“Trust is irrelevant when you can see the future,” Bob said, turning on his heel to stare down at his littlest brother. “But if it makes you feel better, it’sbecauseI trust you that I can’t tell you what’s coming.” He smiled wide. “You are the best, most sophisticated tool I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. You are the crowbar I’ve picked to pry apart the universe, Julius Heartstriker. If you think I’m going to jeopardize that so you can feel less anxious, you’re crazier than I am.”
“But you’re not crazy,” Julius said, crossing his arms over his chest as he stared right back up at the seer. “Are you?”
Bob’s confident smile didn’t budge, but something in his face sharpened. It wasn’t even a movement, more like a shift of perspective that threw his usual carefree smile into a new, unsettling light.
“There’s a certain madness inherent in all seers,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible to see as much as we see, to know what we know, and not have it change your perspective. Eventually, you stop seeing the individuals at all. It’s all just percentages and likelihoods, moves on the board, and when you’re always playing twenty moves ahead, you can’t help but look insane to everyone who’s still trapped in the present.”
He sighed and reached up to adjust his pigeon’s hat. “It’s a lonely life, sometimes, but a very exciting one full of possibility. And speaking of possibility.” He dug into his jacket pockets, pulling out several crumpled sticky notes, a mismatched set of silverware, and one of those lace-wrapped packets of birdseed people threw at weddings before finally producing a densely folded piece of parchment. “You’re going to need this.”
“What is it?” Julius asked, taking the paper, which had been folded over so many times it was practically a solid cube.
“The new clan charter I had everyone sign last night. The magically binding document that lays out the redistribution of Bethesda’s powers to the Council and thus determines the future of our entire clan.”
Julius nearly dropped it. “And you’ve been carrying it around balled up in your pocket?”
“Next to my heart,” Bob said sweetly, laying a gentle hand on his chest. “That’s my only copy, so be careful. I’m only entrusting it to you because you’re going to need it. This morning marks the first official meeting of the Heartstriker Council, and you can bet your newly unsealed tail feathers that Mother’s going to try every trick in the book to undermine the process. Your only hope of stopping her is to know exactly what the new rules are and force her to follow them. Otherwise, we might as well just give up now and hand her the clan back.”
That was a defeat Julius didn’t even want to think about. “I’ll try my best,” he promised, carefully tucking the folded square of paper into his own pocket. “But why are you saying all of this to me? Aren’t you going to be there, too?”
“Why would I go?” Bob said with a shrug. “I’mnot on the Council.”
Julius recoiled in horror. “You can’t make me do this alone!”
“But youmustbe alone,” the seer said firmly. “You were the one who wanted it this way, Julius. You refused to kill Mother and take power properly. You were the one who wanted a Councilandthe one who put himself into one of the three seats—”
“Only because no one else would do it!”
“—and now you have to follow through,” Bob said over him. “You got everything you wanted. Bethesda was overthrown with zero Heartstriker deaths, and the whole clan has been turned down a new, hopefully less abusive path. But just because you swept the board doesn’t mean you’ve gotten out of the responsibility of actually making it all work.” He dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. “It’s time to put your money where your mouth is, Julius. No good dragon goes unpunished.”
He said that as though he were handing down a death sentence, but before Julius could think of a proper way to respond, the golden elevator they’d been waiting on finally arrived.
“No time for regret now,” Bob said, his face going back to its usual goofy smile as he pushed the elevator’s slowly rolling door all the way open and shoved his little brother inside. “But it won’t be so bad. You’ve already got two seats of the three-seat Council locked down. Once you fill the final vacancy, the Council will be complete, and the three of you willbethe Heartstriker, magically and legally. That’spower,Julius! I know you’re a miserable excuse for a dragon, but even you should be able to enjoy that. Especially since Mother’s the one who’s sealed this time. Also, you’ve got your lovely sword now.” He nodded at the sheathed Fang strapped to Julius’s hip. “You have nothing to be afraid of.”
