“They didn’t go at all,” Ian growled. “Svena sealed herself inside her mothers’ ice fortress before I got there. I couldn’t even find the door.”
“So why did you comeback?” Bethesda asked angrily. “Svena was always a long shot, but I thought I made it clear in my message that you being in Siberia was the only thing keeping the Golden Emperor from—”
“I am well aware of our situation,” he snapped. “I didn’t come back because I wanted to. I came back because I didn’t have anywhere else to run.”
Julius and his mother exchanged confused looks, and Ian rolled his eyes in disgust. “Doesno onewatch the news?” He had his phone out before they could answer, waving his hand over the screen to bring up a series of photos in the public AR, which he proceeded to shove in their faces. But though Julius’s field of vision was now crammed with floating pictures, he still didn’t understand what he was supposed to be looking at.
“That’s just the DFZ,” he said, flicking through multiple pictures of cars crammed like sardines onto the Skyways. “Traffic looks worse than usual, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“That’s not traffic,” Ian said. “It’s an evacuation. Algonquin ordered the entire city out.”
“What?” Julius grabbed his brother’s phone, flipping through the pictures with new horror. “Why?”
“No one knows,” Ian said, snatching his phone back. “But it’s got every mage in the world in a panic.”
Bethesda arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Human or dragon?”
“Both,” Ian said, his new brown eyes grim. “Svena’s still refusing to talk to me, but Katya says she’s moved their entire clan, including my children, into the Three Sisters’ old sleeping chamber beneath the ice. I’ve never been down there myself, but it’s supposed to be one of the most heavily warded locations in the world. It’s also the place Svena hates most, so if she’s down there voluntarily, she’s legitimately scared of something, and she’s not alone. I keep multiple human mages on call for my various businesses. We’re talking two dozen mages on three continents, and every single one of them has called me in a tizzy about some kind of mana surge building under the DFZ.”
“Mana surge?” Julius frowned. “Are you sure? I haven’t felt anything.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Ian said, disgusted. “You’re a dragon. Unless you’ve been studying magic all your life like Svena, the only magic from this plane that we can feel is the local ambient kind. This is much deeper, down in the primal magic, and it’sbig. Ten minutes after Algonquin’s evacuation started, the United Nations issued an international casting ban, which includes magically augmented flight decks. Thankfully, I’d already decided to come back at that point, and the ban didn’t cover planes that were in the air. I’m just glad I took the suborbital jet. If I’d been in the old supersonic, I’d still be over the Atlantic.”
“So you just ran home?” Bethesda said angrily. “Without my eggs?”
“Yes,” he snarled. “Because if this is as bad as it looks,mychildren are safer under Svena’s wards. We should find a way to follow suit.”
“How?” Julius asked. “You’re talking about magic big enough to make Algonquin panic, but without Amelia or Svena, we’re helpless. We have no wards, no shelter. Even our staff mages didn’t show up for work. What are we supposed to do, hide in the panic bunker?”
“I don’t think the panic bunker’s going to be deep enough,” Ian said gravely. “That’s why I decided to come home. With me back, the Heartstriker Council is complete again, which means we can go ahead and surrender to the Golden Emperor tonight.”
Julius stared at him in horror. “Surrender?” he got out at last. “You’re the one who said you didn’t crawl your way to the top of two clans just to lose both!”
“I know,” Ian snapped. “I still feel that way, but the situation’s changed, and at this point, the Golden Emperor’s our best shot at surviving it. I read the surrender document you and Bethesda sent over, and while I agree it’s suspiciously generous, we don’t have time to be picky. Unlike us, the Qilin has mages, not to mention his luck. If we join his empire, we’ll get both. And let’s be honest, unless a miracle happened, we were going to surrender tomorrow morning anyway. We might as well do it now and get our protection from whatever this thing is in the bargain.”
“But you don’t even know what it is!”
“I know it’s more than we can handle,” Ian said, glaring at him. “I fought for this clan just as hard as you did, Julius, but it’s time to face facts. We’re in over our heads. There’s no point in standing firm if the ground’s washing out from under us. The Golden Emperor has offered us extraordinarily generous terms of surrender. I say we take them and use his luck to the hilt to keep ourselves alive. When this current disaster is over, we can rebuild and rebel at our leisure.”
“That’s whatI said!” Bethesda cried. “Finally, another dragon who understands reason. Julius has been gone all afternoon, running after some crazy idea he thinks will save us.”
“It’s not crazy,” Julius growled. “I know why the Qilin is here now. I know what he wants, and I think I know how to help him get it,withoutconquering our clan.”
Bethesda rolled her eyes at that, but Julius kept his locked on Ian. “If there’s a way we can get through this without joining the Golden Empire, we need to try, because rebelling against the Qilin will not end well for anyone. Just give me until tomorrow morning.”
“We don’t have until tomorrow,” Ian snapped. “This disaster is happeningnow. I’m sure you think you’ve got the answer to everything, but do you realize how stupid it would be if we missed our shot at safety by a few hours because you were trying to have your gold and spend it, too?”
“But that’s exactly what we might get,” Julius argued. “If I can pull this off, the Qilin will be our ally, not our emperor. We can keep our clanandenjoy the shelter of his luck. Just give me an hour. I’ll go wake up Chelsie right now and—”
“Chelsie?” Bethesda said sharply. “She’syour plan?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “She’s—”
“Forget it,” the Heartstriker snarled, turning to Ian. “Don’t listen to him. Whatever his plan is, it’ll never work. I don’t know what delusion he’s under, but Chelsie would die before she’d do anything with the Qilin.”
“But she’s already agreed to talk to him,” Julius said frantically. “All I have to do is convince him to talk to her, too, and this whole thing could be—”
“Don’t listen to him, Ian,” Bethesda warned. “I can’t explain the details sincesomeonemade me swear not to, but trust me when I say that Chelsie and the Golden Emperor willnevermake peace. Normally, I’d be content to let Julius learn that lesson the hard way, but if things are truly as bad as you say, then upsetting the Qilin is the absolute last thing we want to do. We should be keeping Chelsie as far away from him as possible, not smashing them together.”
