“And I’m trying to answer your question,” Amelia said, her face splitting into a grin. “I’ve transcended, Svena! I didn’t just cheat death. I drop-kicked it! I asked Bob to kill me so I could travel with Marci through mortal death into the Sea of Magic. Once there, I conquered and devoured the nascent Mortal Spirit of dragons and took its power for myself, forever tying all dragon magic to this plane.” Her grin turned manic. “Do you get it now? I solved the non-native reduction problem you’ve been working on for the past five centuries! Me! You always called my interest in humans a narcissistic obsession, but it was through human magic that I finally solved the biggest magical problem of our species! The one even you couldn’t crack! I did that, and now I’m the first dragon ever to become truly immortal by merging with an effectively infinite magical source, which means I have finally and officially won. Our rivalry is over. There is absolutely nothing you can do to beat me now. Even if you did manage to kill me, I’d just come back like any other spirit and laugh in your face.” Her expression grew unbearably smug. “Face it, frosty, you’ve lost.”
Amelia cackled after that. A loud, cringe-worthy guffaw of pure bad sportsmanship, and Svena began to shake. Julius stepped back at the sight, moving to shelter Marci with his body against the inevitable explosion that came from rubbing defeat in a proud dragon’s face. But as he opened his mouth to call his sister out for unnecessary levels of gloating, he realized Svena wasn’t shaking with rage.
She was crying.
“You idiot!” she roared. “I thought you were dead!”
“Well, yeah, I was,” Amelia said, looking confused. “It was the only way to make everything work. But I was always planning to come back.”
“I didn’t know that!” Svena cried. “You turned to ash in front of my eyes.” Then before anyone could move, Svena reeled back and launched a trash-can-sized ball of ice at Amelia’s face. “How dare you do this to me!?”
Amelia didn’t have time to do more than look surprised before the attack smashed into her, blasting her across the living room and into the couch, which exploded in a shower of wood splinters and synthetic cotton filling. The stuffing hadn’t even finished falling before Svena was on top of her, tossing the ice boulder away with a wave of her hand so she could grab Amelia by the shoulders and slam her into the floor so hard the boards cracked.
“You were the only one left I could talk to!” she shouted. “The only one who remembered what dragon magic actually meant! You were a brash idiot with no sense of subtlety, but you were mine. My idiot, my enemy, my friend! You belonged to me, and you let that smug bastard of a seer take you away!” She slammed Amelia into the floor again and then dropped down herself, her face vanishing behind the long sweep of her ice-blond hair as she buried her head into the crook of Amelia’s shoulder. “Did you even think of what it would be like for me, you stupid, selfish snake?”
She was sobbing by the time she finished, her whole body heaving as the giant hunk of ice she’d thrown at Amelia melted into a puddle. Pinned to the ground, Amelia shot a panicked look at Julius, but he just shrugged. It wasn’t that he didn’t have sympathy. It was just all for Svena. Amelia and Bob had done this to her as much as they’d done it to him, and as nice as Julius was, he didn’t move an inch to save his sister from the consequences of her recklessness.
“Okay, okay,” Amelia said at last, awkwardly patting Svena’s shaking shoulders. “I know egg-laying makes dragons emotional, but—”
She cut off with a gulp as Svena’s hands wrapped around her throat.
“But perhaps I didn’t go about this in the best way,” she finished, eying Svena’s sharp claws nervously despite her much vaunted new immortality. “I’m back now, though, so everything’s cool. All’s well that ends well, right?”
“All is not well,” Svena snarled, sitting up with a glare. “You hurt me deeply, and I want an apology. A real one, right now, or I will never speak to you again.”
“Oh, come on!” Amelia cried. “What are we? Five?”
Svena set her jaw stubbornly, and Amelia clonked her head back down on the floor with a groan. “Fine,” she muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. “I’m sorry.”
The white dragon did not look satisfied. “Promise you’ll make it up to me,” she demanded. “A life debt good for one favor of my choosing.”
“No way!” Amelia shouted. “I’ve already admitted I was slightly in the wrong here, but you’re crazy if you think that means I’m giving you an open-ended favor.”
It did seem like overkill, but Svena wasn’t budging. She just sat stubbornly on Amelia’s chest, glaring down at her as the silence grew colder and colder until, at last, the new Spirit of Dragons sighed. “All right,” she growled, lifting up her hand. “If it will make you stop, then I swear a life debt to make this up to you with a favor of your choosing.”
“Done,” Svena said immediately, grabbing Amelia’s offered hand. The moment their fingers touched, dragon magic slammed down on the room like a falling guillotine. One favor was relatively small for a life debt, but Amelia’s new status must have given the spell extra bite, because Julius wasn’t even tangentially involved in the agreement, and the magical spillover was still strong enough to make him gasp. Even Marci looked uncomfortable, rubbing her own hands together as if they hurt. Svena, however, looked deeply satisfied, her lips curling into a smug smile.
“Apology accepted,” she said as she rose gracefully to her feet. “You always did grovel beautifully.”
“Shut up,” Amelia growled.
“Why should I?” Svena replied, looking down at her with a superior smirk. “I just put myself back on top.”
“What?” Amelia shrieked, shooting to her feet. “That did not count!”
“It absolutely counts,” Svena said with a toss of her hair. “Everyone just heard a self-proclaimed god apologize and agree to grant me a boon in exchange for the mercy of my forgiveness. Including the Golden Emperor, apparently.” She arched an eyebrow at the Qilin, who was standing behind Julius in the hallway. “I think we’ve all just seen who has the real power here.”
“You little faker,” Amelia growled, her face furious. “That was extortion!”
“I faked nothing,” Svena said angrily. “I was legitimately wronged! If you’d told me ahead of time it was a ploy for power, I would have understood, but did you do me even that small courtesy? No! You let me think you were dead.”
“She held a beautiful funeral for you,” Katya said sadly. “Full honors at sea, same as she’d do for one of our sisters.”
Svena nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “You hurt me truly, Planeswalker. A life debt is the least I could demand for the loss of my greatest rival. Not that you deserve my forgiveness after rubbing my pain in my face.” She turned up her nose. “I should have let you dangle. See how you like being left alone.”
To Julius’s amazement, Amelia laughed at that. “Like you could,” she said with a smile. “I admit it, you played me good, but I should have known you were bluffing. ‘Never talk to me again,’ my tail. You couldn’t even wait for the magic to settle before you came running.” She nodded at the baby dragons still clinging to Katya and Marci. “You even brought your poofballs.”
“I couldn’t leave them behind,” Svena said haughtily. “I know how little you Heartstrikers understand proper parenting, but a responsible dragoness doesn’t leave her whelps alone for a moment during the first month.”