That was easy for Bob to say. He’d had his Fang since who knew when. Julius didn’t even fully understand how his worked yet, not that any weapon could make him feel better about confronting the mother he’d lived his entire life in mortal terror of on the morning after he’d gotten her dethroned. But it was way too late to back out now. Bob had already mashed the button for the throne room, blocking the other dragons who tried to get on with his body as he waved Julius good-bye.
“Good luck!” he called as the doors closed. “And remember my sage advice!”
“What advice?” Julius said, grabbing the elevator door only to snatch his hand back again when he remembered that his mother didn’t bother with safety features that kept closing elevators from taking off fingers. “You didn’t tell me anything!”
The seer smirked at him through the last crack of the closing doors. “Be yourself.”
Julius was getting mighty sick of that line, but it was too late to ask his brother for more. The mirrored golden doors had already shut, and the elevator had started to roll, whisking Julius up through the mountain at terrifying speed toward the peak, where Bethesda waited in her lair.
Or what was left of it, anyway.
With all the craziness that had happened last night, Julius hadn’t had much time to think about what the aftermath of battle in the throne room would mean for the actual, physical throne room. In the sober light of morning, though, the damage was staggering. The grand stone hallway lined with the heads of Bethesda’s enemies where the elevator let out wasn’t too bad, but the great gold-painted wooden doors at the end had been turned into splinters from the blast Bob had created when he’d broken Amelia’s ward, and it only got worse from there.
In the huge cavern of the Heartstriker’s throne room itself, massive structural cracks ran down the walls and into the floor. The enormous golden mosaic depicting Bethesda in all her feathered glory had been obliterated entirely when Conrad had thrown Justin into it, and the balcony was blackened on all sides where Estella’s white fire had touched it. In the center of the room, his grandfather’s giant skull, which had been proudly suspended from the gilded ceiling, was now lying haphazardly on its side, and his mother’s ornately carved throne was a pile of gilded rubble.
Since he’d been here when it happened, none of the damage was actually surprising, but seeing the trappings of his family’s power lying broken on the ground hit Julius harder than he’d expected. He was still staring at it when the door that led to his mother’s private apartments—the one that had been hidden behind the giant throne, but was now just a door in the wall—opened to reveal a cross and surprisingly dusty-looking Frieda.
Julius flinched. He supposed being greeted by his mother’s secretary was better than being jumped by Bethesda herself, but not by much. Like most Heartstrikers, he’d always been leery of Fs. Unlike the rest of her children, whom she’d expected to leave the mountain and make a name for themselves as soon as was physically possible, Bethesda had always kept her sixth clutch close. They were the ones trusted with the unglamorous but vital jobs that kept the Heartstriker clan running. The Fs were her accountants, security staff, and managers for the army of human servants that kept Bethesda’s mountain fortress from falling apart. They even raised her children. Julius’s own clutch had been brought up by a pair of F sisters—Francis and Fiona—with Bethesda visiting only when she felt the need to inspire the proper levels of fear.
There were all sorts of rumors about why F-clutch had been singled out for this special treatment. The most popular one was that F-clutch’s father had jilted Bethesda, and she’d punished his children with menial labor as a result. Another theory was that since F-clutch had been born so soon after E—less than a year, in fact, a speed that was unheard of among dragons, even one as famously fertile as Bethesda—they’d all come out magically stunted, forcing Bethesda to keep them close lest they become a liability.
Knowing his mother, both of these explanations seemed likely to Julius. But however the Fs had come to be servants in their own mountain, none of them had ever seemed particularly happy about it. This went double for Frieda, who, as the eldest female F, had the honor/curse of being Bethesda’s personal aide, a job that would break anyone.
She seemed to be feeling the full brunt of it this morning, too. In addition to the dust that covered her usually impeccable suit dress, her normally sleek black hair was escaping from its tight bun in long, frazzled wisps. Even standing up straight with the doorframe for support, her whole body looked wilted, her green eyes ringed with dark circles as she sourly looked Julius over.
