“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 the 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?”
“Trust is irrelevant when you can see the future,” Bob said, turning on his heel to stare down at his littlest brother. “But if it makes you feel better, it’sbecauseI trust you that I can’t tell you what’s coming.” He smiled wide. “You are the best, most sophisticated tool I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. You are the crowbar I’ve picked to pry apart the universe, Julius Heartstriker. If you think I’m going to jeopardize that so you can feel less anxious, you’re crazier than I am.”
“But you’re not crazy,” Julius said, crossing his arms over his chest as he stared right back up at the seer. “Are you?”
Bob’s confident smile didn’t budge, but something in his face sharpened. It wasn’t even a movement, more like a shift of perspective that threw his usual carefree smile into a new, unsettling light.
“There’s a certain madness inherent in all seers,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible to see as much as we see, to know what we know, and not have it change your perspective. Eventually, you stop seeing the individuals at all. It’s all just percentages and likelihoods, moves on the board, and when you’re always playing twenty moves ahead, you can’t help but look insane to everyone who’s still trapped in the present.”
He sighed and reached up to adjust his pigeon’s hat. “It’s a lonely life, sometimes, but a very exciting one full of possibility. And speaking of possibility.” He dug into his jacket pockets, pulling out several crumpled sticky notes, a mismatched set of silverware, and one of those lace-wrapped packets of birdseed people threw at weddings before finally producing a densely folded piece of parchment. “You’re going to need this.”
“What is it?” Julius asked, taking the paper, which had been folded over so many times it was practically a solid cube.
“The new clan charter I had everyone sign last night. The magically binding document that lays out the redistribution of Bethesda’s powers to the Council and thus determines the future of our entire clan.”
Julius nearly dropped it. “And you’ve been carrying it around balled up in your pocket?”
“Next to my heart,” Bob said sweetly, laying a gentle hand on his chest. “That’s my only copy, so be careful. I’m only entrusting it to you because you’re going to need it. This morning marks the first official meeting of the Heartstriker Council, and you can bet your newly unsealed tail feathers that Mother’s going to try every trick in the book to undermine the process. Your only hope of stopping her is to know exactly what the new rules are and force her to follow them. Otherwise, we might as well just give up now and hand her the clan back.”
