“What else are we going to do?” he cried. “We can’t fight. Negotiation is all we have left.”
“It’s not a negotiation when you have no power,” his mother said, but the words weren’t angry this time. They were hopeless, which was almost worse. “This is going to be a surrender.”
“Not if we play it right,” Julius said stubbornly, pulling himself straight. “I didn’t go through all the pain of standing up to you and forming a Council to give up now. We might be alone here, but our clan is still alive.”
“For now,” Justin said.
“Now’s all that matters,” he said firmly, keeping his eyes on his mother. “As I just said, if the Golden Emperor wanted us dead, we’d already be gone. Since we’re not, we have to assume he wants something else. That’s power if we can use it, so I say we try. I mean, what have we got to lose?”
Bethesda slumped back against her console. “I don’t know if you’re pathetic or accidentally brilliant,” she said, shaking her head. “But I wasn’t looking forward to running…”
She trailed off with a sigh, and then she pushed herself back up straight, squaring her shoulders with a flip of her glossy black hair. “Fine,” she said, looking down her nose at Julius. “You win. Let’s gotalk. If nothing else, we’ll die facing our enemy.”
“We’ll die as Heartstrikers should,” Justin said proudly, drawing his sword.
“Stop that,” Julius said angrily. “No one is going to die, and you are not coming with us.”
Justin went very still. “What did you say?”
The words came out in a terrifying growl, and Julius flinched back instinctively. He knew that look on his brother’s face. He wasn’t sure what came after it since he’d usually already surrendered by this point, but not this time.
His brother was as brave as dragons got, but he was also injured, outnumbered, and couldn’t be trusted not to start a fight if his life depended on it, which it did. Things weren’t looking good for any of them, but if Justin went up there, he would almost certainly die. That wasn’t a risk Julius was willing to take. Not over something this stupid. Not when he’d lost so many already.
He didn’t care if Justin hated him forever, he would not allow him to walk out and face what might very well be their deaths. Unfortunately, this wasn’t something he could explain to his brother easily. Even if he could get Justin to admit he was too injured to fight, he’d insist on going with them anyway because he was pig-headed like that. But Justin management had been a vital J-clutch survival tactic from the moment they’d hatched, and unlike every other part of being a dragon, it was one Julius excelled at. He used that knowledge now, pulling on every bit of his experience as he looked pleadingly at his older brother and spoke the words that never failed.
“I need your help.”
“Of course you do,” Justin said. “Have you seen how many dragons are out there? They’ll eat you alive without me.”
“That’s just it,” Julius said. “Theywilltry to eat me if you’re there. Without you, though, I think we might have a chance.”
Justin blinked. “Come again?”
“You’re a power of the clan,” he explained. “A Knight of Heartstriker. If you went out there, they’d have to fight, but Bethesda and I are different. She’s sealed, and I’m a weakling. If we go out there alone, attacking us will be beneath the Qilin’s dignity. That buys us a chance to talk, which is the entire point of this.”
“But you’re the clan head,” he growled. “I’m your knight. My duty lies with you.”
“Your duty is to protect the clan,” Julius said. “We can’t risk you, Justin. With Chelsie gone, Bob doing who knows what, and Mother and I trapped here, you and Conrad are the only two active Fangs we have left. If we go down, we need you to rally the rest of Heartstriker.Ineed you to—”
“Forget it,” Justin snarled, getting in Julius’s face. “You think I can’t see what you’re doing? I’m your brother, idiot. I know you, and if you think for one second I’m going to let you go out there alone to do your Nice Dragon nonsense without backup, you’re a bigger moron than Mother says.”
Julius sighed. “Justin—”
“No!” his brother yelled. “I look after you. Always have, always will. End of story.”
“I don’t need you to look after me.”
“Too bad. I—”
“Justin!”
Justin blinked in surprise, and he wasn’t the only one. Bethesda and Fredrick were staring at him as well, but Julius refused to back down. He was touched that his brother cared so much, but he couldn’t let Justin treat him like a whelp who needed to be carried around anymore. Especially since this was the one part of being clan head he was actually confident hecoulddo.
“Have some faith in me,” he said. “You’ve seen me talk my way out of tighter spots than this. Mother and I will be fine, but without Chelsie to force them together, the rest of the clan could easily fall apart. I can’t let that happen, not after everything we went through, so I’m begging you, Justin, help me do this. Don’t waste yourself fighting here. Go find Conrad and David, tell them what’s going on, rally the clan to fight off whatever the emperor has in store for us.That’swhat I need from you, not this.” He reached out to touch the sword in Justin’s hands. “If you want to be my knight, protect what I care about most. Don’t let Heartstriker fall just when we’ve finally started to change things.”
That was his last, biggest card, and it seemed to work. Justin didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue, either. He just stood there, thinking while Julius sweated, until, at long last, he turned away.
“I’ll take the southern emergency tunnel,” he said, sheathing his Fang. “There’s a canyon at the end I can use to make an unobserved take-off. As soon as I get reinforcements, I’ll be back.” He glared over his shoulder at Julius. “Don’t you dare die.”
