“What do you think I was?” Julius said with a shrug. “And it wasn’t that bad. Sure, it’s a bit far away, but at least I didn’t have to deal with my siblings there.” No dragon who cared enough to bully him would deign to set foot in overflow housing.
“Whatever tickles your feathers,” Amelia said, extending her fingers. “One doorway to the Heartstriker slums coming up.”
The magic was rising before she finished, and Julius realized too late what was about to happen. “Wait!” he cried. “Should you be doing that in your state?”
“Please,” Amelia scoffed as the air began to warp. “The day I’m too drunk to make a portal is the day I swear off drinking. So, never basically.”
That didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it was too late now. Amelia’s portal was already opening, the doorway through worlds bending and shifting before popping into place, creating a perfect oval-shaped hole in the air beside the savaged buffet table. On the other side, Julius could see the familiar beige walls and narrow doorways of his own part of the mountain, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” he said nervously, darting through the portal before it collapsed.
“Don’t encourage her,” Chelsie growled, stepping through after him.
“You’re welcome,” Amelia said at the same time, ignoring her sister. “And have fun!”
The innuendo in her voice left no doubt what kind of fun she meant, and Julius felt himself going bright red all over again. Fortunately, the portal closed before Amelia could see, leaving him and Chelsie standing alone in the narrow, utilitarian hallway of the Heartstriker overflow tunnels.
“I think she has a problem,” he said quietly.
“Amelia has a lot of problems,” Chelsie replied. “It’s a good thing dragon livers are as immortal as the rest of us, or she’d have pickled hers centuries ago. But Amelia’s high-functioning alcoholism is a battle for another day. We’ve got more immediate problems.”
She wasn’t kidding.
The Heartstriker overflow sub-floors were a series of hallways that branched off the main mountain’s underground floors like ant tunnels, burrowing wherever there was room into the surrounding desert. Bethesda had had them built decades ago to house the seasonal human laborers that came in every year to work the mandatory Heartstriker holidays like egg laying and her birthday celebration. Under normal circumstances, dragons wouldn’t be caught dead down here in the endless, utilitarian tunnels lined with bleak, windowless rooms, which was exactly why Julius had chosen them for his home when he’d lived in the mountain. But these were hardly normal circumstances, and the moment the portal closed behind them, the smell of unknown dragons hit Julius like a punch.
“Here too?” he asked, looking up and down the drab hall. All of the doors were closed, so he couldn’t actually tell which rooms were occupied, but his nose told him that several dragons had moved in since he’d left, which was just insane. “Couldn’t they find room anywhere else?!”
“If they could have, they would have,” Chelsie said, keeping her hand on her sword. “But Heartstriker Mountain was never designed to hold the whole clan at once, and thisisthe overflow area.”
That it was, but it didn’t make Julius feel any less invaded. “I just hope no one’s squatting in my room,” he grumbled, shifting Marci in his arms. “I’m at the end, by the way.”
“I know where you live,” Chelsie said casually, darting ahead to take the lead.
That was slightly creepy, but Julius was too annoyed to care. He just wanted to get away from the constant crowd of dragons and have five minutes to himself where he could feel safe, or at least not actively under siege. But as he rounded the sharp corner that led to the tiny closet of a bedroom that had been his home since he’d turned fifteen, Julius realized he’d forgotten a very important detail about what had happened the last time he’d been home.
“Wow,” Chelsie said, arching her eyebrows at the blackened ring on the wall around where Julius’s door should have been. “I thought you were exaggerating when you said Bethesda blasted her way into your room to get you.”
“No, she came in hot,” Julius said, staring at the wreckage in despair. “But why is it still like this? It’s been over a month.”
“It’s not like you were here to put in a repair ticket,” she said, stepping over the charred pile of ash that had once been his door. “And overflow floors are at the bottom of housekeeping’s priorities. Frankly, I’m amazed they cleaned it out.”
Julius’s eyes went wide. “Cleaned it?” He stuck his head through the door. “Son of a—!”
His bedroom was completely empty. Everything he’d cared about—his gaming rig and desk, his posters, his books, his signed replica of Frostmourn—was gone. Even hisbedwas missing, leaving only his bare mattress lying on the stone floor like a sad, shucked oyster.
“Well,” he said at last. “At least this solves the mystery of whether or not Bob was joking when he said he sold my stuff.”
Chelsie shot him an uncharacteristically sympathetic look. When he tried to actually step into his empty room, though, her arm flew out to catch him. “Let me go first.”
He didn’t see why. The room was obviously empty, but that didn’t stop Chelsie from entering like she was easing into a too-hot bath. She drew her sword at the same time, swinging it around in the empty space in long slashes. Julius was about to ask her what she was doing when the air shimmered and the fiery scent of dragon magic burned his nose, making him step back in alarm.
“What was that?”
“What I was afraid of,” Chelsie said, shaking her sword like the bone-white blade was covered in invisible goo. “A curse. Couple of them, actually. Nothing truly nasty, but definitely enough to keep you out of any votes for the next week or so.”
Julius couldn’t believe it. “Someonecursedmy empty room?”
“Multiple someones, looks like,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. “But how is this a surprise? Did you think I was the only one who knew where you lived?”
