The empress scoffed. “What choice? You said it was inevitable.”
“It is,” he assured her. “Nothing can stop the hammer now, but if you’re quick, you can still choose where it lands. That’s power, Empress. The only power you have left.”
Fenghuang looked down at her red-lacquered nails, making a show of thinking it over, but only a show. In truth, her mind was already made up, because the seer was telling the truth. She’d fed Xian enough of her fire to make him the greatest Qilin ever born, and for twenty-one years, he had been. Then, just as he’d come of age and entered what should have been his full potential, the Heartstriker girl had ruined him.
Not immediately. The first year they were together, Xian’s magic had been even more magnificent than she’d dreamed. His happiness brought more good fortune to their empire than his father’s last two centuries combined. So much that even she had willingly turned a blind eye to the mud he was rolling in. A shortsighted, foolish mistake. Breeding always told, and when the Heartstriker girl showed her true colors at last, they had all suffered for it.
It had taken centuries to recover from the catastrophes the Qilin’s misery brought down that year. Even after she’d patched things up, convincing her son that he had been betrayed, that it was all the Heartstriker’s fault, his luck was never again what it should have been. No matter how many lovelier, better dragonesses she’d found for him, he’d always remained distant, and while his luck never truly faltered again after that first, horrible year, neither had it blossomed. He was simply diminished, her great work squandered. But then, just when the loss grew painful enough to make her actually consider summoning Chelsie back, the rumors arrived, and Fenghuang finally realizedwhythe girl had run.
That was the final stroke. She had no proof, nothing but hearsay, but if any of it was true, then the Heartstriker truly had taken everything from them. Worst of all, she hadn’t even done it on purpose. A calculated attack would have at least been something she could respect, but Bethesda’s daughter had destroyed their clan out of foolish, selfishignorance, which was as unforgivable as it was irreparable. Nothing could fix what the stupid girl had broken, so Fenghuang had done the only thing she could. She’d buried everything, walling off her son and her empire from the rest of the world. And for six hundred years, it had worked. Now, though, everything was unraveling.
From the moment they’d embarked on this cursed journey across the sea, this end had been inevitable, but like any proper dragon, Fenghuang could not accept defeat. So when the Seer of the Heartstrikers offered her a chance,anychance, to mitigate the damage, for all her hatred of his family and his smug green eyes, she found that she could not refuse.
“What must I do?”
The seer’s smile grew sharp. “Exactly what I say.”
Fenghuang had never hated anything as much as those words. But an empress did her duty even in defeat, so she swallowed her anger and nodded.
“Excellent,” Bob said, reaching off camera to grab something waiting outside of the booth. “I have detailed instructions, multiple stipulations, and one ironclad rule you must never break, all of which I will explain in exhaustive detail. Before we go down that rabbit hole, though, there’s someone you need to meet.”
The Empress Mother had no idea whom he could be talking about. She wasn’t even sure where Brohomir was, other than somewhere filthy. Certainly not the sort of place where any dragon worthy of her interest would be found. When he came back into view, though, there was indeed a dragoness with him.
She was a hatchling, a young one. How Brohomir had gotten a whelp that young into human form, she’d never know, but whatever he’d done to her, the child was obviously a Heartstriker. She looked like a mini-Bethesda with her thick, dark hair and high, haughty cheekbones, but her eyes were the wrong color. Even through the terrible camera, Fenghuang could see no green in them at all. Just gold. The pure, rich, glittering, metallic color she’d seen only twice in her life looking out at her from the little dragon’s face.
And that was when Fenghuang knew to her bones that all was truly lost.
Chapter 8
The Sea of Magic was roiling.
“What is goingon?” Marci cried, clinging to the Empty Wind, the only thing in the entire place that wasn’t violently shaking.
“It’s the magic,” Ghost said, his glowing eyes round as he stared up into the dark. “It’s being forced apart. Something’s coming through.”
That didn’t sound good, but before Marci could ask what, where, why, or how big, something new appeared at the edge of her vision.
She jumped with a yelp, whirling around so she could face…whatever it was. When she stopped, though, there was nothing. Just the churning magic, twisty and nauseating as always. She was about to write the whole thing off as nerves when it happened again.
There was no missing the change this time. She was looking right at the floor of the Sea of Magic when the ground rippled like water, the rough, uneven, seemingly stone surface smoothing and rounding before her eyes into what looked like a manhole cover. It couldn’t be, of course, but that was what Marci saw: an iron manhole cover complete with air holes, tire scuffs, and the logo for the DFZ’s private sewer contractors conglomerate.
“Do you see that?”
“I see it,” Amelia said, squinting. “I don’t understand it, but—”
An echoingbangcut off whatever she’d been about to say as the manhole cover shot off the ground like a bullet. It landed a few seconds later, crashing to the right of the pillar with a deafening clatter of thick iron hitting stone. The sound was still going when a man’s hand reached out to grab the lip of the tunnel the blasted-open manhole had revealed, followed immediately by the man himself as Sir Myron Rollins hauled himself out of the ground and onto the floor of the Sea of Magic.
He collapsed immediately after, flopping over to heave on his back like a landed fish. The whole thing was so unexpected, so incredibly out of place, that Marci couldn’t speak a word until Sir Myron rolled over to push himself up, and his eyes found hers.
“You!” he cried, eyes flying wide. “How are you—What are you doing here? You’redead. Isawyour body. I—”
He stopped there, eyes going even wider as he finally spotted the Empty Wind standing behind her.
If things had been less dire, Marci would have relished watching Sir Myron Rollins have a mental breakdown over the abyss that was her spirit’s true face. But as entertaining as it was to watch him break beneath the crippling truth of his ultimate insignificance, they didn’t have time.
“Ghost,” she said quietly. “Would you mind?”
He sighed and turned around, putting his back to Myron, who fell gasping back to the floor. “I suppose that explains how you’re here,” he said when he could speak again. “You sold your soul to a death god.”
