If he hadn’t already cried himself dry hours ago, that thought would have set him right off again. He’d thought he’d appreciated her, that he’d understood his own feelings. What a joke. He hadn’t even begun to realize how much he’d needed and relied on Marci until she was gone. Everything he’d accomplished that he was proud of in his life was because of her. Even when he’d done something alone, she was always there holding him up. It had taken her death to make him realize that he didn’t just love her, heneededher. Marci was the one who’d kept him going when he wanted to quit, who’d never let him give up and hide. They’d been a pair in more ways than he’d even imagined. When she was alive, he hadn’t even noticed, because it had just felt natural. The way things should always be.
Now that she was gone, though, all he could feel was her loss. It was as though death had ripped out half of him as well when it had taken her, and Julius had no idea how to keep going after something like that. Every time he moved, he felt like he was going to crumble. He’d nearly bitten Fredrick’s head off when the dragon had tried to wash the blood off his hands because it was the only thing he had left that still smelled of Marci, and now Chelsie wanted him to go deal with their mother?
When it was clear he wasn’t going to be getting out of bed anytime soon, his sister sighed and sat down on the floor beside him. “I know you don’t want to,” she said. “I know it’s too soon, but that doesn’t matter. You have to do this, Julius. You have to—”
“I know, I know,” he said bitterly. “I have to be a dragon.”
“Actually, I was going to say you have to be an adult. Hiding in the dark and growling at your pain is very draconic. Trust me, I would know. But it’s also very childish, and you can’t be that way anymore. You have to take control.”
“Why?” he snapped. “The whole point of having a Council is that no one dragon is in charge.” And he wasso tiredof being in charge. “If David still wants my Fang, he can have it. I’m done.”
“No, he can’t,” Chelsie said tiredly. “If anyone else could do what you did, we would have changed long ago.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “We need you, Julius.”
He froze. Chelsie’s fingers were so light he could barely feel them. But slight as it was, that touch was the first act of open affection Julius had ever received from his sister, and it grabbed his attention more than any of her growling when she’d first come in.
“It’s harder to be weak than to be strong,” she said softly. “Any idiot can beat others into following him, but while stomping on your enemies is the simplest road to power, it’s also the quickest way to make everyone else hate your guts. Worse, it’s never actually worked. I don’t think there’s ever been a truly functional dragon clan. But even in the face of failure, no one thought to try anything else, because we all thought that’s just how dragons were. Even in China, where everything was different, every dragon I met believed that hate and fear and betrayal were part of our natural state as a species. That’s what I thought, too, until you came along.”
“I didn’t do that much,” he grumbled, lifting his head to look at her at last.
“You did enough,” Chelsie said, flashing him the closest thing to a smile he’d ever seen on her face outside of the painting. “Heartstriker is a different clan now, and that’s because of you. You were the only one who could overthrow Bethesda without killing her and taking her power for yourself, because you were the only dragon in this mountain open minded enough to imagine a different ending. It might not have gone exactly as you planned, but the fact remains that you’ve changed this clan more in six days than anyone else has managed in six centuries, and so far, it’s all been for the better.”
Her voice wavered a little at the end, and she looked away, pulling her hand back to wrap her arms protectively around her knees. “Do you know how hard that was for me to believe? I swore centuries ago that I would never again expect anything to get better. I’m not normally the sort who gives up, but expecting nothing was the only way I could avoid having my hopes crushed again and again and again. I decided that if I really was doomed to be Bethesda’s Shade forever, I could at least use my position to try to protect the rest of you, so I made that my goal and gave up on everything else. And that’s how it was, until you.”
Shedidsmile then, a tiny curl of her lips Julius would have missed completely if he hadn’t been peeking at her from the corner of his eye. “You’ve made me want to hope again,” she whispered. “That’s why I can’t let you quit. You’re not finished yet.”
“But I am,” Julius said, sitting up at last. “Because I didn’t actually do any of that stuff. All the change you’re talking about was Bob. He’s the one who set everything up. I was just following his plans, and I still had help every step of the way. I wouldn’t even have survived finding Katya without—” He couldn’t even say Marci’s name. “I was just the one who happened to be there every time,” he finished at last. “I didn’t doanythingon my own.”
“You stood up to Mother,” Chelsie said. “You stood up to Gregory, and to me. You’ve stood your ground in a lot of places where any normal dragon with a healthy sense of self-preservation would have fled. But not you. You stood your ground and demanded that we listen, not because you were bigger or stronger, but because you wereright. You’re living proof that even dragons are capable of change and compromise, and I will not allow you to throw that away now, when you’ve finally won.”
