“Get up,” Brohomir said softly. “We have to go.”
Chelsie blinked in surprise. She hadn’t even realized her brother was here until he spoke. For a desperate moment, shealmostinterpreted that as a good sign before she remembered even a seer couldn’t save her now.
“Why should I?” she whispered, pressing her face into the mercifully cold stone. “You heard her. I’m going to pay for this forever.” And forever was a very long time for a dragon. “I think I’d rather die.”
“If that was actually true, you wouldn’t have put us through all this,” her brother said gently. “But like it or not, you lived, and now we have to move on.”
Easy for him to say. “You saw this would happen,” she growled, tilting her head to give the seer a hateful look. “Why did you let me come here in the first place if you knew it would end like this?”
“Because, believe it or not, thiswasthe happy ending,” Brohomir said with a sad smile, reaching down to brush her long, tangled black hair out of her face.
“You still could have warned me.”
He shrugged. “Would it have made a difference? You already knew exactly how bad things could get when you embarked on this foolishness. If that couldn’t stop you, what hope did I have?”
The rightness of his words hit Chelsie like a punch, and she slumped back down on the stone, defeated. “I know,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I know I was stupid. So,sostupid.”
“You were,” Brohomir agreed. “But there’s no point in dwelling on it. What’s lost is lost forever. All we can do now is move forward, and you should be glad you have that much. There were a thousand ways you died today. I bent over backwards to steer us down the one path where you didn’t. You might not thank me for that in a few minutes when you see what Mother has planned for you, but trust me when I say this was the best of bad options. Now.” He reached down to help her up. “Let’s go home, before any more of the ceiling falls on our heads.”
His hand hovered just above her own, but Chelsie couldn’t bring herself to take it. She knew he was right, that the only choice left was to accept what had happened and find a way to live with it, and with herself. But when she tried to imagine her future, all Chelsie could see was her mother’s boot coming down on her throat over and over again forever, and…and she just couldn’t. Shecouldn’tmove forward. Not if that was all she had left to look forward to.
“You see all our futures, right?” she whispered, looking up at him. “Tell me it gets better.”
The seer didn’t answer. He just sighed in that way of his, as though he’d already gone through this a thousand times before. To be fair, maybe he had, but Chelsie refused to give up.
“Please,” she begged, reaching out to grab his hand with both of hers. “You always tell us never to ask about the future, but I need to know it won’t be this way forever. I don’t care if it’s a one-in-a-million chance that won’t come for a century, just tell me a way out exists. Give me hope that I won’t actually be paying for this stupid, foolish mistake for the rest of my life.Please, Brohomir!”
She was crying by the end. Big, ugly, hopeless tears running down her cheeks as she clung to her brother’s hand. Again, though, the seer said nothing. He just leaned down and picked her up off the ground, carrying her out of the throne room to the palanquin waiting outside, where Bethesda was already writing out the details of the blood oath Chelsie now knew for certain she would never, ever escape.
Chapter 1
Heartstriker Mountain, New Mexico, USA, 2096
The desert was full of dragons.
It had been just over ten hours since Algonquin, Spirit of the Great Lakes, had broadcast her intention to wipe dragons off the face of the Earth, and the Heartstriker stronghold in the New Mexico badlands was seething like a kicked-over anthill. Dragons had been arriving all night, clogging the mountain’s tiny airstrip and two-lane highway with their limos, motorcades, private jets, and the requisite human entourages all of that luxury implied. A few even arrived under their own power, their giant feathered wings casting huge shadows in the bright desert moonlight as they flew in from all over the world. No matter how they arrived, though, all of them wore the same grim, cautious scowl, their green eyes constantly sizing up the competition as they crowded into their ancestral home.
Even for Julius, who’d grown up in the mountain, it was more dragons than he’d seen in his life. Bethesda liked to keep her true strength a mystery, so there was no official number for just how many Heartstrikers there were, but Julius had always assumed the true count was somewhere near one hundred for the simple reason that keeping more than a hundred dragons in line at any one time was impossible. But it seemed he’d underestimated his mother, because his dragon count had passed a hundred an hour ago, and the arrivals hadn’t slowed down a bit. At this point, he couldn’t even guess what the final tally would be, but staring out the window at the never-ending parade of monsters, Juliuswascertain of one thing: this was more dragons than anyone should ever have to deal with.
“I can’t do this.”
“Nonsense,” Marci said. “You’ll do fine. You just need to get away from the window and stop freaking yourself out.”
Julius didn’t think that was going to help. Looking out the window might not be good for his blood pressure, but if he turned around, the only other thing to look at was Marci lying propped up in her hospital bed, fixing the spellwork on her damaged bracelets while Ghost slept on her lap.
That was not a sight that made him feel better. Despite being patched up by one of Katya’s sisters (Julius had already forgotten which. Other than Svena and Katya, the terrifying blondes all looked the same to him), Marci had still had a whole chest full of broken ribs thanks to being thrown into a wall by Estella. Fortunately, Heartstriker Mountain was equipped with a state-of-the-art mortal infirmary to handle the inevitable injuries that cropped up when hordes of human groupies spent too much time around dragons, and they’d treated Marci very well. If it weren’t for the fact that everyone referred to the place as “the vet,” Julius would have had no complaints. Other than Marci being injured in the first place, of course.
“You’re doing it again,” she said, rolling her eyes. “For the last time, Julius, I’mfine. Ysolde the Frostcaller already handled all the actually dangerous stuff. The doctor just said I was pretty much healed. They’re releasing me today, for crying out loud.”
“I know, I know,” Julius said, plopping down on the foot of the bed. “It’s just…I hate that you got hurt. You shouldn’t have to suffer for my mistakes.”
“What mistake?” she cried. “Dude, wewon! Things might have been a little hairy at the end, but who cares? We did it! Estella’s gone, the Three Sisters are dead, and you’re legit friends with the new head of their clan. And let’s not forget that you also took overyourclan, which means Bethesda no longer has the authority to ruin your life. That’s a victory by any definition. You even got a fancy sword for your trouble.”
“But Ididn’t,” he said frantically, placing a hand on the Fang that dangled awkwardly from his hip. Justin had dug up a sheath and belt for him to use, but having the blade covered did nothing to hide just how ridiculous he looked wearing a Fang of the Heartstriker. “The only reason I was able to pull it at all was because I had a seer super-weapon forcing the universe to keep me alive. I didn’t do any of it on my own!”
“Maybe not initially,” Marci said. “But the chain Dragon Sees the Beginning gave you is long gone, and you can still use the sword, right?”
“Yes,” Julius admitted. “But—”
