The seer looked so shocked, he nearly missed the catch. “An F?” he cried. “Really? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely name, but if you were going to stick with Bethesda’s system, you should have gone for an A.”
“I didn’t choose it because of Mother’s stupid system,” Chelsie snapped, grabbing her daughter back before Bob could toss her again. “I wanted her to have a happy name. Maybe it will help her lead a happier life than the rest of us.” She threw the whelp up into the air herself, launching her almost all the way to the top of Ghost’s barrier as the little dragon squealed in delight. “Also, all of her siblings have F names, and I didn’t want her to feel left out. Or for the others to feel I favored her over them.”
“How thoughtful,” Bob said, watching Chelsie toss the little dragon higher and higher. “You really are an exemplary mother. I should send you a card.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious,” Bob said, and for once, he actually sounded it. “I didn’t enjoy hurting you, Chelsie.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I didn’t,” he said again. “I hated what I had to do, but it was the only way I saw to save you.”
“At the beginning, maybe,” Chelsie said bitterly. “But what about later? I can see sticking me under Bethesda’s boot in a pinch, but that didn’t make you leave me under it for six hundred years.”
“That was the only way I saw to save the rest of us,” Bob replied, his face falling. “I know you think I’m the villain, and from your point of view, I suppose I am. But everything I’ve done I did for our greater good. And for the record, I always meant to make it right. In the future I made for us, you spend ten thousand years as the golden apple of the Qilin’s eye. Surely that’s worth a few centuries of unpleasantness?”
Chelsie caught her daughter with a silent glare, setting the laughing whelp on the ground to catch her breath before turning to face her brother head on. “You don’t get to tell me what our suffering is worth,” she growled. “You weren’t on Bethesda’s chain with us. You weren’t there at all. You were always off in the future, leaving those of us in the present to clean up your messes. Ten thousand years of happiness is the least you can offer for what you put us through, especially since it’s not certain we’ll live past tonight.”
“The future is never certain,” Bob agreed. “I was going to make it that way, but now that we’re thirty minutes past my pre-marked expiration date, I’m afraid the future has changed too much for my guarantee to be good anymore.”
Chelsie blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means the one-in-multiple-billions future I was planning to trade all others for is gone, vanished into the streams of time with all the other timelines from before I convinced the Black Reach that killing me would be shooting himself in the foot. We’re in a new world now, with new futures. Ones I don’t know. But while most of those are very dark, I know we’ll get through this.”
“How?” Chelsie asked, arching an eyebrow. “Got another trick up your endless sleeves?”
“No,” Bob said with a sad laugh. “I’m afraid my tricks and sleeves ended half an hour ago. Frankly, I’m still celebrating the fact I spotted Lao’s phone call in time to make a cryptic comment and maintain my reputation.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes. “Then how can you say you know anything?”
“Because Julius isn’t the only one I needed to be himself,” Bob said, smiling down at her. “Every dragon, spirit, and human in this yard is here because I wanted them to be. Not because I foresaw they’d be useful at any one specific time, but because I knew them. I know you too, Chelsie. A lesser seer, one with more limited vision, would have connived and blackmailed you to bring you to this point, but I didn’t need such blunt tools. All I had to do was choose goals that aligned with your own, and you went after them all by yourself. That’s what separates a good seer from a great one, and it’s why I’m not worried now. I don’t need to see the future to know that we will get through this. Because I see you, and if you can’t do it, it can’t be done.”
That was the most sincere compliment Bob had ever given her. Maybe the only sincere compliment. But while Chelsie didn’t doubt that her brother was telling the truth, something about what he’d said still didn’t sit right. “If that’s how you feel, why do you still have her?”
She nodded at the pigeon sitting on Bob’s shoulder, and he raised his hand protectively, cupping his fingers gently around the bird’s feathered head. “She’s for me,” he said quietly. “My ace in the hole, especially now that I no longer know exactly where all the holes are. The cost of her help will be painfully high now that we’ve moved past the future I’d picked out, but there may come a time when cost doesn’t matter. Besides,” he turned up his nose, “a consort never abandons his lady. What kind of dragon do you think I am?”
Chelsie had a lot of answers for that one. She was about to give him the full, blistering rundown when Xian suddenly came back, his gold eyes bright as he told them to make room. The Dragons of the Golden Empire were coming in for a landing.
***
Julius watched Bob and Chelsie’s conversation with growing dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t like that they were finally talking—he was ecstatic—he just had no confidence it would stay that way. He knew firsthand how infuriating Bob could be, and the seer had only manipulated his life. He’d stomped on Chelsie’s, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t ready to let it go.
But fortunately, and very surprisingly, Bob didn’t seem to be antagonizing her. He actually looked sincere, almost apologetic. Not that he would ever actually apologize—he was too much of a dragon for that—but it was a marked detour from his normal behavior. Julius wasn’t sure if that was because the seer was off his script now or if Bob really did feel bad about what he’d put Chelsie and her children through, but whatever the reason, he was glad of it. One of his biggest motivations for agreeing to take over his clan was the chance to end Bethesda’s culture of violence, something that would be a lot easier if members of his family would stop trying to kill each other. He didn’t think they were there quite yet, but talking instead of hitting was definitely a step in the right direction. He just wished everything else were going as well.