“Well, if she didn’t tell you, I’m not saying anything,” Amelia said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know better than to get in the middle of couples’ fights. But before you freak out too hard, rest assured that Marci didn’t actually do anything other than graciously agree to go along with my plan, which means I really did this to myself.” She lifted her head proudly. “Like I said, dragon mage at the height of her power.”
Julius couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly make themselves look that sickly, but Amelia didn’t seem upset about it, so he set the rest of his questions aside for later and moved on to the more immediate problem. “So you don’t know where Marci is?”
Amelia shook her head. “I wouldn’t worry too much, though. She’s probably just out exploring the mountain.”
“That’sexactlywhat I’m afraid of!” Julius cried. “Do you know how many dragons hate my guts right now?”
“If any dragon in this mountain is stupid enough to mess with Marci, they deserve what they get,” Amelia said with a wry smile. “You need to remember who you’re talking about. This is the mage who killed Vann Jeger and, even more impressive, stood up to me. And let’s not forget her extremely dangerous and protective spirit.” She grinned wide. “Trust me. Anyone who picks a fight with Marci is going to find themselves holding the wrong end of the cat.”
That was all true, but Julius was more worried than ever, because Amelia was right. If Marci was cornered, she’d fight back, and it would make everything worse. Not only would she be in danger, fighting would earn her enemies of her own, and Julius didn’t even want to think about the damage it would do to his own push for nonviolent change if his mortal ended up killing one of his siblings inside their own mountain.
There was nothing else for it. He’d just have to find her first, before anything happened. He was about to say good-bye to Amelia to go do just that when a cold shiver ran up his spine.
It wasn’t a physical cold. There was no water or metal or anything else sliding up his back. It was just a feeling, like someone had stepped on his grave. He was about to brush it off as nerves when Justin growled.
“What was that?”
Fredrick’s head snapped up. “You felt it, too?”
“I think we all did,” Julius said warily, looking at Amelia, who was grinning in a way that made him very uncomfortable.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, reaching down to run her hand through the shadows that were crawling over the ground. Shadows that, despite the darkness of Amelia’s closed room, Julius waspositivehad not been there before. “I think our little Marci just played her hand.”
“Really?” Justin said, kicking the strange darkness with his boot. “’Cause I never saw a human spell do this.”
“I have,” Julius whispered, staring at the shadows, which he could now see weren’t actually crawling over the ground at all. It was hard to see in the sputtering light of Amelia’s fire, but Julius’s night vision had been good even when he was sealed. Unsealed, he could clearly see that the shadows were moving through the floor, not over it, and more importantly, they weren’t shadows at all. They were humans. Hundreds of them. An entire army of transparent, ghostly people moving through the stone floor like swimming fish, their faint shapes fluttering in a wind no one but they could feel.
That was enough to send a second chill up his spine, and Julius grabbed his brother so hard Justin snarled. “We have to go. Right now.”
“What?” Justin said, prying Julius’s hand off his arm. “Why? They’re just—hey!”
Julius was already out the door, pausing only to grab a confused Fredrick before he plunged into the trapped hall. A moment later, Justin charged after them, yelling loudly at his brothers to wait.
“Say ‘hi’ to Marci for me when you see her!” Amelia called, holding up her flask in salute before shutting the door behind them with a knife-sharp blast of magic.
***
Meanwhile, ten minutes earlier and multiple floors below, Marci was struggling with a very different problem. Namely, the fact that she was completely and utterly lost.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, staring up the endlessly spiraling industrial stairwell the one human servant she’d found would talk to her had sworn would take them outside. “The floors aren’t even numbered! How are you supposed to know when you get to the right one?”
We’ll find it eventually,Ghost said, bounding soundlessly down the stone stairs in front of her.There’s only one ground floor.
“And eighty million others,” she said, leaning over the metal railing to peer down the empty center of the enormous stairwell, which seemed to go just as far down as the spiral above went up. “I can’t even tell if we’re above ground or below. I don’t suppose you could ghost through the stone and go check?”
She glanced back for his answer, but her spirit had gone perfectly still, his translucent body frozen like an ice sculpture below the stairwell’s high-efficiency halogen lights.
“What?” she whispered, instantly on alert. “What is it?”
The spirit didn’t answer, but she felt his presence in her mind draw tighter as his attention focused on something up the stairs behind her.
Dragon.
Given the positioning and the suddenness—and whose wards she’d just finished trashing—Marci’s first thought was Chelsie. But when she whirled around, the dragon waiting on the steps above her was one she’d never seen before.
He was, of course, a Heartstriker, but other than the ubiquitous green eyes and dark hair everyone in the family shared, he looked as much like Julius as she did. He was alsohuge,easily as big as Justin. But while he was still insanely handsome (as every dragon seemed to be by default), he looked more brutal and thuggish than the J-clutch knight ever could. He was also doing that leering-down thing dragons always did with people they considered beneath them, which definitely wasn’t helping. A month ago, Marci would have found that intimidating, but these days she’d been leered down at by no less than Bethesda herself, and she was not impressed.
“Can I help you?”
