“To remind myself not to be an idiot again.”
The old anger in those words should have been a warning visible from space, but Julius was too excited to care. He’d never had such a clear look into Chelsie’s past before, and the fact that he’d gotten it from aChinesepainting—presumably the same China Bob had told him to ask about when he’d needed to wake Chelsie up after Estella chained her—only made him more curious.
“Who painted it?”
Chelsie’s answer was a long, pointed silence before she turned and pointed at the room she’d been digging around in earlier. “You sleep here.”
“But—”
She growled deep in her throat, and Julius froze. His curiosity was still burning like a fire, but that angry growl was enough to remind Julius just how much bigger Chelsie was than himself, and how rude he was being to his host. With that, he lowered his head at once. When it was clear he wasn’t going to push any more, Chelsie dropped her aggressive stance, though her body remained tense as she walked past him to the bedroll she’d set up on the floor of the final room of her cramped suite, which Julius now saw was another library.
Other than the painting, the only things Chelsie seemed to collect that weren’t directly related to her job were books. The front room where Marci was sleeping had held mostly paperbacks, but the back room was filled with huge, leather-bound manuscripts, the kind monks used to go blind illuminating. Unlike the paperbacks, which had been stuffed into shelves, the leather-bound books were protected behind glass to prevent them from deteriorating. Julius was about to try and win back some points with his sister by complimenting her collection when he realized books weren’t the only things behind the glass.
In the center of the room’s farthest shelf, resting on a velvet pillow in its own special box under a glowing heat lamp, was an oblong object with a dark, shiny surface that glistened like a beetle’s shell. At roughly the size of a bike tire, it was larger than the books surrounding it, though still remarkably small for what it appeared to be. Even so, Julius didn’t doubt for a second that it was real. He might never have seen one personally before this moment, but every dragon knew an egg when he saw one. At this point, the only thing Julius wasn’t sure of was why his sister had a dragon’s egg displayed on her bookshelf like a trophy.
Chelsie heaved a long sigh. “I can see it in your eyes,” she muttered, rubbing her hands tiredly over her face. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Julius shook his head. After his flub with the painting, the last thing he wanted was to keep pushing, but this was too big to ignore. Before he could think of how to phrase his questions, though, Chelsie beat him to the punch.
“It’s a dud,” she said, stepping over the bedroll to open the egg’s glass case. “Sometimes, if she’s very young, a dragoness will lay an egg that doesn’t hatch. The whelp inside is still technically viable, but for whatever reason, the spark of its life’s fire simply didn’t catch. Without its own magic, it can’t break the shell and be born, so it just stays an egg, relying on magic from its mother or somewhere else to keep it alive.”
“And is that what you’re doing?” Julius asked quietly. “Keeping it alive?”
“More or less,” she said, reaching in to gently pet the egg’s glossy surface with her gloved hand. “Supporting eggs takes a lot of power. Bethesda said it was foolish to keep investing that in an egg that would almost certainly never hatch. She told me to throw it away, but I kept it instead. It was a stupid thing to do. If Mother ever finds out I disobeyed, she’ll have my head, but I just thought it was a waste. Eggs are precious. Each one represents a huge investment of dragon magic from both parents. And there’s still a tiny chance this one will hatch someday, so I keep feeding it magic. Just in case.”
She let go of the egg with a sigh and closed the case, looking almost embarrassed when she turned to face Julius again. “At this point, it’s more habit than anything else. If it hasn’t hatched yet, the chances of it ever doing so are effectively zero. But I’ve been feeding any magic I can spare into it for centuries, so…” She trailed off with a shrug. “Seems like a waste to give up now.”
She said this like it was no big deal, but Julius felt as though he’d just seen his sister’s true face for the first time. Not the terrifying dragon all Heartstriker feared, or even the smiling, carefree girl from the painting, but therealChelsie. The one who never put her siblings into debt because she knew how much it could hurt. The one who couldn’t stand hurting whelps and who’d protected a helpless egg for centuries against her own best interest simply because she couldn’t bear to see it thrown away. The sister who’d protectedhimover and over again, and never asked for anything in return.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I swear, Julius, if you don’t stop looking at me with that insipid expression this instant, I’m throwing you back to the wolves upstairs.”
He wasn’t brave enough to call that bluff, but it didn’t stop him from smiling. “Thank you, Chelsie,” he said, letting his feelings fill his voice so she would know he was telling the truth. “For everything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, turning away, though not before he caught her cheeks flushing ever so slightly red. “Save it for someone who cares.” She nudged his bedroll with her foot. “I know it’s only eight thirty, but you should go to sleep. You’ve been up for two days straight, and it’s obviously making you delirious. I’m going to try and catch some rest while I can, too. Whatever happens, though,do notcome in my room. I’m a light sleeper, and I don’t react well to interruptions.”
Looking at the way she gripped her sword, Julius believed her. “I won’t bother you,” he promised. “But Chelsie…”
He paused, waiting for her to look back over her shoulder. When she finally did, he looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m going to get you out of this,” he said solemnly. “Whatever Bethesda’s using to control you, I swear I’ll find it, and I’ll break it.”
For a moment, something behind Chelsie’s eyes flashed only to die again just as quickly as she turned away again. “You can’t,” she said calmly. “Nothing can free me, Julius. Where do you think I learned to hate debts?”
He clenched his fists. “But that doesn’t mean—”
She walked out before he could finish, striding down the hall without looking back. When he heard her bedroom door slam, Julius sank down to the bedroll she’d prepared. Tired as he was, though, he couldn’t sleep. There was too much banging around in his head, too many plots and plans and other very un-Julius things going on for him to possibly settle down. After spending so long as a pawn, having to think like a player was exhausting, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop. So instead, he lay there in the dark, staring at his unknown, unhatched sibling as the schemes and plans whirled in his head.
But no storm can rage forever. After what felt like hours of going in circles, the heaving sea of Julius’s mind finally grew still enough for sleep to find him, and he passed out, curled in a ball beneath the oddly tiny egg sitting quiet and still in its case.
Chapter 6
What felt like barely ten minutes later, a hand landed on Julius’s shoulder.
“Sir?”
He rolled over with a grunt, dragging the blanket Chelsie had loaned him over his head. He didn’t even know who was talking, but unless the mountain was on fire, he didn’t care. He’dfinallygotten to sleep, and he was determined to—
The hand on his shoulder yanked up, taking Julius up with it. For a terrifying moment, he was actually lifted off the ground, and then the hand vanished, leaving him sitting upright in the bedroll, blinking in the sudden glare of the overhead light, which the tall dragon standing over him had just switched on.
“Good morning, sir,” Fredrick said. “I trust you slept well.”
