Something wasdefinitelygoing to be finished in the next few seconds. Svena had already hopped up onto the rim of the broken cement crater Bob had made when she’d kicked him, standing over him with painfully cold magic pouring off her like a fountain. The frost on the ground was arctic-thick now, transforming the drab dirt and dingy concrete of Julius and Marci’s hideaway into a pristine blanket of white save for the places where Bob’s blood had stained it bright red. There was an awful lot of red, actually, and Svena reveled in it, leaning down to scoop up a handful as she gloated over her fallen enemy.
“What’s the matter, fortune teller?” she asked, tossing the bloody snow in his face. “Forgot how to dodge now that I’m no longer handicapped by pregnancy and your horrible desert?”
“What is it with your family and grudges?” Bob muttered, his face tight with pain as he finally managed to sit up. “But surely you must see that this is ridiculous. I had the advantage last time. There’s no shame in—”
“This won’t be like last time,” Svena hissed as her ice climbed the broken ramp behind him. “I’ve cold and water in plenty here, while you have nothing. Even your pigeon has abandoned you.”
She was right. After the first chunk of ice had hit Bob, his pigeon had fluttered to safety. She was now perched on a tilting piece of the house’s roof, which was only still standing because Ghost was holding it up. Julius held his breath as he watched her, waiting for something to happen, but the pigeon just sat there cleaning her feathers as if she really was the dumb bird she’d always appeared to be. He’d always assumed Bob’s pigeon was special, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe his brother reallywasjust crazy.
Either way, in that moment, two things became painfully clear: Svena was going to kill Bob, and no one was going to stop her. Svena’s grievance was running the hottest right now, but every dragon here, and most of the mortals as well, was someone Bob had used terribly. Even the Qilin had been played, ramped up by Bob and his mother and then broken to weaken Algonquin and empower Amelia. As for Julius, he’d been a pawn too many times to count. From the moment Bethesda had kicked him out of his room, he’d danced on Bob’s string. He’d been a tool, a puppet, a domino Bob had knocked down and set back up over and over andover. He should have hated his brother for that. For using all of them with no care for whom he hurt. And yet…
And yet…
“Here it comes,” Chelsie said as frost began to gather in Svena’s raised hand. “Look away, Julius. This is going to be—”
But Julius was already gone.
He’d never been a particularly strong dragon, but hewasa fast one. Julius used that now, darting out of Chelsie’s hold before she realized what was going on and sliding across the thick sheet of ice to throw himself in front of Bob, flinging his arms around his brother seconds before the avalanche of razor-sharp dragon magic crashed down. He squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to Bob as he braced for the death that never came. Instead, the freezing air went still, falling into a silence as deep as midwinter before Svena’s frustrated voice growled, “What are you doing?”
Julius’s heart was pounding so hard, it took him several seconds to form the words. “Saving my brother.”
Without releasing his hold on Bob, he cracked his eyes open to see Svena staring down at them through a haze of frosted magic with a look that was half fury, half utter disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” she cried, grabbing Julius with a hand so cold it burned. “Get out of my way!”
The order was laced with magic that hurt even more than her grip, but Julius bore the pain and clutched Bob more tightly, looking her right in the eyes.
“No.”
Svena’s lips curled in a frigid sneer. “If you think I am soft like my sister, you are fatally mistaken. I have no problem going through you if that’s what it takes.” She lifted her hand again, and the magic above them sharpened to a deadly point. “Last warning, little Heartstriker.Move.”
Julius had been threatened by enough dragons to know that wasn’t a bluff, but he still didn’t let go. He just sat there, kneeling on the ice with his arms around his brother’s neck and his eyes on Svena. It was a pointless resistance. His body wouldn’t even slow the ice before it crushed them, but that didn’t matter, because this wasn’t about winning. It was about Julius and the fact that no matter what Bob had done, he couldn’t stand by and watch his brother die.
When it was clear he wasn’t going to move, Svena shrugged and started to bring her hand down. But then, just as the glacier’s worth of frozen magic she’d gathered was about to release on top of them, another body appeared in front of Julius’s.
“Svena!” Katya cried, grabbing her sister’s hand with both of hers. “Stop this!”
Svena was so surprised, she actually took a step back. “What are you doing, Last Born?” she roared when she’d recovered. “Move!”
“No!” Katya roared back, planting her feet firmly on the bloody ice in front of the two Heartstrikers. “I don’t care what you do to the seer, but I will not let you harm Julius! He’s the one who saved us from Estella!”
“That debt was paid,” Svena snarled. “This is diff—”
“This is greater than debts!” Katya said angrily. “Julius is my friend and yours. Since we met him, he has done nothing but stand by our clan. Even after you broke the pacts, he was reasonable and fair. He could have branded you an oath breaker and thrown our whole clan down in shame, but he didn’t. He understood and accepted our weaknesses. Now he’s fighting for his brother as you once fought for me, and you’re too snow blind to see it!”
“Brohomir stole our seer!” Svena yelled, her voice echoing to the crumbling Skyways. “He killed my enemy and stole our legacy!”
“So what?” Katya snapped. “We all know you were never really going to kill Amelia, and you were the only one who wanted another seer in the clan anyway. The rest of us were looking forward to making our own decisions for once.”
Svena stared at her in horror. “So you’re just going to let him get away with this? Let him take what is ours?”
“It’s only stealing if we care,” Katya said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Way I see it, we dodged a bullet. You remember how crazy Estella was at the end. Brohomir’s not even half her age, and he has a complex emotional relationship with apigeon. Why would we want to invite that lunacy back into our clan? Your daughter might not see the future, but she’ll still be every bit as clever, strong, magical, and ruthless as you are. Let that be enough, Svena! Take that blessing and go, because if you’re going to stand here and obsess over the Seer of the Heartstrikers, then you’re as bad as Estella. Especially when we’ve got such bigger problems.”
Katya lifted her arm to point at the hole Bob’s crash had left in the spiral of on-ramps that formed the ceiling of the hidden house’s urban cavern. Julius hadn’t had time to even glance at it during the chaos. Now, though, he followed Katya’s motion out of habit, lifting his eyes to the sky. Or at least, where the sky should have been.
Julius sucked in a breath. Being stuck in the house since yesterday, he’d heard a lot about the crisis they were facing, but he hadn’t actually laid eyes on it until this moment. Now, doom was all he could see. An endless expanse of it, complete with a black shell, beady black eyes the size of blimps, and writhing tentacles that filled the sky from horizon to horizon.
“Is that…?” He swallowed. “Are we seeing…?”
“We are,” Bob whispered, his body as still as the ground beneath them. “That is the Nameless End.”
