The moment he saw his sword, Justin had eyes for nothing else. “With that, I can do anything,” he growled, reaching up to grab the Fang’s black-wrapped handle. The second he touched it, Julius felt a much stronger surge of the old magic from earlier, and his brother closed his eyes with a satisfied sigh. Then, like just touching the thing had filled him with new vigor, Justin rolled to his feet, shaking the dust off his body like a dog.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he said, glaring at Chelsie and Conrad, who’d spread out to flank them. “But it can wait. I’ll take Conrad. You get Chelsie.”
“Why do I have to get Chelsie?!” Julius cried, but it was too late. His brother was already swinging, his magic surging as sharp as his Fang as he sliced his enormous sword up, throwing a slash of razor sharp dragon magic across the throne room and into Conrad, who barely dodged in time.
Well, Julius thought, at least Justin was back in fighting form. Guaranteed future or no, he was far less optimistic about his own chances as Chelsie rapidly closed in. “Chelsie,” he said quickly, putting up his hands. “Stop. It’s me. I don’t want to fight—”
She cut him off with a stab at his head. She was so fast, Julius didn’t even see her move until the sword was right in front of his nose. But while that should have been the end of him with a sword through the eye, something odd happened. The moment before Chelsie’s attack hit, one of the bits of rubble under Julius’s feet rolled, making him tilt sideways in just the right way to avoid getting skewered. It was pure, blind luck, the sort of one in a million chance that only happened when you weren’t expecting it.
Or when you’d traded your future to buy another where it was guaranteed you didn’t die.
That thought gave Julius the oddest burst of confidence he’d ever had, and he turned back to his sister, who was already swinging for him again. This time, though, she was the one who stepped wrong, wobbling at precisely the right moment to send her sword, which had been aimed at Julius’s neck, slicing into his shoulder instead.
“Ow!”he cried, grabbing the wound as he jumped backwards. Apparently, not getting killed didn’t mean not getting hurt. But though the cut stung like crazy, he could still move, and he did, pumping both arms frantically as he sprinted away from Chelsie as fast as he could.
Think, he had to think. The incredible luck he’d had up until now had convinced him that the future he’d bought was indeed working. But while Julius was confident he’d arrive at the end result he’d asked Dragon Sees the Beginning to arrange, he wasn’t a seer, which meant he couldn’t look ahead and see how he got there. That left a lot more up to blind faith than he was comfortable with, but at least he wouldn’t have to hold out much longer. He could see the sun setting through his mother’s balcony, getting closer to the horizon by the second. All he had to do was keep it together a little—
A familiar scream shot through the air, turning his blood to ice. He skidded to a stop, whirling around just in time to see Marci fly through the air to crash into the throne room doors.
Julius had never run so fast in his life. He wasn’t sure his feet actually touched the ground until he was beside her. “Marci!” he shouted, dropping to his knees as he grabbed her cold hands. “Marci!”
Her eyes popped open with a gasp, and she sat up. “Whoa,” she whispered, reaching up touch the trickle of blood coming out of her nose. “Thatdidn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?” he asked frantically, running his hands over her arms, legs, and torso to make sure nothing was broken. “What did you do?”
Marci nodded across the room at Amelia, who looked pissed even through Estella’s mind control. “Turns out it’s a lot harder to suck magic out of dragons when they’re not volunteering.”
The blood drained from Julius’s face. “You tried to suck out Amelia’s magic?”
“You know a quicker way of taking a dragon down?” she asked, pushing herself back up with a wince. “Time for Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“You don’t want to know, and I don’t have time to tell you,” Marci growled, never taking her eyes off Amelia as she put out her hands just in time for Ghost to appear between them. “We got this. Go.”
“Wait!” he cried, but it was too late. Marci had already pushed him off the step.
Julius fell with a string of expletives, most of them surprised. He was the first to admit he wasn’t exactly the most hardy dragon, but there should have been no way a mortal like Marci could possibly have knocked him over like that. She must have pushed him just right to knock him off balance, he realized as he hit the ground. And as soon as he looked up again, he understood why.
Chelsie was now standing next to Marci with her Fang wedged in the wooden throne room door exactly where Julius’s head had been a second earlier. Marci, being smart, was already scrambling away, looking over her shoulder just long enough to mouthSorry!at him before she turned all her attention back to Amelia. As much as Julius wanted to help her, though, he had his own problems. In the time between when he’d looked at Marci and now, Chelsie had already yanked her sword out of the door, which meant it was time to run again.
Wounded shoulder burning, Julius shoved himself back to his feet, looking around frantically for somewhere he could either hide or that would force his sister into a position where she couldn’t attack. Surely in a place as huge as his mother’s throne room there’d be somewhere he could use, but with so many different fights going on, all he saw was conflict. The left half of the room was completely taken up by Justin and Conrad’s epic duel. A fight that, to his amazement, seemed to be stalemated. He wasn’t sure if Conrad was being handicapped by Estella’s control or if Justin was getting a boost from finally reuniting with his sword after a full month of rage, but his brother was doing better than Julius had ever seen, taking Conrad on blow for blow.
Unfortunately, since they were both using Fangs, this also meant their half of the throne room was instant death for anyone without one. When Julius turned to check the balcony side of the room, though, Marci and Amelia had taken that over as well. They didn’t actually seem to be doing anything, but the smell of both their magic was thick enough that Julius wasn’t about to risk stepping between them. That left the middle of the room, but that was also where Estella was, sitting on the Heartstriker’s broken throne and watching the fights below like a Roman empress at the Coliseum while she held Bethesda hostage.
No guarantee of survival was good enough to make Julius go nearthat, but he had to go somewhere. Already, Chelsie was right on his heels, and from the glare on her face, she was done playing around. So, with every other path blocked, Julius fled to the only place he had left. He jumped, launching himself straight up into the air and onto the Quetzalcoatl’s bus-sized skull.
It swung alarmingly when he landed, the chains creaking where they’d been anchored in the stone ceiling. Both of these only got worse when Chelsie jumped up after him, landing on the hard bone ridge that had once supported their grandfather’s crowning mane of feathers.
“Chelsie, stop,” Julius said firmly, grabbing hold of a chain to keep from falling off. “Estella’s controlling you. You don’t want to do this. You’ve been bending over backwards tryingnotto kill me, remember?”
Her answer to that was to attack, but her lunge sent the skull swaying wildly, and she missed again, cutting through the chain Julius was holding instead of through her brother. But while this miraculous twist of fate spared his life yet again, it also sent Julius into free fall.
He toppled sideways, hands scrambling desperately over the age-smoothed bone for a handhold. His luck must have suddenly reversed, though, because his desperate fingers didn’t find a thing. He just slid right off, plummeting straight down the side of the giant skull toward the ground directly in front of Bethesda’s throne where Estella was already waiting, her icy sword ready to chop him out of the air.
The fall had gotten his blood moving, but the sight of Estella waiting for him was what sent Julius into real survival mode. The chain he’d bought might protect him from everyone else, but he had no idea how it would stand against a seer with nothing left to lose. He could not,could notget anywhere near Estella, and that knowledge let him reach farther than he’d ever thought possible, nearly popping his shoulder out of joint as his hand shot up to grab the tip of the Quetzalcoatl’s last remaining fang.
But even though he’d made it, even though he’d grabbed on, his fall didn’t stop. He was still plummeting straight toward Estella, because when he’d closed his fingers around the tooth, it had ceased to be a tooth and turned into a sword. A naked, bone-white Fang of the Heartstriker even sharper than Chelsie’s.
