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  Ladon felt the rest of the beast’s concern as a conceptual framework—you need healing.

  But his healer could not touch him.

  We need to get her talisman now, so I can rest.

  I will not argue with you. Dragon turned his back. Sister says Sister-Human believes we need to consider what we do.

  A wall dropped. The beast had had his fill. Ladon knew not to press. Arguing with a dragon often led to him waking up two mornings later, fully rested but with a battle raging outside he should have been spearheading.

  Sister touched his arm as she walked by. “Come, Brother. I have something to show you.”

  Ladon followed her down the walk toward where his van waited in the driveway. After the Seraphim rolled her RV, after Ladon carried Rysa into the Rock Springs Emergency Department, Sister took Ladon’s van to the wreck. And Sister stripped out all the weapons.

  She had brought the handguns into the hospital. But the big weapons—the rifles and the blades—she’d loaded into the van.

  Ladon hadn’t thought much about it. He would have done the same if he had gone out to the wreck.

  But there were two extra blades he had forgotten about. Two blades that the War Babies—the first Fate triad to come after Rysa—had used in the Green River Rail Yard. The two midnight swords.

  Sister walked next to him down the long, clean ribbon of concrete leading to the driveway. Sister-Dragon sprawled on the house roof and Dragon moved to the garage roof, where he had a good view of both Ladon and the pool house.

  Rysa eats, the beast pushed. Derek waits, to make sure she finishes.

  “She probably thinks my husband babies her.” Sister pointed at Ladon’s van at the end of the driveway. “I put the blades in the step.”

  Ladon hit ‘silent’ before opening the vehicle, so it didn’t whoop whoop. Best not to wake the neighbors. He did not look at his sister. Her comments about Rysa still infuriated him and if he looked at her he would scowl, and a fight right now would serve no purpose.

  He pulled open the door and crawled in the driver’s side. His van smelled hot and dirty, though Dragon had opened the roof vents before going into the house. Old coffee, old convenience store food, old ways, old mindsets. Ladon needed to get clean again.

  He reached for the tread of the step up into the back. He kept most of his blades inside the step, near the driver’s seat, so he had easy access. But the mechanism locking the safe required a special touch, one only he, Sister, and his brother-in-law knew.

  Derek comforts her. They speak of what happened in the pool. He reminds her to lay blame on Vivicus, not herself. Dragon paused. Or you, Human. Another pause, then a comment meant for his sister. Or you.

  Next to the van, a sense of stiffness shot from Sister to Sister-Dragon. Ladon popped the latch, but didn’t open the step. Instead, he stared down at his sister from his place in the driver’s seat.

  She didn’t meet his gaze. “I would appreciate it, Brother, if you spoke with her about how sometimes the dragons… overreact.”

  Ladon snorted. Yes, both beasts had had past episodes of overreacting. His Dragon was not without guilt. But they were all old enough now that such things should no longer happen.

  What Sister-Dragon had done went beyond overreacting. “Overreacting” would have been prodding and pushing and demanding because she feared deeply about Derek’s health. But her actions had also carried disdain for Rysa.

  Both his sister and her dragon needed a lesson in manners—and Rysa’s place in the world. “Say her name, Sister.” She might not meet his gaze, but she would show humility.

  Her face hardened. “Why?”

  Ladon felt his own face turn stone cold. “Use that quick mind of yours and figure it out.” The hate that bubbled from his sister was as old and rancid as the food wrappers in his van. And just as unhealthy.

  Sister sniffed and slammed her hands into her pockets. “Her name is Rysa.”

  “Say her full name.” Ladon didn’t move. He didn’t point or shift in the seat. He stared.

  “Rysa Lucinda Torres.”

  You say it, Ladon pushed to Sister-Dragon. You say it and you understand it. Andreas had said a person cannot change something they don’t know needs changing.

  A mental huff flitted from the other beast.

  “Say it, Dragon,” Sister whispered as she pushed the words to her beast. “Say the Fate’s full name.”

  Rysa Lucinda Torres. Another huff accompanied the words, along with audible shuffling on the roof.

