Julius darted behind Amelia. Or at least, he tried to. His sister had been right in front of him a second ago, but now she was nowhere to be seen, leaving him standing face-to-face with a deadly-angry Svena, her blue eyes glowing like radioactive cobalt through the icy mist of her arrival.
As the frost began to settle, Julius realized the new clan head of the former Daughters of the Three Sisters looked… odd. She was still horrifically terrifying, but the effect was mitigated by the ridiculously fluffy white shawl she wore over her shoulders. It was so big, he didn’t even see Katya until the other dragoness moved, looking both embarrassed and determined as she stepped up to stand beside her sister. Even that was strange, though, because though Julius could only see two new dragons in his home, he smelled a lot more. His brain had already identified fourteen unique scents, and the fact that he only knew the location of two of them was sending him into a panic. Where were the others? Was this an ambush?
But as his eyes darted frantically around the room in search of the hidden dragons, Svena’s giant white shawl began to twitch. It moved again when he snapped his attention back to her, and Julius suddenly realized the fluffy white wrap draped over Svena’s shoulders wasn’t actually a wrap at all. They were dragons.Tinyones.
Little serpents the size of dachshunds were clinging to Svena’s body with their tiny claws. Each one was covered in an identical coat of fluffy, snow-white down, which was why they’d looked like a solid mass at first. Once they started moving, though, Julius counted a dozen at least, and every one of them was staring at him, their suspicious eyes as large and inhumanly blue as Svena’s.
“Oh my god,” Marci said beside him, pressing her hands over her mouth. “Are those… Are you covered inbabydragons?”
As always, Svena ignored her. “Where is the Planeswalker?” she yelled in Julius’s face.
“I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “She was right here a second ago, but—”
Svena whirled on her heel and stomped to the nearest door, blasting it off its hinges without even pausing to try the knob. When that turned out to be the bathroom, she turned and blasted the door to the broom closet. The little dragons squeaked in alarm as wood went flying, and Katya jumped forward to catch them as they fled from their furious mother.
“Sorry,” Katya said as she frantically gathered all the wiggling whelps into her arms. “She’s been like this ever since we saw the news. We left as soon as the magic stabilized enough to allow teleportation. I tried to make her wait, but…” She trailed off with a helpless shrug, backing into the living room to make room for the crowd that was now pouring out of the kitchen into the hall.
“What is she doing?” Chelsie snapped, shoving her way to the front just in time to see Svena blast the door off the stairs to the basement.
“Looking for Amelia,” Julius said frantically, watching in dismay as yet another part of his house was pulverized into splinters. “I don’t know what happened! Amelia was right here just a second ago!”
“Oh, for the love of—” Chelsie handed her own daughter to Fredrick and stepped forward, lifting her voice in a roar. “Amelia!Stop hiding, you coward! Get out here and face the consequences of your actions like a dragon while there’s still something left of Julius’s house!”
The words echoed through the building. Even Svena paused her campaign of destruction, her delicate ears twitching as she listened. She was about to head upstairs when Julius felt something sigh deep inside his fire, then the air in front of him flickered like a mirage as Amelia reappeared.
“Svena!” she said in a bright, false voice. “How nice of you to… um… drop by.”
The words rang hollow in the silence that followed. Then, slow as a glacier, Svena turned to face her. The cold moved with her, making Julius shiver. Even Katya scrambled out of the way, taking the pile of baby dragons with her as she fled into the hallway to take shelter behind Julius and Marci, leaving Amelia and Svena facing off alone in the empty living room.
“You,” Svena whispered, the word leaving her lips in a puff of frozen smoke. “You weredead. I saw it. Brohomir killed you!”
“He did,” Amelia said. “But I can explain—”
“Explain?” Svena roared, sending a wave of frost across the floor. “We nearly went to war over you! How did you justcome back?”
With every angry word, the freezing magic in the room grew sharper. Even Amelia flinched, and one of the white whelps on Katya’s shoulder bailed entirely, jumping off to land on Marci’s back. Julius’s heart froze as the tiny dragon made contact, but though she stumbled when it hit her, Marci didn’t fall. She didn’t even look scared. Quite the opposite. Her eyes were sparkling when she looked over her shoulder at the little dragon climbing up the back of her sweatshirt. “Julius…” she whispered, running her palm gently over its downy head. “It’s sofluffy.”
Julius’s response was to bolt for the kitchen, returning moments later with a pair of oven mitts. “Here,” he said, thrusting them onto Marci’s hands. “You’re going to need these. And try to keep away from its mouth.”
Marci nodded, but she still hadn’t torn her mesmerized gaze away from the tiny dragon clinging to the back of her shoulders. “Sooooooo fluffy.”
He sighed and pulled the oven mitts down more tightly. When he was satisfied she wouldn’t lose a finger, he turned back to the standoff going down just a few feet away.
“What are you?” Svena demanded, the frost at her feet rippling as she took a step toward Amelia. “You don’t even smell like a dragon anymore. You smell likehim.” She pointed at Raven, who’d flown up to perch on the stairwell banister, where he’d have a better view. “What did you do to her, creature?Where is the Planeswalker?”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “For fire’s sake. Itisme, ice queen. If you want proof, I can tell the story of that night back in the twelve hundreds when I got you so drunk off fortified wine casks that you ran off and saved the capital of Slovenia. Or if that story’s too well-known, I could tell everyone about the time you got a crush on a human fisherman and asked me to cover for you to your sisters while you two ran off behind his boat to—”
“Okay, shutup, I believe you,” Svena said frantically, her pale cheeks flushing a very slight pink. “But that still doesn’t explain how you’re here.”
“Come on,” Amelia said with a chuckle. “Surely you don’t think a minor inconvenience like death could stop someone as amazing as me?”
“Aminorinconvenience?” Svena repeated, clutching her fists. “You wereash, Amelia! I saw it happen! The human we put your fire into was dead as well. Your flames weregone. Dragons don’t come back from that.”
“I know,” Amelia said proudly. “But that doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not a dragon anymore.Iam agod.”
She spread her arms with a flourish, but Svena just huffed. “What does that matter? Any dragon worth the name has been worshiped as a god at one point or another. Even your tacky mother tricked the Aztecs into offering her blood sacrifices.”
“Don’t confusemewith Bethesda,” Amelia said, insulted. “And I’m not talking about human worship. I’m an actual superior being. Here, see for yourself.” She thrust her hands at the white dragon’s face. “Look at my magic. Does that look like normal dragon magic to you?”
