“And it will,” she assured him, cracking her eyes open at last with a weak smile. “I’ve known since you had your first vision at thirteen that you’d be the greatest seer ever born. I’ve bet my life on you countless times, and you’ve always come through. This time will be no different.”
“So you say,” he whispered, reaching down to stroke her brittle hair. “But you’re cutting it awful close, dearest.”
“What’s the point of gambling if you aren’t willing to go all in?” Amelia said with a hollow laugh. “And it was past time for a change. I’ve been traveling the planes for a thousand years now. Thanks to the time dilation, that makes me old even by dragon standards, but planeswalking can’t challenge me anymore. I need something new. Something I can sink my teeth into forever.” She smiled. “You might say I’m finally ready to settle down. Before I do, though, there’s one last loose end to tie up.”
She reached into the folds of her blanket and plucked out a heavy envelope with Julius’s name on it. “What’s this?” Bob asked, truly curious. He’d foreseen there would be a letter, but he hadn’t glimpsed what was inside.
“A condolence gift,” she said. “For our Nice Dragon. It was ridiculously hard after Marci’s death left me like this.” She waved down at her emaciated body. “But I did it. I finally managed to crack those hateful green eyes. It was actually stupidly simple, which I should have guessed from the start. Mother’s never been much of a mage.” She tapped her fingers on the envelope. “Anyway, I’ve written it all down in steps even a J should be able to follow. With this, he should be able to break the whole clan free if he wants to.”
That was a surprise indeed, but Bob was in too much of a hurry to savor it. “Who did you break out?” he asked as he took the letter.
“Fredrick,” she said. “He wasquiteshocked, but who wouldn’t be? Dragon eyes usually come from the father, and with eyes like those, there can be no doubt.”
“Well, I hope you covered them right back up again,” the seer said with a nervous look at the horizon. “If Chelsie finds out, she’ll have our heads.”
“You mean your head,” Amelia said. “Because unless she gets here in the next five minutes, she’ll be too late for mine.”
Bob’s hands began to shake. “Amelia…”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I gave Fredrick an illusion that should do the trick long enough. I’m not trying to air dirty laundry or ruffle any feathers. I just wanted to make sure I could die in peace knowing Svena never beat me at a single thing.”
She grinned up at her brother, but Bob was looking at his feet. “You know, maybe we should wait another—”
“No!” she snarled, grabbing his arm. “We can’t put this off any longer, Brohomir. Look at me! Between Marci’s death and breaking the green eyes, I’m running on fumes. You were the one who just said there’d be no more second chances. That includes me.” She let him go, falling back to her couch with an exhausted sigh. “This whole thing was our idea, yours and mine. I’ve done my part. Now it’s your turn.”
He knew that. He’d seen this day coming for a century now, but like all his visions, knowing didn’t make it any easier to accept. “Can’t it be someone else?” he choked out at last. “Svena would do it in a heartbeat, but I don’t know if I can…” He stopped, taking a deep breath. “You’re the only real family I’ve ever had, Amelia.”
“But that’s why it has to be you,” she said softly, reaching up to brush his long hair back from his face. “I might be grossly weakened, but I still have the feeling I’m going to take this rather badly, and you’re the only one I could never bring myself to kill.”
Bob knew that, too. He’d told her as much himself back when all of this had seemed terribly clever rather than just terrible. Every step of this day had been planned for decades, and yet…
“Enough,” Amelia growled, tossing back the last of her scotch before sitting up and chucking the empty glass tumbler off the balcony. “No more hesitation. I’m ready. Let’s get this over with.”
He wasn’t, but seeing how he never would be, Bob supposed that didn’t matter. So, since he clearly wasn’t getting out of this, he focused instead on sharpening his magic, sending his pigeon safely away to perch on Amelia’s pile of empty bottles while he honed his fire. When it was as sharp as he could make it, he turned back to his sister.
“Ready?”
She held her emaciated arms out wide, which was answer enough. With no more chance of escape, Brohomir decided to just get this over with as quickly as possible, moving at his full speed for the first time in centuries as he punched forward, plunging the talon of his sharpened magic deep into Amelia’s chest.
As predicted, she didnottake it well. Even on death’s door, Amelia was one of the strongest dragons on the planet, and she fought to the last breath. If he’d been anyone else, she would have ripped his throat out, among other things. But even in her dying struggles, Amelia’s attacks never landed anywhere truly vital, and eventually she fell still, her frail hands sliding off him as she slumped over.
For a long moment, she lay motionless on the couch. Then, in a single instant, her entire body turned to pure-white ash. It held her shape for an instant, and then a breeze blew in from the open balcony, and what was left of his favorite sister collapsed into dust. When Bob finally worked up the courage to pull his hands free of the ash, a beautiful orange flame was cupped in his palms. It was the last of Amelia’s fire, the purest magic of the greatest dragon mage he’d ever known. He was still staring at it when a shocked voice spoke behind him.
“What are you doing?”
Bob shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a seer, after all. But hunched over the fire and ash that was all that remained of the sister who’d been more of a mother to him than Bethesda could ever claim, Bob had lost track of time, which was the only reason he hadn’t been ready and waiting when Svena teleported into Amelia’s room carrying a frozen bottle of Aquavit and two tall glasses.
“What are you doing?” she said again, the frosty liquor bottle crashing to the ground as her blue eyes went from Bob and the fire to the pile of ash on Amelia’s couch. “What have youdone?”
“What she asked,” Bob said, closing his hands protectively over the flickering orange flame.
Stumbling in shock, Svena made her way to the couch, reaching down to touch what was left of Amelia with trembling fingers. “My enemy,” she whispered, her cold voice cracking. “My only true rival.” The delicate ash crumbled even further when she touched it, and Svena snatched her hand away, whirling on Bob instead. “You killed her!”
When he didn’t deny it, ice raced across the floor, filling the enormous cave and dropping the air temperature to below freezing in seconds. “Howdareyou?” Svena roared, rocking the mountain with her rage. “She was mine! My rival! My friend! Mine to kill!How dare you take her from me?” She threw out her arm, launching a barrage of razor-sharp ice straight at his head. “I will kill you!”
“But you can’t,” Bob said, dodging the ice easily before stepping into position to avoid the next attack, which she hadn’t even formed yet. “First, we’re in the desert, which means you have to work twice as hard to produce your ice cubes. Second, you’re pregnant and pouring most of your power into your still-forming eggs. Third, I’m a seer, and we both know that if you could kill one of those, you’d have done so ages ago and saved us all a lot of trouble.”
Svena responded by throwing a giant ice spike at his head, but Bob simply leaned sideways, letting it sweep by him with inches to spare. The next attack played out the same way, as did the one after that, but Svena didn’t stop. Her rage wouldn’t let her, and so she kept going, launching ice wildly at Brohomir until there was nothing left.
