“Hello,” Julius said, trying to look as friendly and unintimidating as possible. Not that he could have intimidated dragons like this. “You probably remember me from this morning, but I’m Julius Heartstriker, one of the heads of the Heartstriker Council. I’ve come to request an audience with the Qilin.”
“The Golden Emperor does not wish to see you,” the guard on the left said, in perfect English. “Come back tomorrow at the appointed time of surrender.”
“How do you know he doesn’t wish to see me if you didn’t ask?” Julius countered, smiling politely. “I promise not to take too much of his time. I just have a few questions about the surrender agreement. The sooner I get them answered, the faster we can end this awkward waiting period and come to an agreement.”
Considering Heartstriker’s surrender was awhenrather than anif, that shouldn’t have worked, but as Julius had noticed downstairs, the emperor wasn’t treating it like a done deal. No dragon confident in his success would sweeten a deal that much right off the bat, and sure enough, the moment he hinted there was a chance of wrapping things up faster, the Qilin’s dragons jumped on it.
While the left one kept an eye on them, the red dragon on the right pulled out his phone. Whatever message he sent, the answer must have been immediate, because a few seconds later, the twins nodded at each other, and the left dragon opened the throne room door, motioning for Julius and Fredrick to follow him inside. With a deep breath, Julius did, slipping nervously between the double doors into a throne room that, once again, looked nothing like he remembered.
Like the Hall of Heads leading up to it, the Heartstriker throne room had been stripped clean.Everythingwas gone: the three-sided council table, the Quetzalcoatl’s skull, the art displays from the adjacent hallways, everything. Even the mosaics depicting the Heartstriker in all her feathered glory had been picked out of the walls tile by tile. The only thing thathadn’tbeen moved was Chelsie’s Fang, which was still lying on the balcony where she’d dropped it yesterday, probably because no one else could pick it up. Other than that one detail, though, Julius felt as though he were standing in a completely different mountain, but the strangest change of all was the throne.
He didn’t know how they’d gotten it in here, but standing in the place where their Council table had been this morning was a massive and incredibly lifelike statue of a twisting golden dragon that served as the base for two thrones. A large one made of white jade positioned inside the dragon’s open mouth, and a smaller, black jade one cradled in the crook of its tail. The whole thing was incredibly beautiful, a true work of art that absolutely did not belong here. He was still staring at it in horrified wonder when the door to what had been Bethesda’s apartments flew open, and the Empress Mother hobbled into the room.
“I understand you wish to discuss your surrender,” she said, cane clacking against the cracked stone of the throne room’s polished floor as she made her way toward the golden dragon. By the time she reached it, the red dragon who’d let them in was already there, ready to lift the old crone off the ground and into the smaller of the two thrones. Once seated, the Empress Mother took her time getting settled, placing her cane into a crook in the golden dragon’s claws that seemed tailor-made for the purpose before folding her hands in her lap. Only then, when she was comfortable and elevated above the Heartstrikers in every way, did she finally turn her red eyes on Julius.
“Speak,” she commanded. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
Julius would have pointed out she was the one wasting time, but he couldn’t say a word. He was still trying to make sense of how his world had changed so quickly.
If someone had asked him a week ago about redecorating the throne room, he’d have been all for it. He’d always hated and feared this place, which existed only to be a gaudy showcase for Bethesda’s power. Now, though, standing in the emptiness left by the removed mosaics and the headless hall and the missing skull with a foreign throne sitting at the heart of Heartstriker power, it suddenly didn’t matter that they were all just symbols, and his mother’s symbols at that. They were still part of Heartstriker. Gaudy or not, seeing them erased like this made Julius feel more under attack than the army of dragons flying into their territory had. For the first time in his life, he wanted to lash out for his clan, to make these dragons pay for what they had done to the Heartstrikers. He was still struggling to get the unfamiliar violent urge in check when the Empress Mother rapped her knuckles against the stone of her black throne.
