“No, we’ll be an effective government,” Julius said firmly. “I think the run-up to the election proved perfectly just how badly fear works as a unification tactic. But I don’t have to convince you, do I? Because I’m also voting yes, which makes it two against one.” He smirked at Bethesda. “You’re outvoted, Mother.”
For a heartbeat, Bethesda’s lovely face turned a very unflattering shade of scarlet. Then, fast as it had changed, she was right back to her old self, smirking down at Julius like a cat toying with its prey. “It won’t work,” she said in a sing-song voice. “I can’t stop you from freeing the Fs, but my control over Chelsie is apersonaldebt, which puts it outside the reach of this farce of a Council. You can’t make me give her up.”
Julius began to sweat. He hadn’t considered that angle. Thankfully, though, he was no longer alone.
“Oh, but we can,” Ian said slowly. “I’m sure your hold over Chelsie is dreadful indeed, but whatever deal you struck to make her sign away her soul was made during your long reign as clan head. During that time, you ran Heartstriker as a dictatorship with no differentiation between personal and clan decisions. Obviously, it’s far too late to go back and sort everything out now, centuries after the fact, which means we’re going to have to just pick one. So unless you want to claim that all the mortal insults you delivered and clan wars you started while acting as the Heartstriker werealsopersonal debts incurred by you, and thus yours to deal with alone, you have no choice but to admit Chelsie’s servitude is to the clan, not to you.” He glanced at Julius. “Agreed?”
“Yes,” Julius said, eyes wide. “That wasamazing.”
Ian shrugged the praise off and reached for one of the sheets of blank paper someone had stacked neatly in the middle of the table. “It’s what I do,” he said casually. “I was running businesses for a century before you were even born, remember? Fudging the line between business and personal is the oldest trick in the book. Frankly, I’m disappointed Mother didn’t see it coming.”
Bethesda shot him a nasty look, but Ian was staring at his paper as he began to draft a proposal. He wrote for several minutes and then passed the sheet to Julius, who read it over. Sure enough, Ian had written down a more formal version of what he’d just said: that since Bethesda couldn’t differentiate between which decisions had been made as head of the clan and which had been made as herself,allprevious decisions were now formally considered to have been made by her acting as the Heartstriker rather than alone. Furthermore, because of this, all of her personal claims on Chelsie—magical and legal—were hitherto null and void. Below these statements, he’d drawn three lines, one for each of them to sign with his own signature already in place. Julius signed next then passed the paper to Bethesda, who looked like she was about to choke.
“I won’t sign.”
“Then you won’t get your dragon form back,” Julius said flatly. “We can’t move forward with a proposal still on the table. You can mark yourself as a no if you want, but if you don’t sign, we’ll never get to the vote to unseal you.”
Bethesda’s chest began to heave, and then she lurched forward, snatching the pen from his fingers. “Fine,” she snarled, scrawling her signature across the line. “Here’s your vote, and I hope you choke on it. But it won’t make a difference. You can’t change what’s in my head. So long as I know what Chelsie would rather die than admit, I’ll always have her by the—”
The moment Bethesda finished signing her name, dragon magic snapped like broken glass. It was similar to what had happened when they’d all signed Bob’s contract to form the Council in the first place, except much more pointed, and much,mucholder. But while the shock of it put to rest any lingering doubts Julius had about the magical efficacy of the Council’s decisions, it hit Chelsie even harder. He’d been focused on their mother, so he hadn’t actually seen it happen, but that didn’t matter. JuliusfeltChelsie’s bloodlust ring through the air like the scrape of a drawn knife right before she launched herself at Bethesda.
“Chelsie!” he yelled, scrambling for his Fang. “Stop!”
But she wasn’t listening. The second the life debt that kept her from actually killing her mother had snapped, she’d gone straight over the table, crashing into Bethesda like a cannonball. Now the two of them were rolling together on the floor. But while it was impossible to tell exactly what was going on between the flying limbs and deadly claws, Chelsie had the clear advantage over her sealed mother. Sure enough, barely five seconds after it had begun, the brawl ended with Bethesda’s neck firmly under Chelsie’s boot. Chelsie had already stomped down hard enough to draw blood before Julius finally got his hand around his Fang, freezing them both under an iron wall of magic.