  “Who is she?” Ladon continued to hold still, and continued to stare at Sister.

  Sister blinked. Her face softened and she sighed a real sigh, not so much in compliance but relief, as if Ladon had just lifted a weight from her shoulders. Perhaps at least the human had begun to understand.

  “She is the Draki Prime. The new Draki Prime, a Fate worthy of taking the mantle.” She glanced up at the roof.

  “And?” They would say it. They would admit it. Ladon had lived with his sister long enough to know that speaking what needed speaking was the only way to get her to move in the direction she needed to move.

  Sister glanced up at him. Her next words came out almost as a whisper, soft and full of more reverence than he’d ever heard from her. “She is our healer.”

  “Yes, she is our healer, Sister.” Ladon sniffed and pointed at the roof. What else? he pushed to Sister-Dragon.

  She did not answer.

  A burst fired from Dragon straight at his sister, one strong enough that Ladon knew Rysa, even focused on eating, would notice.

  She looks up at the roof. Dragon paused. As does Derek.

  Say it, Sister-Dragon.

  Clinking echoed off the roof as the other beast turned her back to Ladon. But she turned her head and her neck toward Rysa. Ladon’s stomach both tightened and loosened—what she did right now could make all the difference in the world.

  Or it could not.

  Rysa Lucinda Torres, the Draki Prime and healer of dragons, and the mate of Brother-Human. She turned again, faster than she should have, and dropped into the front yard, behind the wall.

  “That’s right. You remember it. And you think about how your brother treats the mate of your human.” Ladon spoke the words. Not loud. But both beasts could hear. “And how your brother is a better protector than you.”

  No sounds came from the front yard.

  “Do not scold her, Brother.” Sister’s expression held more grief than anger. Grief, he suspected, more for herself than for her dragon. Or her husband.

  Ladon turned away. Let them think about what they did. He might wish them to hurry, to figure out what work they needed to do to get their heads through this and to make amends, but he knew better. His sister took time to adjust to being wrong. Often, a lot of time.

  She had to do it herself.

  A memory of Rysa speaking of using her seers to cheat on the future popped into his head. About how knowing what to do without learning the right path changed nothing. It wasn’t only Fates who could cheat their way into the what-will-be. If he prodded his sister and her dragon too much, if he laid out the path in all its glory, they would just skip on down it without understanding where they went.

  This time, they’d learn. They would all learn. And he would not allow Andreas to come in behind and take away the hurt.

  Then I will scold her. Dragon huffed. Finish your business. Derek returns to the house and Rysa to the pool house. I wish to return to the backyard.

  Ladon popped the top of the tread. “I do not understand why you hold so tight to your hate. This is the New World, Sister. Rysa is not like the Fates we dealt with when we lived in Europe.”

  Inside the step, several blades glimmered in the light from the dim streetlamp on the corner: His machete, three short blades, a German cooking knife still in its packaging that he’d picked up awhile back and intended for barbecues and not fights, and the two midnight short swords.

  He lifted out one, the
n the other. They sucked in all light as if they actively ate it. The blades were more shadow than metal, and when he twisted them in the reflections from the street, they all but vanished into the shadows infecting his van.

  Sister did not respond to his prods. She pointed at the swords. “The blades do not have mimicking capabilities, but I have never seen a material that looks as if it is not there, the way these blades look.” Sister jumped up onto the van’s running board. “That is why we rescued both blades from the railroad bridge in Green River. These swords are unique.”

  Ladon nodded. They were also exquisitely balanced. He rolled the hilt of one around his hand, feeling little to no strain on his wrist.

  “They are still deadly sharp. Even after you slammed one into concrete and the other into the top of a rail car.” Sister shook her head. “I used one to cut the rifles out of my burning RV.”

  Ladon placed one back into the box under the tread. He peered at the other.

  Sister jumped down. “Take it into the light.” She pointed at the front door. “Look at the pommel.”

  Ladon jumped down, leaving his van wide open. When he stepped onto the porch, a slight breeze rustled the landscaping around the house. Bernard’s rocking chair creaked. And Ladon held up the blade.

