“And in a few minutes, it’ll be no one’s world,” Julius growled. “Don’t you get it? You’ve been so busy fighting for what you think you lost, you can’t even see what you’re actually losing right now!”
“I lose nothing,” Algonquin said, slapping her water against the blackness. “This is my chosen victory! I would rather die here alone than live on in a world where I am ruled by Mortal Spirits, defiled by humans, and plagued by dragons!”
“But that’s just it!” Julius cried. “You’re so convinced that change is your enemy, you’ve forgotten thatyou can change, too. Everything can! If you don’t like how a tree is growing, you don’t burn it to the ground. You help it—prune it, tie it, coax it in a different direction. The future’s no different. As Ghost just said, Mortal Spirits didn’t come out hating you. You taught them that, because the only one who’s ever acted like it’s our way or the highway is you. But the good news is that you canchange your mind.”
“Impossible,” Ghost growled. “She will never change. Her hate is too deep.”
“Everything can change,” Julius said. “Two months ago, I thought my clan would always be a nest of vipers, but this afternoon, I watched all of Heartstriker fight alongside clans we’ve been enemies with for centuries.” He turned back to Algonquin. “If stubborn old dragons can change to survive, you can. I mean, you’re water! All youdois change, so change now. Let the old grudges go. Look forward instead of backward. If you can’t live in this world, then work with us to build one youcanlive in. But if you destroy everything now, then it’s over foreveryone, including the lakes you’ve fought so hard all this time to protect.”
That last part was the most important. Julius had been taught from birth to see Algonquin as his enemy, but even when he’d lived in her shadow in the DFZ, he’d never doubted her dedication to her lakes. Everything she’d done, including this, was to protect the land and those who came from it, and that gave him hope. She’d made a lot of terrible choices, but anyone who could die for others could surely be convinced to live for them instead. Even the fact that she’d held on to the Leviathan for sixty years before using it was a sign that Algonquin wasn’t an implacable enemy. She was just desperate and cornered, like Estella had been, or Chelsie.
Like himself.
When Marci had died, he could have done terrible things. Would have, if Chelsie hadn’t stopped him. When she’d grabbed him, the line between tragedy and survival had come down to a single moment. One decision to bend instead of break. To keep moving forward instead of dying with his fangs in his enemy’s throat. It was a choice that couldn’t be forced, couldn’t be demanded. It could only be asked, so that was what Julius did now, lowering his head respectfully before the Algonquin.
“Please,” he said, bowing before the spirit who’d wanted him and all his kind dead for ten thousand years. “Don’t give up yet. All of us are here right now because we’re too stubborn to die. That’s common ground, so let’s stand on it. Let’s be stubborn together. Let’s fight and argue and refuse to give up until we’ve hammered out a world we canalllive with. It might take a long time, and things might get worse before they get better, but if we just keep going, there’s nothing that can stop us from getting where we want to be. All I’m asking is that you keep trying with us.Please, Algonquin.”
A long silence fell when he finished, and then the lake spirit sighed. “You beg surprisingly well for a dragon.”
“I’m not begging,” Julius said, lifting his head. “I’m asking you to do what you know is right. It’s not over. You can still fix this.”
“No,” she said, cowering in her puddle. “It was the only way. The Mortal Spirits—”
“What could Mortal Spirits do to you that’s worse than what you’ve done to yourself?” Julius demanded. “I’ve seen your lakes, Algonquin! Your shores are dry. Your fish are dead. The Leviathan took every drop of water from them, and you let him. You were their spirit, their god, and you let them die.”
“Stop,” Algonquin whispered, sinking lower.
“I can’t stop,” Julius said angrily. “Not until you do. You’ve always claimed you were fighting to protect the land. Now’s your chance to prove it.Stopthis, Algonquin. Don’t be the hammer that breaks the only home we have.”
By the time he finished, Algonquin’s muddy puddle was smaller than a dinner plate. When she didn’t rise again, Julius was terrified they were too late, that the Leviathan had already finished her off. Then her water started to shake, and Julius understood. Algonquin wasn’t being devoured. She was crying, weeping in ripples that quickly grew to waves.
“Ican’t,” she sobbed. “Don’t you see? It’s too late. Even if I wanted to stop, I already let him in.”
She lifted a watery hand as she finished, and Julius gasped. In the dark of the emptiness, Algonquin’s water had looked muddy, but now that a bit of her was stretched out under the soft light of the Black Reach’s fire, Julius saw the truth. Algonquin wasn’t murky at all. Like always, her water was crystal clear. The off color was merely an illusion created by thousands of dark, tiny lines running through her body. The way they spread reminded Julius of roots, but there was nothing plantlike about the hungry way the black tips twitched and moved, crawling through Algonquin’s water like predators as they ate her alive.
“There is no more choice,” she whispered, pulling her arm back down. “He’s in every drop of my magic now. When he’s finished consuming all the water from my physical lakes, he willbeme, and our world will be his.”
The defeat in her voice made Julius tremble. Even Marci was shaking, her whole body wobbling as she dropped to her knees beside Algonquin’s murky shallows. “There has to be a way to reverse it,” she said. “It’s still your water. What if we—”
“There is nothing,” Algonquin said bitterly. “Everywhere I look, everything I touch, he’s already there, and I’m so tired. I’ve fought for so long now, lost so many times. If I could go back and do things differently, maybe this wouldn’t have been such a waste, but as Raven loved to croak at me, we can never go back. The past is gone, and soon, I will be too.” The puddle sloshed resentfully. “I’m sure that brings you joy.”
“How can you think that?” Julius asked, heartbroken. “What have I ever said that could make you believe this is anything but a tragedy for everyone?”
The water gurgled, sinking even lower into her shrinking pool. “You are truly the strangest dragon I’ve ever met,” she said quietly. “I wish we’d had this conversation decades ago, back when it might have done some good. But now…”
She let out a long, watery sigh, and then she lifted her head, raising her mirrored face from the hand-sized splash of water that was all that was left of her. “I will not apologize. This isn’t how I meant for things to end, but I only did what I thought I must to protect my world, and I will never be sorry for that.”
Knowing she’d had the best intentions just made everything worse. At this point, Julius almost wished she’d died cursing them. The hate would have stung, but at least it would have been a clean ending, not this bitter, tragic mess. Looking at Algonquin, all he could think was that if only he’d been better, said something sooner, he could have prevented this. They’d spoken before, but he’d always been too distracted by other disasters to pay attention towhyAlgonquin was acting the way she was. If he’d taken the time, looked harder, maybe everything would have been different. Because she wasn’t a monster. None of them were. Dragons, spirits, humans—they were all just flawed, floundering souls fumbling their way as best they could. Now they’d fumbled right off the cliff, and by the time Julius realized what was happening, it was too late.
That was what ate at him the most. Not the loss or the death, but thewaste. The deep unfairness of fighting so hard only to discover you’d never had a chance. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t lose. Not after how hard they’d tried. Not after everything they’d been through.
And just like that, Julius came to a decision of his own. It took only a moment, barely a thought, but he must have spent way too much time with Bob lately, because Julius could have sworn he felt the future pivot toward a new direction as he raised his head to look at Algonquin again.
“If things had been different,” he asked quietly, “if you could do everything over, knowing what you know now, would you work with us?”
The spirit’s mirrored face flashed with annoyance, but the inevitability of their coming deaths must have been enough to defang even Algonquin’s hatred, because in the end, she just shrugged what was left of her water. “Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t have given up like I did. I would never have run to you with open arms, but if I could go back and do it all again…” She thought a moment longer, and then her head bobbed. “I would have acted differently, yes.”
That was all Julius needed to know. “Marci?”