“Chelsie,stop,” he said again, panting. “You said you didn’t want to kill her!”
“I said I didn’t wantyouto kill her,” Chelsie growled through clenched teeth, her eyes still locked on their mother with centuries of pent-up hate. “I have no problem at all skinning the old hag from nose to toes for what she’s done to us.”
The unfettered rage in her voice was enough to make Bethesda tremble. In fact, now that Julius’s Fang had ended the fight, Bethesda’s own bloodlust seemed to be vanishing altogether in favor of fear, freeing her from the grip of his Fang as she wiggled out from under her murderous daughter’s boot.
“You see?” she cried, scrambling to her feet. “She’s insane! This is what I warned you about. She’s never going to stop trying to kill me.” She turned to Julius. “Well, what are you waiting for? Attempted murder is still illegal in your little hugbox utopia, isn’t it? Punish her!”
She actually tapped her foot as he finished, looking at Julius as if she seriously expected him to order Chelsie’s execution. But as he stared at her in disbelief, Julius realized his mother had just handed him the key to solving the problem of Chelsie’s secret.
“Actually,” he said slowly, “freeing Chelsie and F-clutch was our first vote ever, which means we haven’t actually set any other rules down yet. That’s too bad for you, but really, what else did you expect? If you abuse and blackmail someone for six centuries, they’re going to want to kill you.”
Bethesda began to look more nervous. “But we don’t do that anymore,” she said quickly. “Isn’t that what you’re always going on about? Ending the cycle of violence? If you let her kill me, you’ll be breaking your own rule.”
“You’re right,” Julius said, glaring at her. “I didn’t go through all the headache and trouble of saving your lifemultiple timesjust to let you get killed now. But just because I don’t want any more killing in this clan doesn’t mean that what you’ve done magically goes away.” He tapped his fingers on the hilt of his sword. “I can keep Chelsie frozen, but sooner or later, I’m going to have to let go. When that happens, do you really think I’ll be fast enough to stop the assassin you trained to kill your dragons?”
By the time he finished, Bethesda’s face was ashen. “Then what are you going to do?” she said, her voice shaking. “You’re supposed to protect the Heartstrikers. That includes me!”
“Hey, I’m just a J,” Julius reminded her. “And a failure. I can try, but even with my Fang, we both know I’m no match for Chelsie. Sooner or later, she’s going to find a way.”
“I will,” Chelsie promised. “I will hunt you every day of my life if that’s what it takes, but Iwillkill you, Bethesda.” She bared her teeth, forcing Julius to put another hand on his sword to hold her in place. “You will pay for what you’ve done!”
“WhatI’vedone?!” their mother roared. “I saved your life, you ungrateful child! I begged for you!”
“And you’ve lorded it over me every day since!” Chelsie roared back. “I’ve saved your hide more times than I can count over the last six hundred years, and you repaid me by making me kill my brothers and sisters so you could play the good mother and keep your hands clean!” She lurched against the Fang’s hold, her eyes flashing with more emotion than Julius had ever seen on her face before. “You will pay!”
“Not before you do,” Bethesda snarled, lifting her chin as she turned to Ian. “Do you want to know what Chelsie’s been hiding all these years? The secret shame she can’t let anyone—”
Julius released his grip on the sword, and Chelsie pounced, tackling Bethesda back to the ground before he could freeze her again.
“What are you doing, you idiot?” his mother cried, scrambling out from under her second near-fatal mauling in as many minutes.
“Making a point,” Julius said calmly. “I don’t care what you did before. All I care about is our future together, as a clan. But that can’t happen if we stay mired in the past. Now, I can’t make Chelsie not want to kill you, but she might be willing to let things slide if you swear never to tell her secret.”
