, tell me what happened in China. Give me something to work with.”
Give me a way to fix this.
The Qilin gave him a funny look. “I knew you were an odd sort of dragon,” he said, turning back to the painting. “It’s not a story I like to remember. I certainly don’t come off looking like a glorious emperor. But the whole point of bringing you here was to make you understand why I have to conquer your clan, and you can’t understand without knowing, so…”
He trailed off with a long sigh, staring at the picture he’d painted of Chelsie with an emotion Julius couldn’t name.
“This was how I first saw her,” he said at last, reaching up to brush a finger over the delicately painted flush of Chelsie’s cheek. “I was walking in my garden, and she was just…there. Like a bolt of lightning. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she’d been sent to China by Bethesda as a special envoy for the emperor’s coronation. Needless to say, this was news to me. Old news at that since I’d been emperor for two months already at the time. When I told her she was too late and asked why she hadn’t come to the palace to announce herself, she just shrugged and said the guards had turned her away.”
“Wait,” Julius said, confused. “So she didn’t realize you were the emperor?” Because he had no idea how anyone with eyes could miss that.
The Qilin smiled. “In her defense, I wasn’t dressed for court. I also wasn’t expecting to meet an envoy from another clan in my private garden at the heart of the palace. To this day, I have no idea how she got in. My mother’s security was very tight. There were wards, walls, guards, alarm spells, everything that could be had back then.”
“Chelsie is the master of being places she shouldn’t,” Julius agreed. “But what was she doing in your garden if your coronation was over? What was she after?”
The emperor’s expression grew sheepish. “I asked the same thing. Demanded, really. Naturally, I assumed she was there for me. The mate of the Qilin becomes his empress, and I’ve had to chase ambitious dragonesses out of stranger places than my garden. When I confronted her about it, though, it became clear that not only did she have no idea whom she was talking to, she didn’t care. She claimed she’d only infiltrated my palace because she’d gotten bored with the city outside.”
Julius arched an eyebrow. “And you believed that?”
“Honestly?” He smiled. “I did. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but she had a frankness to her that I’d never encountered. It certainly wasn’t the normal awe of the Qilin. I was…charmed, I suppose. And a little insulted, because she seemed far more interested in the fish than she was in me. She’d never seen a koi before, apparently.”
That mental image was enough to make Julius grin. He could absolutely see his blunt sister giving an emperor the cold shoulder. He also understood why someone like the Qilin might find that refreshing. “Is that what attracted you? Because Chelsie didn’t treat you like a god?”
The emperor looked at him like he was crazy. “I was attracted because she was beautiful. Have youseenyour sister?”
“Not in that way,” Julius said, face turning red.