Julius sank into the mattress. He knew Chelsie was trying to be motivational, but the uncharacteristic praise just made him feel awkward and uncomfortable. As much as he disliked it, though, at least the awkwardness was a change from the loop of endless sadness, anger, and regret over Marci’s loss. That was more than Julius could say for anything else in the last few days, but even more importantly, it reminded him that his life wasn’t actually entirely pointless yet. The rest of eternity might look like an endless blank without Marci, but right now, there was at least one thing he still had to do. He wasn’t sure how he’d do it, exactly, but just knowing he had unfinished business was enough to finally make Julius get up.
“I’ll go to the meeting,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I promised to free you and F-clutch—”
“Stop,” she snapped, her newborn smile vanishing under a far more Chelsie-like scowl. “I said I was hopeful, not delusional. You are to say nothing about freeing me or the Fs, because we both know that can’t happen. Bethesda still has me by the throat, and you’ve pushed her closer to the edge than ever. Now that Conrad’s abandoned her too, I’mreallythe only power she has left. If you so much as look at her funny, she’ll shout my secret from the mountaintop for sure, and then we’ll all be the ones to pay.”
“Then we’ll find another way,” Julius growled. “I don’t care what Mother says, I—”
“I do,” Chelsie snapped, staring him down. “There’s no clever trick this time, Julius. The only way we can be free is if you kill Bethesda, and I’m not going to let you do that, either.”
Julius blinked in surprise. “What?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” his sister said bitterly. “I’d love nothing more than to see her feathered head on a pike. But if you’re the way it gets there, that’s too high a cost.”
He still couldn’t believe it. “But—”
“You’re not a killer, Julius,” she said. “And that’s a good thing. If Heartstriker’s actually going to move forward, then we need someone at the top who won’t resort to the same old violence the moment things go bad. That’s why I stopped you from killing General Jackson, and it’s why I’m revoking my request for you to kill Mother now. I finally understand why Bob’s sunk so much into you. You’re our chance to finally escape the blood of the past. Even if you can’t help me and the Fs, youcanfree everyone else, and make all of our lives a lot better in the process. That’s no small victory, but it’s only ours if you get in there and finish what you started.”
Julius sighed. He still didn’t want to leave his room, and he was miles from feeling okay, but his sister was right. Bob might have foreseen it all, but Julius was the one who’d actually made the decisions, and as the seer always told him, his choices were always and only his own. He’d taken over responsibility for his clan the moment he’d decided not to kill Bethesda. Now it was his responsibility again to see this through, and no matter how bad he felt or how much he never wanted to move again, Julius was determined to do it. His sister deserved no less, and if Marci had been here, she would have already been dragging him out of bed.
That image made him want to cry and smile at the same time. Both felt like more than he could handle and remain functional though, so Julius ran his hands through his hair instead, shaking himself like a dog before turning back to his sister. “Okay,” he said with a long sigh. “I’m up.”
“Clean clothes are there,” Chelsie said, pointing to the pile Fredrick had left on the end of his bed yesterday. “Be quick. I’ll be waiting outside.”
He nodded, waiting until she was out the door to strip off the clothes he’d put on when they’d come home three days ago. The ones that were still coated in Marci’s blood. He folded them carefully, stowing them away in the closet where no one would mess with them. When Marci’s precious scent was safe, he forced himself to wash his face and hands in his tiny coffin of a bathroom, hurrying through the motions as fast as he could before changing into the clean clothes with barely a look. Thankfully, Fredrick had given him a button-up shirt and jeans that were impossible to put on backwards, which meant Julius was more or less presentable when he finally stepped out into the hall, where his sister was waiting.
The mountain had changed a lot during the days he’d been in his room. He’d seen the dragons heading out right after the vote. Now, though, now they were gone completely, leaving the formerly packed-to-the-rafters mountain fortress empty once again. Other than himself and Chelsie, Julius didn’t so much as smell another dragon until they’d gotten all the way up to the grand entry hall. By the time they reached the top of the mountain, Julius was beginning to wonder if the entire clan had run for cover just in case this Council thing blew up. When the door rolled open, though, he saw that wasn’t quite right. There was at least one dragon left in the mountain. A tall dragon with long black hair in a peacock-blue military coat complete with gold-braided epaulets for his pigeon to perch on, leaning on the wall beside the elevator door like he’d been waiting hours for just this moment.
“Could it be?” Bob said, clutching his chest dramatically as Julius stepped off the elevator. “Has the hermit crab emerged from his shell at last?”
