“I can’t stop,” Julius said angrily. “Not until you do. You’ve always claimed you were fighting to protect the land. Now’s your chance to prove it. Stop this, Algonquin. Don’t be the hammer that breaks the only home we have.”
By the time he finished, Algonquin’s muddy puddle was smaller than a dinner plate. When she didn’t rise again, Julius was terrified they were too late, that the Leviathan had already finished her off. Then her water started to shake, and Julius understood. Algonquin wasn’t being devoured. She was crying, weeping in ripples that quickly grew to waves.
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “Don’t you see? It’s too late. Even if I wanted to stop, I already let him in.”
She lifted a watery hand as she finished, and Julius gasped. In the dark of the emptiness, Algonquin’s water had looked muddy, but now that a bit of her was stretched out under the soft light of the Black Reach’s fire, Julius saw the truth. Algonquin wasn’t murky at all. Like always, her water was crystal clear. The off color was merely an illusion created by thousands of dark, tiny lines running through her body. The way they spread reminded Julius of roots, but there was nothing plantlike about the hungry way the black tips twitched and moved, crawling through Algonquin’s water like predators as they ate her alive.
“There is no more choice,” she whispered, pulling her arm back down. “He’s in every drop of my magic now. When he’s finished consuming all the water from my physical lakes, he will be me, and our world will be his.”
The defeat in her voice made Julius tremble. Even Marci was shaking, her whole body wobbling as she dropped to her knees beside Algonquin’s murky shallows. “There has to be a way to reverse it,” she said. “It’s still your water. What if we—”
“There is nothing,” Algonquin said bitterly. “Everywhere I look, everything I touch, he’s already there, and I’m so tired. I’ve fought for so long now, lost so many times. If I could go back and do things differently, maybe this wouldn’t have been such a waste, but as Raven loved to croak at me, we can never go back. The past is gone, and soon, I will be too.” The puddle sloshed resentfully. “I’m sure that brings you joy.”
“How can you think that?” Julius asked, heartbroken. “What have I ever said that could make you believe this is anything but a tragedy for everyone?”
The water gurgled, sinking even lower into her shrinking pool. “You are truly the strangest dragon I’ve ever met,” she said quietly. “I wish we’d had this conversation decades ago, back when it might have done some good. But now…”
She let out a long, watery sigh, and then she lifted her head, raising her mirrored face from the hand-sized splash of water that was all that was left of her. “I will not apologize. This isn’t how I meant for things to end, but I only did what I thought I must to protect my world, and I will never be sorry for that.”
Knowing she’d had the best intentions just made everything worse. At this point, Julius almost wished she’d died cursing them. The hate would have stung, but at least it would have been a clean ending, not this bitter, tragic mess. Looking at Algonquin, all he could think was that if only he’d been better, said something sooner, he could have prevented this. They’d spoken before, but he’d always been too distracted by other disasters to pay attention to why Algonquin was acting the way she was. If he’d taken the time, looked harder, maybe everything would have been different. Because she wasn’t a monster. None of them were. Dragons, spirits, humans—they were all just flawed, floundering souls fumbling their way as best they could. Now they’d fumbled right off the cliff, and by the time Julius realized what was happening, it was too late.
That was what ate at him the most. Not the loss or the death, but the waste. The deep unfairness of fighting so hard only to discover you’d never had a chance. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t lose. Not after how hard they’d tried. Not after everything they’d been through.
And just like that, Julius came to a decision of his own. It took only a moment, barely a thought, but he must have spent way too much time with Bob lately, because Julius could have sworn he felt the future pivot toward a new direction as he raised his head to look at Algonquin again.
“If things had been different,” he asked quietly, “if you could do everything over, knowing what you know now, would you work with us?”
The spirit’s mirrored face flashed with annoyance, but the inevitability of their coming deaths must have been enough to defang even Algonquin’s hatred, because in the end, she just shrugged what was left of her water. “Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t have given up like I did. I would never have run to you with open arms, but if I could go back and do it all again…” She thought a moment longer, and then her head bobbed. “I would have acted differently, yes.”
That was all Julius needed to know. “Marci?”
She lifted her head hopelessly. “If you’re looking to me for a solution, don’t bother, ’cause I’ve got nothing.”
“That’s not why I’m looking at you,” he said, leaning down to rest his feathered head on hers. “I love you.”
Marci looked surprised by the sudden show of affection, which made Julius feel guilty for not telling her the truth sooner. If they’d had time, he could have gone on forever about how much meeting her had changed his life for the better and how important she was to him. But Algonquin’s puddle was shrinking by the second, so he had to settle for a final deep breath, holding the air that smelled of Marci and magic in his mouth as long as he dared. Then, when he couldn’t stall any longer, Julius turned to the lake spirit and lurched forward, sinking his teeth deep into what was left of Algonquin.
As runt of his clutch, Julius had never been much of a dragon. He was awful in a fight, couldn’t cast spells, had terrible control of his fire, and generally failed at everything most dragons considered vital to survival. But while he was a disappointment in every traditional sense, there were two things Julius did very well: being fast and ignoring the instincts that ruled other dragons’ lives, including, in this particular instance, the drive toward self-preservation.
He bit Algonquin like a striking viper, sinking his teeth into painfully cold water that tasted of fish and death. If he’d had a thought to spare for such luxuries, he would have been proud since this was probably the best hit any dragon had ever landed on the Lady of the Lakes, but his target wasn’t actually the spirit. He was going for the tendrils that ran through her, the threads of the creature who was not from their world. Those were what Julius was eying when his jaws snapped down, devouring all that was left of Algonquin in one quick bite.
“Dragon!” The lake spirit’s voice was a roar as she poured down his throat. “What are you doing?”