“Bethesda’s been using up her father’s magic slowly over centuries,” the new F from the treasury added. “How else do you think she managed to scrape together enough power to lay eight clutches during the magical drought? She’s notthatgood.”
“But the magic itself is still the Quetzalcoatl’s,” Fredrick said. “Mother can use it since he’s no longer alive to tell her no, but certain parts, like the Fangs, still follow the echo of his will.” He smiled tightly. “In her greed, you could say Bethesda created the closest thing our kind has to a ghost.”
That was probably the most horrible thing Julius had ever heard about his mother, which was saying something. “And she wants me to do it, too?” he asked, pointing at the headdress. “She wants me to wearthat?”
The two Fs exchanged a look. “Actually,” Fredrick said slowly. “Mother doesn’t know. Franz and I decided—”
“Franz?” Julius said, head whipping around to the treasury dragon, who nodded. “Wait, the two ofyoudecided I should wear this? Not Bethesda?”
Fredrick’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Bethesda wants you to fail,” he said crisply. “Why would she share the power she’s hoarded from her father with the dragon who defeated her? But we at the bottom of the clan are…optimistic about a possible change in power. That’s why our clutch has agreed to do everything we can to ensure that your efforts are not undermined.”
By the time he finished, Julius was staring at the Fs like he’d never seen them before. “You want tohelpme?”
He hadn’t meant for the question to sound quite so skeptical, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around it. Other than the few allies he’d won through blood and Bob, whose end goal was still completely unfathomable,no onein this mountain wanted to help him. He especially couldn’t imagine receiving it from the clutch who was so famously under Bethesda’s thumb. The more he thought about that, though, the more he started to wonder if he’d been reading this whole situation incorrectly, especially given the look of pure rage painted across Fredrick’s normally stoic face.
“Let me put this in a way you can understand,” the F growled. “From the moment we hatched, my entire clutch was assigned to be Bethesda’s personal servants. For the last six hundred years, we have been forbidden to transform out of our human shapes or leave the boundaries of Heartstriker Mountain.”
Julius stared at him wide eyed. “How?” he asked. “How could Bethesda keep an entire clutch locked up like that?”
“The same way she did for you,” Fredrick said, unbuttoning his stiff coat. He unbuttoned his white shirt next, pulling the fabric aside to show Julius the old glimmer of dragon magic crisscrossing his chest. A very familiar glimmer.
“She sealed you?” Julius cried, staring at his brothers. “All of you? For six hundred years?”
“Now you understand why we would support a change,” Fredrick said as he re-buttoned his coat. “But our seal is different than yours. You were merely trapped beneath her magic. Our seal was affixed before we were even born, and it doesn’t just stop us from changing shape or leaving the mountain. It binds us to Bethesda’s rules, making it impossible for any of us to refuse a request from her or any dragon currently in her favor. We are also absolutely forbidden from attacking any of our siblings, even if they attack us first. We are only one year younger than the Es, and yet we are treated worse than Js, and Mother has never told us why. This is simply our life.”
“We’ve learned to survive as best we could,” Franz added grimly. “With our heads down. Our only hope was that eventually someone would do to Bethesda what she did to her father and set us free. Now, thanks to you, it’s happened at last.”
“This would all have been much simpler if you’d killed her, of course,” Fredrick growled. “But we’ll take what we can get. We don’t know what you plan to do with this clan, Great Julius, but whatever it is, it can’t be worse than our life under Bethesda. So long as you change anything, anything at all, you can trust that our clutch ishighlymotivated to aid you.”
Both Fs were staring at him expectantly by the time Fredrick finished, but Julius didn’t know what to say. The only thing he knew for sure was that—if Fredrick was telling even a fraction of the truth—then his initial assessment of F-clutch was entirely wrong. They weren’t Bethesda’s spies or lackeys, they were her slaves.They’d been trapped here for centuries against their will, living in conditions even worse than his had been, and the longer he thought about that, the angrier Julius got.
“I’m so sorry,” he said at last. “I didn’t know.”
“Not many do,” Fredrick said with a shrug. “It’s not a secret, it’s just that most dragons don’t care about anyone’s situation but their own.”
“I’m still sorry,” Julius said, because he was every bit as guilty of that as the rest of his siblings. He’d been raised by Fs, but he’d never bothered to look past his own misery to wonder why such obviously capable, centuries-old dragonesses were tending Bethesda’s children like paid nannies instead of running their own empires like every other upper-alphabet dragon in the clan. But while he couldn’t change his selfish ignorance in the past, Julius was determined to make things right now.
“I’m going to fix this clan,” he said, looking Fredrick straight in his green eyes. “I didn’t know how badly Bethesda was treating you, but I’m not surprised at all.” His mother used everyone, manipulated them all, but that ended today. This was exactly the sort of horrible abuse of power he’d created the Council to stop, and if wearing his grandfather’s armor would help to achieve that, then Julius was going to suck it up and wear it, because Fredrick was right. Dragons everywhere were suckers for trappings of power, especially golden ones. A little J was not impressive, even one who’d overthrown Bethesda. But that same J draped in the Quetzalcoatl’s own feathers? That would make any dragon pay attention, at least for a little bit. The rest would be up to Julius, but given how terrifying it was going to be standing in front of the dragons he’d spent his life up to this point hiding from, he was ready to take whatever help he could get. Even the creepy dead kind.
“I’m in,” he said firmly, pulling himself straight. “Put them on.”
“Excellent choice, sir,” Fredrick said, his face splitting into a hungry grin as he took the crown from Franz. “Brace yourself. This might feel a little odd.”
Julius nodded and closed his eyes, pulling his whole body tight as the F set the headdress on top of his head, and the weight of a dragon with it.
***
Now hereallylooked ridiculous.
Once again, Fredrick had been right. Four hourswasa push to get Julius into a full suit of incredibly complex armor that hadn’t been worn in centuries. Not only did every golden piece have to be remolded to fit Julius’s body—which was apparently much scrawnier than his grandfather’s had been—but Julius had to keep taking breaks to adjust the enormous weight of the feathers on top of his head.
It seemed impossible that something as light and airy as feathers could feel so heavy. The five foot long plumes looked like nothing floating behind him, but the moment he put them on, the weight was enough to buckle his knees. Even after he’d figured out how to balance it, the crown was still incredibly uncomfortable. The brilliant rainbow-colored feathers had edges as sharp as knives, and even though the dragon who’d grown them was long gone, they still twitched and rustled like living things. That plus the deathly, ashen smell that surrounded it was enough to make Julius want to tear the headdress off every time they stuck it on his head. The only reason he didn’t was because he was going to eventually have to wear this in front of a crowd, and he’d much rather learn to bear it here in private than freak out in front of his entire family.
But even Julius’s constant breaks and the literal reforging of multiple golden pieces were no match for Fredrick’s efficiency. In the end, they were done with ten minutes to spare. The F had just left to go check on Bethesda’s progress when the door to the dressing room banged open, and a tall, familiar, and very well-armed dragon strode into the room only to freeze in his tracks.
“Wow,” Justin said, his jaw hanging open. “Dude, you lookgood.”
This was so different from their usual interactions, it took Julius several seconds to actually reply. “Thank you,” he said at last. “I—”
