Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

this. "All at once, she vanished."
    Not vanished, Sam said. She is dead.
    "What?" Rule looked up.
    Sam was coming in for a landing again - this one much slower than the last. He still held Johnny, but the sorcerer was limp - unconscious, maybe? Or had losing his lover killed him? It is the only way to kill a Chimei. Created to not-know death, they cannot die until someone shares a death with them.
    "Shares a death?" Rule repeated blankly.
    Dragons are the only ones who can do this - or we were, until tonight. In Dis, Lily died. That she also lived does not make her death less real. She shared that death with the Chimei.
    "I broke the treaty," Lily said dully.
    No. Small actions accumulate. As an agent of order, you tried to stop the Chimei without killing her. She thought your attempt to drain her power broke the treaty, but her thinking was badly warped, or she would have sensed it still in place - strained, stretched, yet still intact. When she tried to kill you - that broke the treaty.
    Rule looked at her, questions in his eyes.
    "If you're trying to ask how I did all that, well... I lack words." That's what he'd said to her often enough. "Rule, I remembered. Because of Sam, I remembered everything. The part of me that was with you in Dis - she's here now, all the way here. I mean I'm here now. I'm not... I'm all of me."
    He wrapped his arms around her and held her gently, pressing a kiss to her hair. She smiled and let her eyes close again. I love you.
    He jolted. "Lily?"
    "What?"
    "You didn't say that out loud."
    That startled her eyes open. "Shit."
    Grandmother arrived at the same time as half a dozen lupi - some clothed and two-legged, some naked and two-legged, a couple still on four feet. She was propping up a wobbly Cullen. Cullen's face was strained, his eyes frantic. "Cynna?" he said hoarsely.
    "She's all right," Lily said quickly. "She's fine, and so is the baby. The gnomes got her out."
    His eyes closed. "Okay," he said simply - and slid to the ground.
    After a few frantic seconds, they confirmed that he'd passed out, not died. His heart still beat.
    He is well enough, Sam said, sending dust flying as he settled to the ground several dozen feet away. He set the sorcerer's body aside. This one is not.
    Lily looked at Grandmother, standing unnaturally quiet in the midst of the lupi, her face tender and sad and happy all at once. "You arrested her. The Chimei."
    "You heard." Delight rang through Grandmother's voice. "I did. It is important to follow the forms of such things."
    "I have a few questions," Lily began - and broke off, frowning.
    For some reason everyone - well, everyone but Cullen, who was unconscious - seemed to find that terribly funny.

 
    FORTY

    On August eleventh at shortly after one in the morning, Pacific Daylight Time, in cities around the world - in Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, and Beijing, and twenty more - dragons flew. As they flew, they sang. In every city in the world that had a dragon, people for the first time heard dragonsong.
    Not everyone heard it, of course. Those who did stopped their cars or their feet, stopped whatever they were doing, and listened. Just listened. Many of them wept, but later couldn't say why.
    No one recorded it. No one who heard it even thought of trying. They didn't know the why of that, either.
    In the U.S. the TV talking heads speculated madly about the reason for this unprecedented behavior - of dragons and people both. Oprah had three of those who'd heard it on her show. In China and Canada, the governments politely inquired of their dragons what was up. In Hollywood, agents tried frantically to contact the dragons to offer contracts.
    The dragons didn't care to discuss it. Neither did those few humans - and lupi - who knew why the dragons sang.
    The most innately sovereign species in existence was free of a binding that had been passed down, through blood and magic, for more than three thousand years. The last of the un-surrendered Chimei was dead. The treaty was no more.
     
    August 13th at 10:09 P.M.
     
    Rule knelt in front of his Rho and shuddered with relief.
    Nokolai's mantle - the heir's portion - rested in him once more. He looked at his brother, kneeling beside him. "Benedict," he began... and ran out of words.
    Benedict's mouth kicked up at one corner. "Still can't quite believe I'm happier without it, can you?"
    Rule looked at him helplessly. "It's not that I doubt your word."
    Benedict regarded him a moment. "When you