“I’m going to be embarrassed about this tomorrow, aren’t I?”
“I hope not,” Julius said, kissing the top of her head. “I won’t be.”
She laughed softly. “You really are t’nicest dragon.”
Her slurring voice made him all the more certain that he’d made the right decision, but while she didn’t sound upset, she didn’t say anything else. Julius was starting to worry he actually had hurt her feelings and she was just keeping quiet about it, when he felt a soft snore vibrate up through his chest.
A goofy smile spread across his face. He didn’t care how many times it happened—and he fervently hoped it would happen many more times in the future—he would never get used to the wondrous feeling of Marci sleeping on him. It was the ultimate sign of trust, and the fact that she did it so easily stirred up more emotions than Julius knew how to deal with. He was still trying to work through them when he realized he should probably say something to his sister.
Given Chelsie’s habit of disappearing whenever his back was turned, Julius was strongly hoping that would be the case now. No such luck. When he looked over his shoulder, Chelsie was right where she’d been when he’d last seen her, leaning on the wall beside his closet with her eyes firmly fixed on her phone.
“I hope you didn’t stop on my account,” she said without looking up.
“Not entirely,” Julius admitted, praying that his face wasn’t actually as red as it felt. “So, um, what do we do now?”
“Whatever you want,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll just be here. Don’t let me keep you up.”
He gaped at her. “You’re just going to stand there while I sleep?”
“Yes,” Chelsie said, raising her head at last to give him a withering look. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear before, but I’m here to keep you from getting murdered in your sleep. I can’t very well do that from out in the hall, can I? Not that it would matter since your room doesn’t have a door, but if this is where you’re staying, I’m staying, too.” She looked down at her phone again. “Just lie down and relax. No one will come near you so long as I’m around, and you’ll forget I’m here in a moment.”
Julius was pretty sure that was never going to happen. “Chelsie, I can’t sleep while you’re staring at me.” And now that she’d reminded him of the door situation, he didn’t think he could have slept here even if she wasn’t. He supposed he could call housekeeping to come put a curtain over it, or at least bring him another mattress, but even if they fixed everything, there was no way the three of them would ever fit comfortably into his coffin of a room.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered at last.
“Agreed,” Chelsie said. “But it’s not as though we have a lot of options. Like I said, the mountain was never meant to hold every Heartstriker at once, and with the remaining Daughters of the Three Sisters taking up half the guest rooms, things are even tighter. I’m frankly surprised someone wasn’t squatting in your room already, blown-off door or no. Then again, maybe there was a dragon in here before the curse team chased it out.” She shrugged. “Silver lining to everything, I suppose.”
Julius sighed. Part of him wanted to ask if they could just go upstairs to the suites reserved for Bethesda’s higher-ranked children and kick someone out. Hewason the Heartstriker Council, and it was about time his new position did something good for him instead of just making his life harder. But no matter how appealing the idea of a room with a door and an actual bed sounded, the idea of taking a bed from one of his siblings felt too rude for Julius to seriously consider. Plus, whoever they kicked out would undoubtedly take the whole affairverypersonally, and if there was anything Julius didn’t need right now, it was another enemy. He was about to say screw it and tell Chelsie he’d just stay up, too, when his sister shoved her phone into the zippered pocket of her combat suit.
“Okay,” she growled, pushing off the wall. “This is officially too stupid. Let’s go.”
He frowned. “Go where?”
She shot him a withering look. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually enjoy standing around staring at dragons all night. I definitely don’t like the idea of spending eight hours guarding you in a barren room with no vestige of proper security. Not if there’s a better option.”
“There’s a better option?” Because that was news to Julius.
“Yes,” Chelsie said irritably, marching to the door. “Franz and his team are already on their way down to get your armor, so stop being a parrot, grab your human, and let’s get out of here.”
Julius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He picked up Marci at once, pausing only to tuck his sheathed sword—which he no longer had pants or a belt to attach to—under his arm. When he was sure he had everything, he scrambled after his sister into the hall, which was not nearly as empty as before.
They hadn’t been making much noise, but Julius knew from experience exactly how well sound traveled down here. Sure enough, while there were still no dragons to be seen, several doors that had been shut when they’d arrived were now cracked open. Chelsie snarled at one as they passed, and many of them slammed shut, but not all. After that, Chelsie didn’t bother with threats. She just picked up the pace, forcing Julius to jog to keep up as she swept all the way down the narrow hall, into the main mountain compound, and past the elevators before finally opening the door to the enormous spiraling Central Service Stair that ran like a spine down the center of Heartstriker Mountain.
Here, at last, they were actually alone again. The spiral stairwell was huge, open, and brightly lit, with a giant empty space in the middle big enough for a good-sized dragon to fly down if he kept himself tucked in. It was also the most direct way up and down the mountain, provided you didn’t mind climbing thousands of stairs. But while most dragons didn’t bat an eye at a little exercise, they wouldn’t be caught dead on a stair meant for servants, which meant that despite its convenience, the Central Service Stair was almost always empty. When he’d lived here, Julius had taken advantage of that all the time, using the stairs constantly to avoid his siblings, but he’d never seen Chelsie on them.
“Never seen” was apparently the operative phrase, because Chelsie knew these stairs like the back of her hand, rushing down the floors without even bothering to count the unmarked doors as she flew by. She went so fast, Julius didn’t even have the breath to ask questions until they reached the very bottom, where the service stair met the mountain’s roots. It was only here that Chelsie finally slowed down, opening the heavy, metal door to the mountain’s lowest floor with a shove of her shoulder.
“So,” Julius said as she led them into a stone hallway that looked more like an accidental gap in the bedrock than somewhere dragons were actually supposed to walk. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe,” Chelsie replied, picking up the pace again as she strode down the narrow crack of a hallway. “Or safe as it gets in this mountain.”
“You mean like a vault?”
She shook her head. “The vaults are the first place anyone would think to look. That’s why I’m taking you somewhere theywon’tthink of, or at least won’t have the guts to check.”
“Where’s that?” Julius asked, getting more nervous by the step.
“My room.”