“Are you deaf, child?” she asked sharply. “I am doing you a great honor coming to answer your questions in person. You would be wise not to waste my generosity. Now tell me, what new groveling do you bring from your worm of a mother?”
With every arrogant word, Julius’s anger flared hotter and hotter. “I’m not my mother’s mouthpiece,” he growled. “I’m also not achild. I’m a head of Heartstriker, an elected member of our Council, andyouare sitting where our table should be.”
“That thing?” The Empress Mother smiled. “I had it removed, along with everything else. This entire peak was a shrine to the violent, backward, barbaric culture that elevated a creature like Bethesda. Such an environment is no place for the golden Qilin, even temporarily, so I did what needed to be done.” She arched an eyebrow at Julius. “Surely you’re not here to defend your mother’s taste.”
“Taste has nothing to do with it,” Julius said angrily. “You changed our mountain without permission!”
“We do not need your permission,” she said haughtily. “Your conquest is final in all but formality. That you are free to complain about such obvious improvements is a sign of the enormous and frankly undeserved favor the emperor shows to your clan. Did youenjoywalking down a hall of corpses?”
Julius hadn’t. If she’d asked first, Julius would have personally helped them take down the Hall of Heads. But theyhadn’tasked. No one had. They’d just done it, and the more he thought about that, the more determined Julius became to never surrender to the Golden Emperor. It didn’t matter how awful Bethesda’s taste had been. Changing another clan’s seat of power without bothering to seek input from the dragons whose traditions you were “improving” wasn’t the action of a ruler Julius could ever call his emperor.
“Enough of this,” the empress said, narrowing her eyes at what Julius realized must have been a murderously defiant expression. “I did not disrupt my rest to listen to a spoiled whelp complain. You said you had questions. Speak them or go.”
“I will,” Julius said, glaring back at her. “But only to the Qilin himself.”
“Insects do not demand to speak to emperors.”
“I’m not an insect,” he said angrily. “I’m a clan head, just like your son. Until he actually conquers Heartstriker, that makes us equals, and equals speak face to face, not through a third party.”
That was enough to make the empress rise from her throne, but Julius wasn’t finished. “You can threaten me all you like,” he snapped. “But I fought for the right to stand at the head of Heartstriker, and I willnot be bullied into backing down by a toothless old dragon who thinks she has power because her son is emperor.”
By the time he finished, his heart was pounding like he was in the middle of a fight. But while the anger on the empress’s face was terrifying, Julius would go down fighting before he took a word of it back. Heartstriker might be on the verge of getting crushed, but until it crumbled, this washisclan, the family he’d fought his mother for and won. He refused to surrender that to anyone, but especially not to a dragon as haughty, insulting, and undeserving as this one.
“You certainly are your mother’s son,” the empress said at last, looking down her nose as though she was seriously considering roasting him on the spot. “So much pride, and so little done to deserve it. But it matters not. Demands without the power to back them up are nothing but empty words, and that’s all a worm like you has left.”
Julius was opening his mouth to say she was wrong. That Heartstriker was still the largest dragon clan in the world, and they wouldneverbow to an emperor who demanded their obedience but did nothing to deserve their respect. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance. Before a word could leave his lips, the Empress Mother lifted her chin, looking over Julius and Fredrick’s heads at the pair of red dragons guarding the door behind them.
“The audience is over,” she announced. “Take the young Heartstriker out to the edge of the desert and kill him.”
Julius froze, eyes going wide. “What?”
“Did you not hear me?” the empress asked innocently. “I’ve decided you’re going to die.”
“But you—” He began to sputter. “You can’t do that!”
“Of course I can,” she said. “Because unlike you, I haveactualpower. I’m an empress, whereas you’re barely one-third of a clan head. Anelectedthird. If you die, you don’t even have an heir to take up your cause. Your family will simply choose another of the Broodmare’s infinite children to replace you, and while I’m sure he’ll be every bit as arrogant and ridiculous, at least he’ll have your death to help correct his behavior.”
