Nathaniel wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, he hadn’t seen his mother in three hundred years. Dragons didn’t age the way humans did. However, immortal as they might be, over the course of time, things changed. From popular fashion to hairstyles and culture, older dragons had trouble keeping up. Often one could tell the age of a dragon simply by their appearance. His three-piece suit was an example. It certainly wasn’t representative of modern London, but it was what he was comfortable in.
What would his mother be comfortable in? What illusion would she bring forth?
The tapestry shifted and he found out. Eleanor, Empress of Paragon, stood at the opening to the chamber, dressed in a strappy onyx dress with a satin sheen. She entered the room, her shoulders squared, her chin high, and peered down her nose at him. All the softness he’d remembered from his childhood had been stripped away and replaced with a gaunt and angular visage marked by thin lips and flat, soulless eyes.
He sighed, his heart turning to lead in his chest. “Hello, Mother.”
“Nathaniel? You’re the last person I expected to see. Why are you here?” Her voice was as flat as her eyes, betraying no emotion. Did she think there was a chance that his motives were benign?
He ran a hand down the front of his vest. “I could say the same. You see, when I helped you develop the spell to send the nine of us to Earth, I thought we were doing it to save us all from a planned attack by Brynhoff. But then Marius was killed anyway, and you didn’t make it through the portal with the rest of us. I’ve labored under the assumption all these years that you died in the coup.”
Her lips twitched, showing a little teeth. “Brynhoff is dead. I was able to subdue him, take control of the kingdom, and have him executed.”
“Hmmm.” Nathaniel took a step toward her. “And afterward? Why didn’t you come for us?”
She shrugged, her perfectly shaped eyebrows rising toward her expertly coiffed hair. “I couldn’t find you, spread out as you were. It seems you followed my advice too well. You were impossible to track down.”
Part of Nathaniel wanted to believe her, the boy within who’d spent years joyfully mastering magic by her side, but he knew it was a lie. Rowan and Alexander had told him she’d ruled with Brynhoff and her appearance here, now, proved as much. Alexander had spoken of one of Aborella’s trackers being worn by a monster in the late 1600s. And then there was Scoria who’d hunted Gabriel, Tobias, and Raven, ordered to return them to her dead or alive. They’d had to kill him to survive. His mother was not the woman of his memories. She was a monster.
“I’ve missed you, son,” she said, approaching cautiously. “You were the only one who ever truly understood me.”
“Likewise,” he said flatly. “You’ve changed your magic room. I remember more plants and less skulls.” He glanced at the skull of the dragon child on the top shelf.
“We underestimated the power of blood magic,” she said, running her finger along a shelf laden with sorted bones.
“Blood magic is very powerful indeed. Our blood powered many spells when we were together.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “Not just our blood. The blood of others. The blood of children is the strongest.” She sighed and shook her head. “I am so strong now, Nathaniel. Stronger than the Goddess of the Mountain.”
He gasped. “Blasphemy.”
“It’s true.” She turned to him, her dark eyes hollow and soulless. “There are greater gods and goddesses, and once I obtain their book of spells, I will be the most powerful of all.”
Nathaniel inched toward the door. “Is that your goal, to be more powerful than the gods?”
She whirled on him and laughed. Her eyes flashed. “Isn’t it yours? Who wouldn’t want the power of a god?”
He stared back at her in confusion.
“Do you remember the first time we ever did magic together?”
“Of course I do. We transformed a dove into a narwit.”
“I’d never seen you happier. Nathaniel, you were never designed for the pits like the rest of them. You weren’t a warrior destined to brandish a sword or flex his muscles. No, you were my boy. You were a creator, an engineer of the arcane. From the very beginning, you could see the magic in everything, take it apart and put it back together. What is that but playing God?”
He scoffed and shook his head. “You have it all wrong. Yes, magic involves rearranging the power around us, but not to play God. Its purpose is to bring balance. The power requires balance or it will corrupt. It will kill. And the rot will eat you from the inside out. You know that. You taught me about balance.”
“I was wrong. Balance is unnecessary.” She spread her hands. “Here I am, Empress of Paragon, breaking all the old laws. Nothing has happened to me.” She paused, a feral smile stretching across her thin lips. “No, that’s not true. Something has happened. I am now more powerful than ever.”
He frowned. “So that’s why you stopped looking for us. You have no intention of relinquishing the throne to Gabriel or Tobias. You intend to rule forever.”
“For the good of Paragon!” she proclaimed. “I am the only ruler who can keep this kingdom safe. I’m the only one who can keep this world safe. I will unite the kingdoms and be their single, benevolent goddess. Who else could rule in my place? I am the only dragon with magic.”
Nathaniel raised his pipe to his lips and blew a smoke ring toward her. It turned into a pentagram and widened, forming a shield between them. Her lips parted on a sneer.
“Not the only one,” he murmured. He backed toward the door.
“Stay, Nathaniel. We can rule together. I can show you a new kind of magic.” She raised her ring and shattered his shield as if it were nothing.
“No. Using the blood of children? You’re an abomination!” he yelled.
“Traitor!”
Yellow lightning zapped from her fingers. Nathaniel sidestepped it but the blast left him shaken. That was new. He blew another shield.
“Traitor? I’m not the one forcibly holding onto a crown that isn’t mine. You’ve been deceived by dark magic, Mother. Your mind is poisoned by it. Can’t you see what it’s done to you? To us? Don’t you remember what we used to have?”
The electricity crackled around her ring once again, this time coiling into a whip. “I do remember. You were a part of all this once.”
“Then pocket your magic and let’s talk.”
She bared her teeth, and for a moment he thought he saw memory flare in her eyes, but it was only a flash, a glimmer, and then they turned hard and cold once more. “Never. You’re the most dangerous of my children, Nathaniel, and your blood will make me more powerful than I could imagine.”
He held up a hand. “Mother, think about what you’re doing!”
Her eyes narrowed and her next words came through her teeth. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
She swung the electric magic above her head and snapped it out, shattering his shield. How was she doing that without symbol or spell? He blinked out of sight, but she kept coming, the air around him crackling with her power. He blocked her magic and puffed confusion charms at her as fast as he could, but she seemed immune to his smoke. She was too strong. Too fast.
He could breathe fire or shift into his dragon form, but neither would be any use against her. Eleanor was as fireproof as he was, and older dragons were stronger in their beastly form.
Breath short, he could only produce one last puff with his pipe before it sputtered and burned out. Eleanor’s magic whip cracked. The lightning wrapped around his body, sending a sizzle of pain through his skin. Dragons couldn’t burn, but this magic had teeth. He flopped to the stone, muscles trembling uncontrollably.
She pried the pipe from his grip and looked at it more closely. “Ingenious to use your breath this way. If only you had learned to use your blood.”
She adjusted the ring on her finger, and he could see her hand was bleeding under the band. A rune glowed between her thumb and forefinger and then faded. That’s how she did it. Eleanor was walking blood magic. She’d likely taken a page from Aborella’s book and tattooed herself with magical symbols, then affixed a blade to the inside of the ring to instantly add blood to the mix when she needed it.
She wasn’t just powerful. She was terrifying. He’d underestimated her descent into madness. The places she’d taken her magic had corrupted her to her marrow. Darkness and death were now her lovers.
Two guards hustled to her side at the snap of her fingers.
“Lock him up with the others, then search the grounds. Sylas is free. I can smell him all over this room.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
One of the guards lifted his boot and brought it down upon Nathaniel’s head, and everything went black.