  There, on the very bottom edge of the sword’s hilt, engraved so small he had not seen it before and a normal would have missed it, were three sentences: “Prototype 11A6-B. Property of Praesagio Industries. Not for resale.” And under that, more words. “Patent pending.”

  His sister stopped at the base of the porch, her hands still in her pockets and her now-spiky hair bursting around her head like a night-dark halo. “My gut tells me there is more going on here than we realize.” She ran her hand over her head.

  “With Fates, there is always more going on than we realize.” Ladon stared at the blade. “How did the Jani get not one, but three of these blades?” A third dagger sat on the counter in their home’s kitchen, where Ladon had left it before chasing after Rysa’s abductors. And the Jani had been cavalier about leaving all three behind. His eyes narrowed. The Jani and the Ulpi had long circled each other. They never cooperated.

  Sister’s voice dropped. “I think these blades were a back-up plan, in case the Jani did not succeed with their plans to harm us. I think Faustus made sure he left behind something that would rupture the ire of the Ulpi. Items stolen and planted specifically to get their attention. Because of all the old families, who might see the future the same as your…” Sister caught her words, “as Rysa’s hell-bent uncle?”

  Ladon nodded. But the Ulpi wouldn’t use Burners to attack Sister and him, the way the Jani had. The Ulpi would build weapons. And having a dragon’s talon would make the building all that much easier. “We need to go now. They cannot have the talon. Who knows what they will do with it.”

  Sister grasped his arm again, her face intense. “I do not think the Ulpi were the old family the Seraphim meant to use Rysa as bait to ensnare.”

  He glanced at her, drawn from his thoughts of the Ulpi. “What?” They were the most powerful family in North America. They were the obvious target.

  “I spoke with Andreas. He says the biggest impression he’s pulling out of the Seraphim who Dmitri is interrogating is secret. None of them know the name of the Fates they called in. It’s as if they had their own enthrallers wipe the information.” She shook her head. “Not even Vivienne, Vivicus’s daughter who was running the operation, knows. Neither Andreas nor I have ever heard of such a thing.”

  Ladon looked up at the stars. No, the Seraphim would not wipe their own people unless they had been instructed to do so, in order to ensure their target’s willingness to show up. And such a move was not the behavior of a family as arrogant as the Ulpi.

  “I think your—” Sister stopped herself again, scrunching up her face as if he’d just slapped her. “I think Rysa is only one piece on the board, as is her talisman. The Parcae are in the midst of a civil war.”

  Ladon scowled. A civil war triggered by terrible future-seer visions that all Parcae thought the dragons would cause. “They have probably been in a civil war for one hundred and fifty years, and we never noticed.” Both he and Sister were in America now. Far from most of the scheming.

  And without a Draki Prime to spy on the other Fates, up until a few weeks ago.

  Sister reached for the blade, palm up. “I will return it to its safe case.” She glanced toward the garage. “I suspect Brother-Dragon wishes to stay vigilant.”

  Vigilant. Rysa had massaged Ladon’s fury to release in the van, before her calling scents cycled up. And for a moment—one small moment—he’d let it go. He had breathed. But now his chest tightened again into his battle posture. The muscles of his neck and lower back coiled, ready to release if he needed to swing or cut or pull a trigger.

  And the shades, they danced just outside his vision. In the dark. In the night.

  Sister took the blade from his hand, her eyes piercing. “We will leave at first light.”

  Ladon shook his head. “We leave now.” Portland was a day’s drive. How Hadrian fit into this, Ladon did not know. The best solution was to find him immediately, before the Ulpi took the talon from him, if they had not already.

  Sister stepped off the porch, her small frame throwing an equally small shadow, and her boots made tiny scraping noises. “Go in. Sleep the few hours until dawn. You and my husband. Neither of you can drive like this.” She waved her free hand at the yard. “I will sleep out here.”

  “But—”

  “I will call Andreas. He will talk sense into Hadrian. Stop any exchange before it happens.”

