“Why should I listen?” she demanded. “What have dragons done for this world except take? What have humans done except defile the land and fill it with monsters?” Her water opened like fangs. “I have every right to hate you!”
“But what has that gotten you?” Marci asked.
The cloudy water jerked. “Excuse me?”
“No one can argue the damage humans have done,” Marci said, hugging her glowing cat against her chest. “We’ve done terrible things, and you have every right to be mad about them, but hating something doesn’t fix the problem. I’ve had a front-row seat for every one of your sketchy plans to stop the Mortal Spirits, and not a single one has made things better for you or the things you claim to care about. I was willing to work with you in Reclamation Land, but you wouldn’t even listen to a compromise. You tried to use Ghost and me by force, and when that didn’t work, you fed your precious Spirits of the Land into the chipper-shredder to get enough magic to raise the DFZ as a slave to Myron so he could be the first Merlin.”
Her face grew furious. “Do you have any idea thegoodyou could have done with that much power? How much better everything could have been if you’d used your magic to greet the confused, newborn Mortal Spirit of the DFZ in peace instead of stomping on her? The DFZ turned out to be amazing! She could have been an incredible ally if you hadn’t treated her like a fighting dog, but youdid. You were so busy hating us, you didn’t even think about trying something different, and now you’re doing it again. You’ve chosen over and over to be the villain, and now you’ve sided with this monster against your own world! Your Spirits of the Land, the ones youclaimto be doing all of this for, they’re so afraid of what you’ve done that they willingly gave their magic tomeso I could try and stop it!”
Algonquin pulled back. “The banishment,” she whispered. “That was their magic?”
“It waseveryone’smagic,” Marci said. “Land, Animal, Mortal—they all volunteered because they were scared to death of whatyoudid! But even though my banishment failed, I’m still happy I tried, because it proved what I’ve been saying all along.”
“That I’m the enemy?” Algonquin said bitterly.
Marci shook her head. “That we’re all the same.” She looked down at Ghost in her arms. “You always talked about the Mortal Spirits like they were aliens, some kind of new invasion completely separate from other spirits, but they’re not. Ghost’s vessel might have been carved by humans instead of geology, but he protects the forgotten dead just like you protect your waters and your fish. If you need more proof, look at Raven. He figured out ages ago that the lines we drew to divide spirit types are nonsense, and he used that knowledge to become somethingmore.”
“Do not speak that traitor’s name!” Algonquin snarled, her watery head turning as she searched the dark around them. “Where is he anyway? Lurking in the shadows for the right moment to swoop down and say something dramatic?”
“He’s not here,” Marci said, her face grim. “He gave up his magic just like everyone else to try to banish you before you destroyed everything. He hasn’t risen again yet. At this rate, he might never do so.”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Algonquin looked sad, her murky water drooping. Then she pulled herself back together. “It does not matter,” she said. “Raven was always against me.”
“Youwere against you,” Marci said. “Raven was always the one trying tosaveyou.”
“He was a fool,” Algonquin spat. “But it doesn’t matter.” She slipped back into her muddy pool. “Criticize me all you like, mortal, but it’s too late. This world is already finished.”
“But it’s not!” Julius cried, grabbing the water with his claws. “That’s why we risked so much to come here! Because we’re all still alive, and so are you. You’re not dead yet, Algonquin! There’s still time to change your mind.”
The pool of water scoffed. “And do what? Join you? Forget the wrongs I’ve suffered and embrace those who hate me just as much as I hate them?”
“It was you who made us enemies,” Ghost said, his cold voice startlingly soft as he hopped out of Marci’s arms. “The DFZ and I were not born hating you. You taught us to hate through your actions. You killed the hundreds of thousands of people whose anger woke me from my sleep. You enslaved the city you built. Those areyoursins, Algonquin. Not ours.”
“Yourkind are the ones who taught mine to fear,” the water spirit snapped. “You were so out of control, your own Merlins shut down the magic because they couldn’t deal with you. Where’s the callout for those sins, cat?”
“That’s unfair,” Marci argued. “You can’t blame Ghost for what Mortal Spirits did before the drought any more than you can blame me for what human mages did a thousand years before I was born.”
“So I should ignore them? Do nothing?” She pointed at the Empty Wind. “His kind trampled mine and turned the world into a hell. Do you expect me to forget that just because he did? He’s as immortal as I am! The Empty Wind blew back then just as it does now, but unlike the Mortal Spirits, I did not wake ignorant. I learned from the past to act in the present before it ruined my future!”
Marci responded with something cutting, but Julius wasn’t listening anymore. He didn’t need to. The arguments might be different, but the dug-in anger he heard in their voices was the same as he’d heard all his life. Marci and the spirits were stuck in the same cycle of violence and revenge that Julius had been banging his head against ever since he’d found the courage to lift it. But as frustrating as that was, it gave him hope, because while he was an outsider when it came to spirit magic, this was a problem he knew as well as his own fire.
“It has to stop.”
The spirits and Marci jumped in surprise at his voice, and then Algonquin’s water hit him in the face like a slap.
“This is none of your affair,” she snarled. “You do not get to speak here, dragon.”
“It’s because I’m a dragon that Icansay this,” Julius replied, shaking the water off his feathers. “I’ve seen the damage hate and vengeance do to everything they touch. Just look at what they’ve done to you.” He looked pointedly down at the pathetic stretch of muddy water. “You were the Lady of the Great Lakes, the most powerful spirit in North America. Now you’d fit in a bucket.”
The water shivered. “Youdaremock me?”
“I’m not mocking you,” he said. “I’m drawing your attention to the results of your actions. I understand why you did it. You saw your world changing, and you blamed the humans and the Mortal Spirits because they were the face of that change, but not once did you stop and remember that you’re a product of change as well. Your five lakes used to be one. Before the last ice age, they weren’t there at all. The source was different, but as Marci already pointed out, you were born into this world the same as any other spirit. Or any dragon.”
“You arenotof our world,” she spat.
“But I was born here,” Julius said. “So was my mother and every other living dragon. The Three Sisters you killed were the last dragons born in our old world. The rest of us were made right here, same as the humans or any other animal. Now that Amelia has tied our magic to this plane, we really are native, and we’re fighting now to protect our world just like you are.”
“This is not your world,” Algonquin rumbled, pointing at Ghost and Marci. “It’s not their world, either. It’smyworld!”
