“Even after she ordered you not to?” the seer growled, dropping the jovial brother act entirely. “We both know she won’t thank you for this.”
“Maybe not,” Julius said. “I don’t even know what kind of secret Bethesda has over her because no one will tell me, but whatever it is, we can take it. We’ll handle whatever comes at us together, as a clan, but I did not waste my last day with Marci getting burned and stabbed by my own siblings so I could become part of the Council for a family that relies on an enslaved enforcer to hold us together.”
“I am well aware of yourfeelingson the subject,” Brohomir snapped. “But I’m not here to fight over moral high ground. I am telling you as plainly as possible what we need to do to avoid disaster. It also bears mentioning, since you seem to have forgotten, that the only reason you’re even on this Council is becauseIput you there.”
“I know that,” Julius said. “But—”
“I don’t think you do,” Brohomir said, stepping forward until he was looming over his much smaller brother. “All of your impossible luck, your meteoric rise to power, it was all me. You’ve always been key to my plans, Julius, and I have been very good to you. Now, all I’m asking in return is one teensy tiny little favor. You don’t have to doanything. You don’t even have tonotdo something, for that matter. I’m only asking for adelay, which I think we can both agree is uncharacteristically reasonable of me. So if you appreciate any of the work I’ve done for you, any of the blessings I’ve rained on your head, you’ll rein in your slightly annoying sense of moral justice temporarily and grant me this one little boon I’m asking to save us all from a great deal of unpleasantness.”
By the time he finished, Julius was pressed against the wall. Bob always made such light of everything, it was easy to forget just how old and scary he could be when he stopped playing. Even worse, his request for a delay wasn’t actually that unreasonable, especially since Chelsie had told Julius repeatedly not to do it. It would be so easy—and probably smart—to just give in and do what they said, but he couldn’t. Maybe if he hadn’t just spent days being eaten raw by the unfairness and pointlessness of Marci’s death, Bob’s plea would have gotten through, because he did owe the seer more than he could ever repay. But even back when he’d been a pushover who did anything his family told him, Julius had never liked debts, and he’d started down this path specifically to end the exact crime Bob was telling him to protect. It didn’t matter if the delay was for one day or a thousand, it didn’t matter how much he owed his brother, it didn’t even matter if a meteor was going to crash into the mountain tonight because of this, what had been done to Chelsie was wrong. Unspeakably, abusively, microcosm-for-all-the-sins-of-the-clan wrong. And he would not let it continue.
His decision must have been clear on his face, because Bob turned away before Julius could say a word, stepping off the elevator as it opened at the dark floor he shared with Amelia with a silence so pointed, Julius was amazed it didn’t draw blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said to his brother’s back.
“No, you’re not,” the seer replied as the doors closed. “And that’s the entire point.”
Julius had no idea what to make of that, but the doors had already shut, leaving him alone in the golden elevator with the fear that he’d just made the second-biggest mistake of his life and the knowledge that he was still going to do it anyway. That was a cocktail strong enough to make any dragon pause, but Julius didn’t have time to recover. He had a promise to keep, and so he pulled himself straight, wrapping his resolve around him like armor as he pushed the button that would take him back up to the top of the mountain.
***
After all that buildup, the inaugural meeting of the completed Heartstriker Council came together surprisingly quickly. Everyone was already there by the time Julius walked in. Including Bethesda and Ian, who were both sitting at what had been his mother’s marble banquet table, which someone had dragged out, chopped into a triangle, and placed in the empty space where Bethesda’s throne used to stand.
As symbolism went, it was a little heavy handed, but that was dragons for you. Personally, Julius appreciated the primal roughness of it. He took his spot at the last empty corner with a feeling of surprising gravitas, folding his hands on the marble’s cold, smooth surface before turning to face his fellow Council members.
“Finally,” Bethesda growled, giving him a dirty look. “Now that we areallhere and have thus fulfilled the requirements of the contract Brohomir forced me to sign, unseal my dragon.”
“In a moment,” Julius said. “First, I have a motion I’d like to put forward.”
“It can wait,” Bethesda snapped.
“No, it can’t,” he said, glaring at her. “And if you push me, I’ll just go back to my room, and then you’ll have to wait another day for the vote to unseal you.”
His mother blinked in surprise, and then her face turned sullen. “When did you get this ruthless?”
“I’ve had a very hard week,” he reminded her. “And a very good teacher.”
“Better late than never, I suppose,” she said, waving her hand. “Fine. Let’s get your motion over with so I can go flying. My wings ache like you wouldn’t believe.”
Having been sealed for over a month himself, Julius knew exactly how badly her wings ached. Telling her so wouldn’t change a thing, though, so he just moved on to what was actually important. “Now that the Council is assembled,” he said, pointedly not looking at Chelsie, who was standing on the balcony beside Conrad, sharpening her sword. “I’d like to propose a change to the Heartstriker clan structure. For many centuries now, some dragons in this family have had measurably fewer rights than others. Therefore, my first proposal to the Heartstriker Council is that the dragons of F-clutch be recognized as full members of the family with the same rights, privileges, and protections as everyone else, including the removal of the seal placed on their dragons at birth, the right to leave the mountain whenever they choose, and above all, the ability to say no to any order that doesn’t legally come from this Council without punishment.”
“That’s quite was a mouthful,” Bethesda growled. “You could have just said ‘I want to free F-clutch.’”
“I have to be thorough,” Julius replied. “Laws are no good if they’re too broad to effectively enforce. And I wasn’t finished. I also want all of these same rights, protections, and freedoms applied to Chelsie, effective immediately.”
By the time he finished, the room was so silent he could hear the dust sweeping over the desert through the open balcony.
“What?” Bethesda said at last.
“I want to free Chelsie,” Julius translated for her. “Right now.”
Something crashed across the room, and Julius looked up to see Chelsie had dropped the sword she’d been sharpening. Her Fang of the Heartstriker was still rattling on the ground like a cymbal, but Chelsie didn’t seem to hear it. She just stood there, staring at Julius with a look so torn between heart-stopping fear and wild hope that even she didn’t seem to know what to make of it.
“Are you out of your mind?” Bethesda snarled, slamming her fist down on the table to bring the attention back to her. “I absolutely forbid it! Chelsie is vital to our security. If you set her free, you doom us all.”
“How so?” Ian asked. “Personally, I think life without worrying about when Bethesda’s Shade is going to stab me in the back sounds like the exact opposite of doom. And the Fs have always been a pointless waste of resources. Who keeps an entire clutch of dragons as servants?” He turned back to Julius. “I vote yes. On all of it.”
“Then you’re even more of a short-sighted fool than I thought you were!” their mother roared. “No dragon clan runs without fear. This is just more of Julius’s softhearted idiocy. He’s trying to turn us into humans. We’ll be a laughingstock!”