  “They will take it.” Ladon doubted Hadrian realized what he fenced. He might be a former emperor, but he was an immortal normal.

  And normals got used.

  “Hadrian is smart. And he has a strong sense of self-preservation.” Her foot slid back and she craned her neck toward the garage. “Brother-Dragon,” she called.

  On the garage roof, Dragon lifted his head.

  “Go inside with Brother. Run calming lights for him while he sleeps.”

  A long moment passed, one brimming with all the anxieties a dragon was capable of brewing. They sloshed against Ladon’s mind, more gelatinous than liquid, and a familiar sense of panic rolled in the pit of his stomach. The same panic he had felt when the War Babies snatched Rysa and took her into the rail yard. The same blob that had dropped on him when the RV rolled and her fever started. The same smothering jittery ugliness that had flooded from his all-too-deep well of grief and had slopped over into the real world.

  And had made him cut away his hair with a steak knife.

  Ladon ran his fingers over his scalp and the stubble on his head.

  Sister’s lips bunched. He did not want to admit it to himself, or to her, but he knew she had her own well-drilled into their millennia-old substrata of things better left in the past. Things neither of them wanted to experience again.

  For Sister, a new Fate in her life triggered her own sloshing panic. For Ladon, it was the thought of losing that Fate.

  He knew it. His sister knew it. He rubbed at his scalp again. Hell, everyone knew it. As Andreas liked to remind him, both he and Dragon were predictable. But understanding did nothing to stop his body from reacting.

  Or Dragon’s. No, the beast pushed. I will stay outside. A very clear burst of distrust flashed to both Ladon and Sister. Dragon did not trust his sister to protect his human’s mate.

  See what you have done? The thought pushed from Ladon’s mind toward Sister-Dragon before he could stop himself.

  He cringed—he had been having difficulty stopping himself from actions these past few days. He’d not been thinking first. He’d been doing. And saying. Perhaps he did need sleep.

  Sister’s face turned stony—hard and rough. A microburst of anger played through her eyes. “We are trying, Brother.”

  Yes, she was trying. But she was at the beginning of her path t
o understanding what it was that spread her soul so thin it laid bare her triggers for all to see. Her dragon reflected her position in her journey, and they needed to admit it, even with Ladon’s outburst.

  Ladon rubbed his face. Arguing with his sister and his dragon would only lessen the time he had to sleep. And she was correct—he could not drive the way he was.

  “I will go in.” He waved his hand dismissively at Sister. “He will come in if he feels like it. I will not force him and neither will you.”

  Sister did not answer. She turned away and walked toward the vans, the midnight sword in her hand.

  Ladon looked up at the stars again. They glimmered bright and clear, like the wonders he’d found with Rysa. And like Rysa, he couldn’t get near them.

  The doorknob felt cold against his palm. As cold as the path ahead of his sister.

  And the path ahead of him.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You want me to call Hadrian?” Andreas Sisto, the Second of the Dragons’ Legion, rubbed his face as he sat up in his hotel bed, in one of the finer suites in the Russian bastard’s tourist warehouse—on the side away from The Land, because he’d had his fill of the bar for the day. The week. The rest of the century. “I haven’t talked to Hadrian in decades.”

  “I will text his current numbers,” the small and surly of his two commanding officers—as opposed to the large and traumatized one—said.

  She called moments into the few hours of sleep he’d been allowed. Surprising behavior, from AnnaBelinda.

  She must be attempting to make up for at least some of what her beast had done. Andreas rolled his shoulders and the bed groaned, as they tended to do under his bulk. Renee, Dmitri’s lovely head bartender, rolled away, and sighed in her sleep. He glanced over at the smooth curve of her naked back.

  Not all of this job led to annoyance and frustration. But no matter how soothing her touches, he had work to do. He always had work to do.

  “Does that son of a bitch have Rysa’s talisman?” Andreas swung his legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward, rubbing his face again. The world still had an overlay of puffed-up drama from dream residue. He blinked, trying to clear it. AnnaBelinda’s words weren’t meshing into his thoughts. “I take it he still deals in antiquities.”