The words came out in a rush, but considering how long he’d been prepping to ask Marci out, Julius was pleased with his delivery. Marci, however, looked inexplicably disappointed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, instantly panicked. “Is dinner bad for you?”
“No, no, dinner’s great,” Marci said. “It’s just…” Her cheeks turned pink as her eyes went back to the feathered dragons hovering in the sky outside. “I was kind of hoping you could take me flying.”
Julius’s heart skipped multiple beats. “Flying?”
“Only if you can,” she said quickly, face getting redder by the second. “I don’t know anything about the physics of it, but I’ve always dreamed of flying on a dragon. If you don’t want to, though, that’s totally cool.”
Notwant to have Marci clinging to his back, shrieking in delight as he flew her over the desert at sunset? Julius couldn’t even imagine it. “I willabsolutelytake you flying.”
His reward was instantaneous. “Really?” Marci cried, her whole face lighting up before she sprang out of bed, nearly tackling him in a full-body hug. “You are the best dragonever!”
When she said it like that, Julius could almost believe it. He was about to wrap his arms around her as well when someone knocked on the door. When Julius looked over his shoulder, Bob was standing in the hallway on the other side of the infirmary room’s observation window, making exaggerated hand motions at the spot on his wrist where his watch would be if he’d been wearing one.
Julius’s stomach sank. “I think that’s my cue,” he muttered, turning back to Marci. “You’ll call me?”
“I will,” she promised, looking him in the eyes. “And remember, Julius. You fought a dragon-slaying fjord spirit, went to another plane of existence, foiled an ancient seer,andsaved your clan from utter destruction, and that was just what happened yesterday. You can totally handlea meeting with your mother. Don’t let her tell you otherwise.”
Julius dropped his eyes, face burning. He couldn’t tell her how much it meant to hear someone say that, but he was determined to try. “Thank you,” he said. “Really, Marci. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, giving him a shove. “Now get out of here. Your brother’s scaring the nurses, and I’m worried it’ll delay my discharge.”
She wasn’t kidding. Bob’s gestures had been getting more and more extreme as they’d talked, eventually reaching the point where the human nurses in the hall had started actively backing away. Clearly, Bob’s presence was not good for efficient running of the clinic, so Julius gave Marci a final smile and stepped outside to greet his brother.
***
“Well,” Bob said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively as Julius closed the door. “Thatlooked promising.”
“What are you doing here?” Julius asked, ignoring the heat that remark brought to his face. “And why are you dressed like that?”
Every time Julius saw Bob, the seer looked as if he’d gotten dressed by falling backwards into his closet and wearing whatever he landed on. That was still the case this morning, only Bob seemed to have stumbled into a much fancier closet. Rather than his usual odd shirts and paint-stained jeans, he was wearing a dizzying combination of black tuxedo pants, a peacock-blue silk trench coat, a snake-skin vest, and a burgundy velvet top hat complete with multiple white ostrich plumes. Even his pigeon had a pink lace rosette tied to the top of her head like a little hat, and the combined effect was enough to make Julius—who was still wearing the long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans Bob had left for him after he’d changed back from his dragon last night—feel like the odd one out.
“Should I be dressed up, too?”
“Probably,” Bob said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and steering him down the hall. “But there’s no time for that now. This is your big morning, Julius the Nice Dragon! You don’t want to be late to the inaugural meeting of the brand-new first-ever Heartstriker Council.”
Julius grimaced. “About that. I—”
“This is the chance we’ve been waiting for,” Bob said over him, his green eyes sparkling. “At long last, the future is wide open. Estella, my greatest obstacle, is dead, and even if her replacement were born tomorrow, it would be fifty years before she mastered the World of Seercraft enough to comprehend my plans.” He grinned in delight. “For the first time in my life, the entire board ismine. Do you know what that’s like?!”
“No,” Julius admitted. “But aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? There’s still the Black Reach to worry about.”
Bob clicked his tongue. “Firstly, if you can’t see the irony inherent in telling a seer he’s ‘getting ahead of himself,’ I’m officially disowning you as my brother. Secondly, I don’t bother worrying about the Black Reach because I can’tdoanything about him. His plots function on a completely different level than mine. Now that you know what he is, I shouldn’t have to explain why.”
Julius nodded. He’d already figured out the Black Reach was really Dragon Sees Eternity, twin brother to Dragon Sees the Beginning and an immortal construct dedicated to preserving the future of all dragonkind. He was also, at least according to Bob, the one who was ultimately responsible for the death of all seers. That struck Julius as the sort of thing you should keep track of, but Bob had already moved on.
“I’ll deal with the Black Reach in time,” he said, hurrying them both out of the infirmary and into the crowded hallway that connected the side building where the mortals were housed to the main spire of Heartstriker Mountain. “Right now, we have a wide-open playing field, which means it’s time to thinkBIG.”
“Last night wasn’t big enough?” Julius asked, struggling to keep up with his much taller brother’s strides.
“Overthrowing Bethesda and changing the entire Heartstriker clan structure was just set-up,” the seer said flippantly. “Once I’ve got my dragons in a row, it’ll be time for therealshow.”
Julius nodded. “Which is?”
“Nice try,” Bob said, wagging his finger. “But you’re in the big leagues now, kiddo. That means no more freebies.”
“Comeon.” Julius groaned as they crossed the marble lobby toward the golden elevator that would take them all the way up to Bethesda’s throne room at the mountain’s peak. “It’s easy for you to be relaxed. You already know how everything’s going to turn out! But all this uncertainty is hell on the rest of us. After everything we’ve been through, can’t you trust me enough to give me a hint?”
