Julius’s heart skipped several beats. “But you just said—”
“I know,” Marci interrupted. “And I meant it. I am absolutelynotdying again. I haven’t entirely figured out how to do that yet, but there has to be a way. What’s the point of being a Merlin if you can’t get to your special clubhouse?”
“But—”
“I’ll befine,” she said, reaching out to take his hands. “I’ve already got a great idea, but I need to get going if I’m going to pull it off in time.”
“I know you will,” Julius said, tightening his hands in hers. Then, because he could now, he pulled her into a hug. “You’re the cleverest, hardest-working person I’ve ever met,” he whispered into her hair. “You’ll make it work, I know it.”
Marci didn’t reply. She did something much better. She hugged him back, squeezing his chest until his ribs creaked. Finally, after almost a full minute of holding him as tightly as she could, Marci let go reluctantly, looking up at him with the stubborn determination that had made him fall in love with her in the first place. “We’re going to beat this.”
“We are,” he agreed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You’d better get going.”
She nodded and turned to go. Then, suddenly, she darted back in again and rose up on her toes to kiss him on the lips. Julius was still reeling in surprise when she hurried off, waving over her shoulder as she jogged away. Dazed and happy, Julius waved back, watching her weave through the crowd of dragons with a painfully huge smile on his face. He was still grinning like an idiot when a wistful voice spoke right next to his ear.
“I’m never stealing her away from you, am I?”
Julius jumped and whirled around to see Amelia standing beside him, watching Marci’s back with open envy. “It’ssounfair,” she muttered. “The First Merlin of the new age, in love with a dragon who can’t even cast a spell.” She shook her head. “Such a waste.”
“Idon’t think it’s a waste at all,” Julius said, irritated. “What are you doing over here anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be helping Svena?”
The Spirit of Dragons shrugged. “She said she didn’t need me anymore. We’ve gotten pretty much everyone. The only dragons left are the ones she already knows, her family and allies and whatnot. Once she pulls those in, we’re done.”
“Done?” Julius looked around in confusion. “How can you be done? There are only a few hundred dragons here.”
Amelia gave him a flat look. “Julius, how many dragons do you think there are?”
He opened his mouth to say thousands but stopped because he realized he didn’t actually know. His mother had lectured them all their lives about the threat of the other clans, so he’d always assumed there must be a lot, but he’d never heard a hard number. To be fair, therewereno hard numbers for the dragon population since most clans kept their true size secret to obscure the actual extent of their power, or lack thereof. He hadn’t even known exactly how many Heartstrikers there were until they’d held the vote, but still, therehadto be more dragons in the world than this.
“Sorry to burst your bubble,” Amelia said when he told her as much. “But we’re a species on the decline. A surprising number of us escaped through the portal to this plane, but the attrition since has been brutal. Between the clan wars and the infighting, dragons have been dropping like flies for the last ten centuries, and with the notable exception of Bethesda, we just don’t breed fast enough to keep up.”
“So this is it?” Julius said, looking at the crowd in the cavern, which now seemed pathetically small.
Amelia nodded. “It was a shock for me, too. I’d always suspected most clans were smaller than they pretended, but it wasn’t until I plugged myself into everyone’s fires that I realized just how bad the problem had gotten. Counting Svena’s whelps, there are only five hundred and thirty-two dragons in the world right now, and most of them are already here.”
Julius sucked in a worried breath. When he’d promised Marci they’d keep the Leviathan back, he’d assumed he’d be working with a much bigger force. What they had here didn’t even look like enough to cover the DFZ and Lake St. Clair, let alone the fiveactualGreat Lakes. But just as he was getting worked up, Julius realized he was being an idiot. He wasn’t looking at all the dragons. There was still one major clan missing. One he’d never thought he’d miss.
“Where’s Heartstriker?”
Chapter 8
“Remember,” Fredrick said, clutching his Fang in his hands as he looked around at his gathered brothers and sisters. “We only have one chance at this. Julius is depending on us to bring the clan. Whatever happens, we must uphold that, but we will not return as servants. Agreed?”
The others nodded, their newly revealed golden eyes resolute. It was a sight to behold. Before he’d left, Brohomir had pulled Fredrick aside and handed him an envelope containing step-by-step instructions in Amelia’s hand for how to break Bethesda’s green-eyed curse. It was the same spell the Planeswalker had cast on him, but while Fredrick was no mage, his brother Ferdinand was. He’d cut straight to him, and then they’d cut to each of their siblings in turn, breaking the curse as they went.
Being free of the last vestige of Bethesda’s control over them felt as good as Fredrick had hoped, but he hadn’t expectedallhis brothers and sisters to share the Qilin’s eyes. In hindsight, though, Fredrick didn’t know how it could have been otherwise. They were the children of the Golden Emperor, the most magical dragon to ever live, with a fire that had been carefully tended for hundreds of thousands of years. Ofcoursehis mark would be on all of them, even if his luck was not.
But Fredrick had no need for luck. With his siblings beside him and their real mother’s Fang in his hands, he could make their future himself. This was just the first step, and Fredrick meant to step big, motioning for the others to take position behind him in the sterile, cement-brick underground hallway. When all his family was in place, Fredrick nodded at his sister Frieda, who was standing in front of the heavy steel doors at the hallway’s end.
The moment his head moved, Frieda hauled back and kicked the doors open, knocking both off their hinges and clearing F-clutch’s way into the bunker deep below the Heartstriker compound in the District of Columbia, where all the rest of the clan was waiting.
They wereallthere, too. Fredrick had known they would be. His new sword knew where every Heartstriker was, but it was still intimidating to see so many green eyes turn to look at him. Every Heartstriker in the family except for Bethesda and Ian—who were still at the mountain—and Julius, Amelia, Chelsie, and Bob—who were already in the DFZ—was packed into the warded bunker hidden below David’s Washington, DC, mansion. Conrad himself was standing on the riser at the front, addressing the army of dragons he’d gathered to fight the Qilin’s invasion.
The moment he had the clan champion in his sights, Fredrick started looking for the second most dangerous target, but the other knight of the Heartstrikers found them first, stepping out from behind the door Frieda had just kicked down with his Fang drawn and his teeth bared.
As always, Justin came out ready to fight. He stopped in surprise when he saw who it was, and then his mouth curled into a dismissive smile. “It’s okay,” he announced, lowering his sword. “It’s just the Fs.” He tilted his head at Fredrick and the others. “Where have you guys been? And what’s wrong with your eyes?”
“Nothing,” Fredrick said calmly as his siblings fanned out to form a wall behind him. “They’ve simply returned to their natural color.”
