“Because, like the seer who first discovered how to trade away the future, Estella was already beaten,” the dragon said sadly. “I read her past just as I read yours. I saw how your brother, Brohomir, had cut her off at every turn, walling off her future piece by piece until only decline was left. When she arrived in this place, her mountain of potential futures was little bigger than a hill. Her hatred, however, was stronger than ever, and being a seer, she knew she had no hope of victory left. Given those circumstances, the exchange of a long but bleak future for certain victory over the enemy who’d trapped her in that situation to begin with seemed like a fair trade, indeed.”
That was unexpectedly depressing, and for a moment, Julius actually felt sorry for Estella. But while he was sympathetic to how desperate she must have felt, none of that excused what she’d done to his siblings and Katya. Or to him and Marci, for that matter. “Okay,” he said. “If you can’t tell us what future she bought, can you at least tell us how many chains she left with?”
“Four,” the dragon replied immediately. “She left here with four chains, all of varying lengths. I’m not sure about the shorter ones since, again, the future isn’t my domain, but I’m reasonably certain that the longest was for three days.”
“Are you serious?” Marci said. “Estella traded her entire future forthree days?” The dragon nodded, and she whistled. “That’s onebadexchange rate.”
“She’s fighting Bob,” Julius reminded her. “She probably needed the power.” Still, hearing she’d left with only four chains was a relief. That accounted for Chelsie, Conrad, Amelia, and Svena, meaning that Justin—whatever trouble he might be in—at least wasn’t bound to Estella’s future. “You said the longest chain she bought was three days. Is that twenty-four-hour days?”
“Sun up to sun down is the traditional definition,” the dragon said. “So whatever that means for your realm.”
Julius scowled, thinking the timing through. Since Svena had been acting strange the longest, she was probably the target of Estella’s longest, three-day chain. At the party on Friday night, Bob said Svena’s future had vanished that morning, so if the chains lasted from sunrise to sunset, and Friday morning was sunrise number one, then Svena’s chain would run out at sunset on Sunday, the same time as Ian and Svena’s mating flight.
That timing lined upwaytoo well. Other than the party where she’d set all this up, the mating flight was the one time Estella was guaranteed to have Bethesda and her children in one place, which made it the obvious time to strike. That timing would also explain why all the other chains had been shorter. Estella had needed Svena’s obedience from the very beginning, but she’d hadn’t needed his siblings until right before she was ready to kick her final plan into action. But while Julius was certain all of Estella’s schemes would come crashing together at the mating flight, he still had no clue what she was actually trying to accomplish.
“Mother’s the obvious target,” he said, thinking out loud. “But it doesn’t feel like enough. If she just wanted to kill Bethesda, she could have attacked at the party and been done with it. Sure she would have died for it, but we’ve already established that Estella doesn’t care about that, so why go through all this trouble? Why drag everything out for three days and spend her own future to bring Conrad, Chelsie, and Amelia into it?”
“Sounds like business as usual to me,” Marci said, rolling her eyes. “From what I’ve seen of your brother, seers can’t go to the bathroom without turning it into a chess game.”
“True,” Julius agreed. “But this is too twisty even by seer standards.” And the more he thought about it, the more the whole thing felt wrong.
He’d always assumed Estella was gunning for Bethesda since the Three Sisters’ seer made no bones about wanting to bring down their clan and cutting off the head would be the obvious way to do that. That said, though, when did seerseverdo what was obvious? He had no doubt that Estella hated Bethesda with a passion, but when you looked at what she’d actuallydonesince her return on Friday, all of it had been aimed at Bob. Threatening his clan, taking over the siblings he actually cared about, cheating at his game—they were all stabs at her fellow seer, the only enemy on the board who could actually hurt her.
Thinking about it that way made Julius feel like he actually had a handle on Estella’s plans for the first time since she’d crashed his mother’s party. If you assumed her target was, and always had been, Bob, then all of this convoluted craziness made a lot more sense. But while he could now see Estella’s endgame, he still had to figure out a way to stop it. Normally, he’d say that was impossible, that a dragon like him just didn’t have the tools to fight a seer. But his situation at the moment was hardly normal, and as he looked down at the giant, breathing mountain of possibilities that was his own future, a crazy idea started to form in his head.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he said, looking up at the giant dragon, who’d sat patiently observing this whole time. “Can anyone pick up one of these chains, or do you have to be a seer?”
“Anyone can trade their future for certainty, yes,” the dragon said. “Though, since only seers can actually look inside the chains and see which future is which, you might not be happy with your purchase.”
Julius cursed under his breath. There went that plan. Not that he’d been particularly keen to trade his future away, but chains seemed to be all they had to work with around here. He was trying to think of some other, cleverer reason Bob had sent them to this place when Dragon Sees the Beginning added. “Imight be able to help you, though.”
That was the last thing he’d expected the giant dragon to say, and his head popped up like a cork. “You?”
The dragon nodded, and Julius gasped. “Why?”
In hindsight, that was not the most politic response. Fortunately, the dragon looked more amused than offended. “I find you interesting,” it rumbled, leaning down to lay its massive head on the ground, putting its milky-white eyes level with Julius’s own. “You are by far the oddest dragon I’ve seen in a very, very,verylong time. I’ve read through your past several times already over the course of our conversation, but even when I observe your decision making process step by step, I cannot comprehendwhyyou make the choices you do. It’s a fascinating conundrum you’ve given me, and as you might imagine given my circumstances, I value new entertainment very highly. So, as a show of my gratitude, I’m going to offer you a deal. You tell me what future you want to purchase, and I’ll put it together for you and tell you how much it will cost.”
“You can do that?” Marci said, clearly skeptical. “I thought you only dealt in the past? And you said only seers can see into the chains! How will you even know what you’re doing?”
“Being a construct with dominion over all that has ever been isn’t entirely without its benefits,” the dragon said with a sniff. “I might not have my brother’s skill with the future, but I can see into the chains well enough, and I’ve watched seers do this uncountable times.” The white eyes went back to Julius. “I’ll certainly do a better job thanhecould.”
That was definitely true. “Sounds good to me,” Julius said. “What are my options?”
“Anything you like,” Dragon Sees the Beginning replied, lifting its head back into the sky to get a panoramic view of the mountain of chains around them. “You are quite young. You have an entire lifetime of possible futures ahead of you, and that’s not even counting the vast potential that your perceptive, presumptuous companion brings to the table.”
Marci crossed her arms with a glare. “I thought you said my future was merely ‘good for a mortal.’”
“But I didn’t sayhowgood,” the dragon replied with a cryptic smile. “I’m not entirely sure why—again, this isn’t my area—but it seems your mortal’s connection to the…whatever it is she has on her shoulders has the potential to completely change the course of magic on her home plane.”
Marci’s whole face lit up. “You mean Ghost?” she asked excitedly. “How?”
“I don’t know,” the dragon said. “Nor do I particularly care. I’m just telling you what I see in the chains. Personally, I’m far more intrigued by the fact that young Julius here appears to be intricately linked to the future of the Heartstrikers as a whole.”
Julius blinked. “Me?”
“Yes, it’s quite fascinating,” the dragon said, leaning down toward the chains for a closer look. “Brohomir seems to be using you as a sort of linchpin, a fixed point around which the rest of your family’s futures, including his own, pivot. I’m not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish—again, I’m not a seer—but the configuration he’s created gives your future an absolutelyenormousamount of potential, far more than any single dragon should ever have on his own. If you were to cash all of that in, why, you could be the new dragon king of your world.”
“Dragonking?” Julius repeated skeptically. “As in king of dragons?”
