Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)
Rachel Aaron
Dear Reader,
There is no way to write a blurb for this final book without spoiling all of the others. Suffice it to say, mysteries resolve, dragons war, pigeons abound, and no one is safe as Bob’s grand plan finally comes to fruition.
But the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers isn’t the only one whose schemes are nearing completion. The Nameless End is coming, and even the machinations of the world’s most brilliant dragon seer might not be enough to stop it. As everything comes crashing down, it’s up to Julius to prove what he’s always known: that seers can be wrong, and Nice Dragons don’t always finish last.
Prologue
700 years ago, somewhere in South America.
On a night in late summer, on a beach somewhere along the Pacific coast of South America, Brohomir and Amelia sat together in the sweltering heat with their feet dug into the cool, wet sand, watching the waves crest in the moonlight.
As usual, Amelia was drinking from a bone flask full of something that smelled slightly of coconut and strongly of alcohol. Brohomir, however, had nothing. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in days in preparation for tonight. Now that they were finally on the threshold, though, he found he was having trouble asking his sister to begin.
“You don’t have to do this now,” Amelia said quietly, her amber eyes shining in the dark. “You said it was centuries in the future. A lot can happen between now and then. There’s no shame in waiting.”
“No help, either,” Brohomir replied, digging his hands into the sand. “But I see the vision every night now, Amelia. There’s no escaping it. I have to do something.”
His sister took another sip from her flask. “What do you see?”
She’d asked him before. He’d told her before, but while Brohomir desperately didn’t want to talk about it, he could never deny Amelia anything.
“I’m in a ruined city,” he said quietly, tilting his head back to look up at the endless stars above them. “At least, I think it’s a city. It’s so big, I can’t be sure. The buildings look as tall as mountains.”
“The future is full of marvels,” Amelia replied with a chuckle. “Too bad it gets wrecked.” She frowned. “Was it one of us?”
“I don’t know,” Brohomir said. “The death vision isn’t like my others. There’s no path of decisions, no trails to follow. It’s just a moment sliced in time. I don’t even know how I got there, but he’s already waiting for me.”
He could see it perfectly even now. The Black Reach stood over him, a long black shadow silhouetted by the strange orange light shining from something unseen behind him. “He kills me after that.”
“If that’s all it is, we’ll just have to make sure I’m there too,” Amelia said proudly. “The Black Reach is the Death of Seers, not the Death of Amelias. I won’t let him touch you.”
“But you are there,” Brohomir said. “I can’t see you in the vision, but I can smell you close by. There’s another Heartstriker as well. One of our brothers.”
“Which one?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. His back is to me, so I can’t see his face. I don’t actually think he’s been born yet.” Brohomir smiled. “He strikes me as very young.”
Amelia snorted. “So, useless.”
“Not useless,” the seer said. “The vision is only for a moment, but in that moment, I know he’s important. Maybe the most important.”
“He can’t be that important,” Amelia said bitterly. “The Black Reach still kills you.”
“He does,” Brohomir said, voice shaking. “He kills me, Amelia. I see it happen over and over, but what’s truly terrifying is that my death isn’t actually the worst part.”
“What’s worse than dying?”
He took a shuddering breath. “The thing in the sky.”
His sister scowled, but Brohomir didn’t know how else to explain it. There were no words, no names for what he’d witnessed floating above the scene of his death, but every time Brohomir saw it, fear cut straight to his bones. It was even worse than when the Black Reach cut him down. That was merely the end of him. The thing in the sky was the end of everything.
“I have to stop it,” he whispered, reaching out to clutch her hand. “It’s over for all of us if I don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Amelia said. “But are you sure this is how you want to do it?” She nodded down the beach at the multiple feet of portal calculations she’d drawn in the hard-packed sand. “I was there when the Black Reach found you. I heard him say that he only kills seers who break his rules, but that’s exactly what we’re planning to do. If this actually works, you could be sealing your own fate.”
“If I don’t do this, we’re all dead,” Brohomir said firmly, pushing to his feet. “But it’s all right, Amelia. I’ve seen the future, and I have a plan. I’m not going to die, and I swear on my fire I won’t let you die, either.”
Amelia grinned at him. “If you say so, I believe you,” she said, standing up as well. “Shall we get this over with?”
When Brohomir nodded, Amelia tossed back the last of her fermented coconut. Properly braced, she dropped the empty flask in the sand at her feet and lifted her hands in front of her, curling her fingers in the empty air like she was preparing to rip open a curtain. When every knuckle was hooked at the correct angle, the air in front of her lit up as a searing lash of Amelia’s magic struck the empty space above the surf, sundering the dark as she ripped the world apart, opening a hole into emptiness itself.
“I can only hold it for five minutes!” she yelled over the wind that began howling past them out into the blackness on the other side of the portal.
Brohomir nodded and pulled his alpaca wool jacket tight, filling his lungs with air as he stepped off the nighttime beach and into the true dark of the space between worlds.
The moment he crossed the portal threshold, all sound vanished. He could still see Amelia behind him, her black hair whipping wildly around her strained face as she fought to hold the doorway open, but there was no more wind or sound. Just the empty dark, stretching out to infinity around him.
“Right,” Brohomir said, speaking the word out loud even though the only voice he could actually hear was in his own head. “Let’s try this.”