“She can teleport?” the Qilin said, amazed.
“It was news to me, too,” Julius assured him. “But that’s not important. What matters is that Chelsie’s alone with Bobright nowin the middle of whatever mess is going on in the DFZ. If you want to get a chance to talk to her, then we need to get there, too. Before things get worse.”
The Qilin lowered his eyes. He was clearly on the edge, but Julius could almost see the centuries of fear hanging from his neck like millstones, all the years of hard lessons that had made him a prisoner of his uncontrollable luck. If things had been less dire, he would have stepped back and left the emperor to figure it out on his own. There was no time, though, so Julius decided to give it one final push.
“If you weren’t a luck dragon, would you go to her?”
“Of course,” the emperor said without hesitation. “But—”
“Then do it,” Julius said, holding out his hand. “Your luck is supposed to make you happy, right? Make it earn its keep. Come with me. Use that luck to find and save Chelsie. Let it do something good for a change before we miss our chance forever.”
That must have been the final straw. Like a dam breaking, the Qilin let out a long sigh, and the tension that had been hanging over the room since the first earthquake melted away. “All right,” he whispered, stepping down from his throne to take Julius’s hand. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Julius said, gripping the Qilin’s elegant fingers.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Xian said nervously, pulling back his hand to take off his heavy outer robe in favor of the lighter and more mobile, though still very golden, inner one. “I just hope she doesn’t run again as soon as she sees me.”
“She won’t,” Julius promised, secretly hoping that was true. “So any thoughts on how we can get to the DFZ in a hurry?”
The Qilin froze. “I thought you had a plan.”
“Getting your helpwasthe plan,” Julius said with a shrug. “You’re the walking miracle.”
The emperor muttered something under his breath in Chinese. “Youdoknow I don’t control my luck?”
“But the things you want still tend to happen,” Julius reminded him. “And you want to save Chelsie, right?”
“More than anything,” the emperor said grimly. “Including, apparently, the safety of my clans.”
“And that’s why it’ll work,” Julius said quickly, before Xian could start talking himself back down into guilt. “If you want it, it will happen. All we have to do is wait and—”
A loud crash cut him off. Seconds later, a green dragon, one of the watchers who’d been perched on top of the mountain since the Golden Emperor’s arrival, came hurtling down past the open balcony with a jut of broken rock from the mountain’s peak still clutched in his claws. He righted himself quickly, but not before his snaking body crashed into the half-moon jut of stone that formed the balcony’s landing, snapping it clean off.
Thecrackechoed through the desert. Outside, the dragon grabbed the broken edge of the balcony and yanked himself back up, babbling what were clearly apologies and explanations in Chinese to his emperor. Xian dismissed the whole thing with a wave of his hand, sending the embarrassed dragon scrambling back up the mountain to his post.
“Did he slip?” Julius asked when he was gone.
“Ping doesn’t slip,” the emperor said. “The rock he was perching on broke beneath him.” And from his pained expression, Xian knew why. “We’ll repair the damage, of course. I just don’t understand why it happened. I’m actually calmer now than I’ve felt all day. I don’t know why my luck is still intent on breaking your mountain.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Julius said, breaking into a smile. “Look.”
He pointed at the balcony’s cracked edge. The falling dragon’s impact had broken the jutting slab neatly in two. But even a clean break puts pressure on the remaining stone. Though it hadn’t been hit directly, the surviving half of the broken balcony was still riddled with cracks, some of which were already crumbling. The biggest crack by far was right in the middle, a massive split that was getting wider by the second, and lying across it like a bridge over a canyon was Chelsie’s sword.
If Julius had had any lingering doubts this was the Qilin’s luck at work, what happened next would have buried them. The moment the emperor turned to look, the rock beneath Chelsie’s discarded Fang gave way, the cracked stone crumbling dramatically from both sides to drop the sword into the desert below. It had just started to fall when Fredrick darted forward, sprinting across the throne room just in time to snatch the sword to safety.
He jumped back the moment he had it, leaping off the damaged balcony seconds before the rest of it collapsed, the broken stones clattering down the mountain. Cringing at the near miss, Fredrick palmed Chelsie’s sword and backed away. He’d just gotten both feet back on the solid ground of the throne room floor when he looked back to see everyone staring at him.
“What?” he said defensively, clutching his mother’s unsheathed sword to his chest. “It’s an irreplaceable heirloom. I didn’t want it to fall.”
“Forget falling,” Julius said with a grin. “Fredrick, you’re holding a Fang of the Heartstriker!”
“So?” he said. “I’ve held it for Chelsie several times when she was injured.”
Julius stared at him in confusion. “You mean it never bit you?”
“No,” Fredrick said, looking nervously at the weapon in his hands. “Should it have?”
“Apparently not,” Julius said happily, turning back to the emperor. “I know how we’re getting to the DFZ.”
