By this point, every instinct Marci had was screaming at her to run. But her pride had made her bed, and Marci lay in it belligerently, refusing to yield an inch. “I am a mage,” she replied with every ounce of haughtiness three years in a competitive doctoral program had taught her. “We bend the rules of the universe on a daily basis. Presumptuousness is the base line for entry.”
The dragon’s green eyes widened, and then he burst out laughing.
The sound broke the tension so sharply, Marci wavered on her feet. The dragon reached out to steady her at once, slapping his hand on her shoulder so hard she almost fell for real.
“Oh my,” he said, wiping his face with a gold-embroidered handkerchief from somewhere in his pockets. “That was not the reply I expected at all. I’d forgotten how nice it is to be surprised.” He looked her over one more time, and though it didn’t seem possible, his smile got even wider. “For the record, Little Miss Mage, that was a test, too. Whatever Julius’s dooming and glooming might have led you to believe, loyalty is very important in our family. It wasn’t what I picked you for, but I welcome it all the same. You will do marvelously. I only hope my brother can keep up.”
Marci blinked, her anger slipping in the face of her confusion. “Picked?” she said, and then, “Wait, keep up with what?”
“Everything,” the dragon said with a sigh, replacing his handkerchief with one hand while the other pulled an ancient keyboard phone out of his back pocket and began typing a message. “Now, not that this hasn’t been a lovely visit, but I’m afraid I have to go get ready to give someone a ride. Would you be a dear and tell Julius to buckle up for me?”
“Buckle up,” she repeated slowly. “You mean, like, in the car?”
The dragon nodded gravely, returning his phone to his pocket. “The near-complete adoption of self-driving cars over the last quarter century has made road accidents statistically unlikely, but my baby brother has recently developed a dangerous knack for bringing in long shots, and I’d hate to lose him to a variable I don’t control.”
That seemed like pretty innocuous advice, so Marci promised she’d pass it on. The moment he’d secured her cooperation, the dragon gave her a winning smile and set off down the sidewalk, his pigeon riding comfortably on top of his head. He’d nearly reached the end of the block before Marci realized she’d never found out his name. Before she could yell after him, however, he turned on his heel and vanished into an alley. She was still staring at the place where he’d been when a flash of movement through the window brought her eyes back to the diner just in time to see Julius wave for the check.
“I will admit, it’s a clever plan,” Katya said as she gathered her things from the booth. “I just don’t think it’s going to work.”
“It doesn’t have to work,” Julius said, paying the check when it popped up on his AR. “It just has to look like it’s working long enough for us to get out of our mutual predicaments.”
“But that’s the problem. It’s one thing to dally with a Heartstriker for an evening, but anything more, even the appearance of such, is completely out of the question for a daughter of the Three Sisters. Especially for Svena. Other than Estella herself, she’s the most famous of us by far, and she’s never agreed to a mating flight in her life. She certainly wouldn’t start with a male so far below her, whatever your mother dreams. No offense meant to your brother, of course.”
Julius shrugged. “Offend him all you want, it won’t stop Ian. I don’t doubt you’re right about your sister, but Ian’s ambitious and persistent even for a dragon. Even for a Heartstriker. An elder daughter of the Three Sisters is exactly the sort of prize he’d risk everything to go after. All we have to do is harness that ambition, and suddenly he’s working for us.”
Katya still looked unconvinced, so Julius laid it out for her again. “Look, you want to stay here in the DFZ with your shaman boyfriend, right?”
She glowered at his word choice, but she nodded all the same.
“But your sisters won’t let you loose on your own, so you keep running away,” he continued. “And it drives your sisters crazy.”
She nodded again, and Julius spread his arms. “So tell me how this doesn’t work? You know Svena best. How badly does she want you to stop running?”
“Bad enough to go to a Heartstriker when she failed to corner me herself,” Katya admitted.
“Exactly,” he said. “You have what she wants, which means you have the power to negotiate. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go to my brother and let him in on the plan. That way, when Svena arrives, Ian and I will both be there to give you backup while you explain to her that you won’t run from your family again on the condition that, rather than being locked up alone in Siberia, you’re allowed to confine yourself to the DFZ under her watch instead.”
“So you keep saying,” Katya replied with a sigh. “And I keep saying she’ll never agree.”
“I don’t think you’re giving your sister enough credit,” he said. “It’s true I don’t know Svena nearly as well as you do, but everything I’ve seen of her tells me she’s not the sort of dragon who wants to waste her time incarcerating an otherwise fully functional sister if there’s a better option on the table. All we have to do is convince her that the DFZ is that better option, and I don’t think it’ll be a hard sell. First, we’re on Algonquin’s turf, which negates Estella’s primary complaint that your lack of magic is an embarrassment to the clan since you can’t do big dragon magic here anyway. Second, you actually want to stay in the city, which means Svena won’t have to worry about you running away. And if those reasons aren’t enough to sway her, I’m sure Ian will think of twenty more. He’s good at that sort of thing.”
Katya scowled. “You seem very sure your brother will help us. I thought you were considered a failure in your family?”
“Ah, but he won’t be doing it to help us,” Julius said. “He’ll be doing it to help himself. That’s why we’re specifying Svena as your guardian here in the DFZ. If we make keeping you in the city synonymous with keeping Svena inside his reach, my brother will probably take care of the rest all on his own.”
“And he’ll know he owes that to you,” Katya finished. “Since this was all your idea.”
“Exactly,” Julius said, breaking into a grin. “Everyone wins! I come off looking like the miracle matchmaker who found a way to keep Ian and Svena together against all odds. You don’t have to go back to Siberia or spend your days hiding in dives like this. Svena doesn’t have to worry about you running away anymore, and Ian gets a long and lengthy courtship to try and convince your sister to throw in with him. And if he fails after all that, there’ll be no way my mother can possibly say it was my fault. It’s perfect.”
Katya drummed her nails on the table, brows knit as she thought it over. “I thought you were pulling my tail at first, but now I’m starting to think this might actually work. I still can’t believe Svena would go for a Heartstriker, but I know she hates the glacier as much as I do. She’d love any excuse to stay away for a while, especially if she’ll have your brother to play with. Heartstriker wiles are not to be underestimated.”
Julius cleared his throat. “Heartstriker wiles?”
“Oh come on. You can’t be ignorant of your family’s reputation.”
“Believe me, I’m not,” he said, blushing. “But ‘wiles’ is a much nicer word for it than I usually hear.”