“I’m serious,” Bob said, and for once, he actually sounded it. “I didn’t enjoy hurting you, Chelsie.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I didn’t,” he said again. “I hated what I had to do, but it was the only way I saw to save you.”
“At the beginning, maybe,” Chelsie said bitterly. “But what about later? I can see sticking me under Bethesda’s boot in a pinch, but that didn’t make you leave me under it forsix hundred years.”
“That was the only way I saw to save the rest of us,” Bob replied, his face falling. “I know you think I’m the villain, and from your point of view, I suppose I am. But everything I’ve done I did for our greater good. And for the record, I always meant to make it right. In the future I made for us, you spend ten thousand years as the golden apple of the Qilin’s eye. Surely that’s worth a few centuries of unpleasantness?”
Chelsie caught her daughter with a silent glare, setting the laughing whelp on the ground to catch her breath before turning to face her brother head on. “You don’t get to tell me what our suffering is worth,” she growled. “You weren’t on Bethesda’s chain with us. You weren’t there at all. You were always off in the future, leaving those of us in the present to clean up your messes. Ten thousand years of happiness is the least you can offer for what you put us through, especially since it’s not certain we’ll live past tonight.”
“The future is never certain,” Bob agreed. “I was going to make it that way, but now that we’re thirty minutes past my pre-marked expiration date, I’m afraid the future has changed too much for my guarantee to be good anymore.”
Chelsie blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means the one-in-multiple-billions future I was planning to trade all others for is gone, vanished into the streams of time with all the other timelines from before I convinced the Black Reach that killing me would be shooting himself in the foot. We’re in a new world now, with new futures. Ones I don’t know. But while most of those are very dark, I know we’ll get through this.”
“How?” Chelsie asked, arching an eyebrow. “Got another trick up your endless sleeves?”
“No,” Bob said with a sad laugh. “I’m afraid my tricks and sleeves ended half an hour ago. Frankly, I’m still celebrating the fact I spotted Lao’s phone call in time to make a cryptic comment and maintain my reputation.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes. “Then how can you say you know anything?”
“Because Julius isn’t the only one I needed to be himself,” Bob said, smiling down at her. “Every dragon, spirit, and human in this yard is here because I wanted them to be. Not because I foresaw they’d be useful at any one specific time, but because Iknewthem. I know you too, Chelsie. A lesser seer, one with more limited vision, would have connived and blackmailed you to bring you to this point, but I didn’t need such blunt tools. All I had to do was choose goals that aligned with your own, and you went after them all by yourself. That’s what separates a good seer from a great one, and it’s why I’m not worried now. I don’t need to see the future to know that wewillget through this. Because I see you, and if you can’t do it, it can’t be done.”
That was the most sincere compliment Bob had ever given her. Maybe theonlysincere compliment. But while Chelsie didn’t doubt that her brother was telling the truth, something about what he’d said still didn’t sit right. “If that’s how you feel, why do you still have her?”
She nodded at the pigeon sitting on Bob’s shoulder, and he raised his hand protectively, cupping his fingers gently around the bird’s feathered head. “She’s for me,” he said quietly. “My ace in the hole, especially now that I no longer know exactly where all the holes are. The cost of her help will be painfully high now that we’ve moved past the future I’d picked out, but there may come a time when cost doesn’t matter. Besides,” he turned up his nose, “a consort never abandons his lady. What kind of dragon do you think I am?”
Chelsie had a lot of answers for that one. She was about to give him the full, blistering rundown when Xian suddenly came back, his gold eyes bright as he told them to make room. The Dragons of the Golden Empire were coming in for a landing.
***
Julius watched Bob and Chelsie’s conversation with growing dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t like that they were finally talking—he wasecstatic—he just had no confidence it would stay that way. He knew firsthand how infuriating Bob could be, and the seer had only manipulated his life. He’d stomped on Chelsie’s, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t ready to let it go.
But fortunately, andverysurprisingly, Bob didn’t seem to be antagonizing her. He actually looked sincere, almost apologetic. Not that he would everactuallyapologize—he was too much of a dragon for that—but it was a marked detour from his normal behavior. Julius wasn’t sure if that was because the seer was off his script now or if Bob really did feel bad about what he’d put Chelsie and her children through, but whatever the reason, he was glad of it. One of his biggest motivations for agreeing to take over his clan was the chance to end Bethesda’s culture of violence, something that would be a lot easier if members of his family would stop trying to kill each other. He didn’t think they were there quite yet, but talking instead of hitting was definitely a step in the right direction. He just wished everything else were going as well.
At that, Julius’s attention jumped back to the other source of his anxiety: Marci. She was standing beside Ghost in the ruins of their house. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but Marci looked upset, which, of course, upset him. He wanted to go over and ask what was wrong, but he didn’t want to hover or make her think he didn’t trust her to do her job. She was the Merlin. He’d seen her do the impossible more than anyone else here, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. The stakes were just so high, and there were so many things that could go wrong on every front.
For example, Fredrick wasn’t back yet. Julius presumed he was still in DC, talking to Conrad, Justin, and the others, but he could be facing off against Bethesda for all Julius knew. Not that he could do anything about that if it was true, but the combined stress was enough to make a dragon crazy. Especially since the one part of the plan to stop the Leviathan that Juliuswasactually involved with wasn’t currently going anywhere.
Since he couldn’t actually help Marci with spirit stuff, Julius had volunteered to help Amelia and Svena bring in the other dragon clans. Seeing as they’d already agreed to work together, he’d assumed they’d get right to the portal making or magic circles or whatever it was they did. But other than moving to a relatively flat portion of Julius’s dirt yard, neither Amelia nor Svena had done anything except stand around staring at each other like enemies on the field of combat. No one had actually attacked yet, but they’d been at it for a good ten minutes now, and with the Leviathan growing more solid by the second, Julius wasn’t sure how much more they—or he—could take.
“Should we do something?” he whispered to Katya, who was standing next to him with Svena’s fluffy whelps clinging to every limb.
“Nothing we can do,” the dragoness whispered back. “They always do this. Don’t worry, though. With mouths and egos as big as theirs, the silence won’t last much longer. Just let them posture. One of them will crack soon enough. You’ll see.”
Neither of the two dragon mages looked anywhere near cracking to him, but Katya had more experience with Svena and Amelia’s unique dynamic than Julius did, so he kept waiting, hopping nervously from foot to foot until, when he was close to cracking himself from the stress, Amelia finally spoke.
“Let’s hear it,” she drawled, cocking her head at Svena. “How does this super teleportation spell of yours work?”
“That is classified information,” Svena said. “This spell is a treasure of our clan, the work of centuries. The fact that I’ve agreed to use it for you is sacrifice enough. I’m not going to hold your hand and guide you through the casting as well.”
Amelia glowered. “You know I could just look through your fire and find out for myself, right?”
“You couldtry,” Svena said. “But you’ve never understood half my spells. What makes you think you can grasp the workings of my greatest masterpiece?” Her smirk turned cruel. “Also, before you go rooting through my private thoughts like a pig, remember that street goes both ways. You step where you are not welcome, and I’ll shove memories at you that you can’t unsee. I have someveryinteresting recollections of events in our youth that you were too drunk to recall, not to mention images of Ian that a sister would never want to—”
“Okay, okay,” Amelia said, putting up her hands. “No need to drag out the nuclear ordnance. I was only curious.”
