The general’s scowl deepened at the smug satisfaction in his voice, but she knew better than to wrestle the bear that was Sir Myron Rollins’s ego. To be fair, though, he was probably right. As official sorcerer to the queen of England and three-time winner of the Nobel Prize for Magic, he’d gotten his job as head of magical policy for the UN precisely because he wasthatgood. Even Sir Myron’s greatest rivals would never claim that he hadn’t earned his positions through sheer, unstoppable, genius-level skill. It certainly wasn’t due to his winning personality.
The same could be said for you,Raven whispered in her mind.Or did I imagine you calling the Secretary General an idiot last week?
“Good thing we’re not talking about me, then,” she said, holding out her hand for the giant bird who popped out of nowhere to land on her fingers. “I need your help.”
“Way ahead of you,” Raven replied, his beady eyes flashing. “But are you sure this is a path you want to pursue? Stealing from dragons is a dangerous business.”
“Then we’ll just have to be clever thieves,” Emily replied, grabbing one of Myron’s cards from the stash in her pocket and jotting a quick message on the front. “Go do what you do best.”
For a moment, she would have sworn Raven was grinning at her, and then the spirit took the card in his beak and disappeared, the shadow of his weight vanishing from her arm as the car began to pull away.
Chapter 7
When he’d lived in the mountain, Julius had avoided the main dining room at all costs. This had meant a lot of cold meals eaten at his desk, but congealed soup and melted ice cream were nothing compared to running the gauntlet through the one place in the mountain where you were guaranteed to see every dragon you were trying to avoid (which, in Julius’s case, meant pretty much his entire clan). Today, though, walking into the beautifully decorated, restaurant-style dining floor with both Justin and Ian at his side, the experience was entirely different.
It was still terrifying, of course. No matter how much things changed, Julius didn’t think he wouldeverbe able to walk into a room full of dragons without that initial shock of survival-instinct-induced panic. It also didn’t help that there were alotof Heartstrikers having breakfast this morning. An astonishing number, actually, given how early it was. The kitchen staff wasn’t even done setting up the buffet line—the only way to effectively feed so many dragons—and yet every circular, white-clothed table in the place was packed full. Even stranger, most of the gathered Heartstrikers were ones Julius actually recognized.
With the sad exception of Jessica, the entire J-clutch was sitting in front of him. Most of I was there, too, as was a good portion of H. There were even a few Gs sprinkled around the back tables, but the majority of the crowd was lower-alphabet Heartstrikers. It was acrowd, too. Not counting the F who was there to oversee the food service, there had to be forty dragons in the dining room when Ian opened the door. It was a scene straight out of Julius’s worst anxiety nightmares, and it only got worse when Ian slapped a hand on his shoulder, drawing everyone’s attention right to them.
“Brothers and sisters,” Ian said loudly. “Thank you for joining us this morning.”
Julius’s head snapped around to gape at his brother in horror.Us?he mouthed.
“Welcome to politics,” Ian whispered back before turning to smile approvingly at the small army of dragons that was coming up to greet them.
“Julius!” his brother Jordan said, grabbing Julius’s hand in a crushing handshake. “I always knew you were faking being a failure!”
“Um, thank you?” Julius said.
“He wasn’t being a failure,” his sister Jennifer cut in, elbowing Jordan out of the way. “He was biding his time and letting Mother make bad assumptions. A classic ploy.” She beamed at him. “Inever doubted you were on your way to the top.”
“You didn’t?” Julius said, too shocked to watch his words. “But you tried to banish me to another plane every morning fortwo years!”
“And look how strong it made you,” she said proudly.
“We’ve all made you strong,” his sister Jacqueline agreed, reaching over Jennifer’s shoulder to steal Julius’s hand for herself. “That’s why I burned off all your feathers when we were eight. I was training you to endure pain and humiliation, and no one’s had more humiliation than you! That’s how you were able to beat Bethesda when no other Heartstriker could.”
His siblings all smiled and nodded as though this was the only logical explanation for the years of torment every dragon in the room had heaped on Julius’s head. Julius, on the other hand, felt like he’d just stepped into the Twilight Zone. “Wait,” he said, prying his hand away. “Every single one of you bullied, harassed, and otherwise made my life hell for our entire childhood, and you seriously want me to believe now that it was allon purpose?”
“Of course it was on purpose,” his brother Jacob said, looking down his long nose. “I cursed your toilet thirty-seven times with thirty-seven different types of boils. That sort of attention to detail doesn’t happen by accident.”
“And youwerethe smallest,” Jorinda agreed, pushing in front of her brother. “It was our duty to make your life as terrible as possible to make sure you were tough enough to overcome your natural setbacks, or have you forgotten that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?”
“It was more than that,” Jacob argued, pushing back. “If we hadn’t worked so hard to beat you down, you wouldn’t have gotten so good at hiding, which means Mother never would have kicked you out, and this whole coup could never have happened.” He smiled a sharp white grin. “It wouldn’t be a stretch to saywemade you the important, powerful dragon you are today.”
The whole group nodded as if that was acceptable logic, leaving Julius gaping. In hindsight, he supposed he should have expected it. This was the most extreme example he’d ever witnessed personally, but this sort of reality twisting was actually pretty par for the course for his clutch. He might have been at the bottom of J, but every J was at the bottom of Heartstriker. If claiming credit for his current position gave them legitimacy within the clan, they would dog-pile on Julius until he was crushed beneath the weight of their newfound self-importance.
But while part of him was insulted beyond words that any of them had thought he could just forgive and forget the dragons who’d made his childhood hell, a surprisingly larger part of him already had. He was still angry about what they’d done, and probably always would be, but itwasdone. All of those childhood tortures were in the past, and Julius was a very different dragon than the one their mother had kicked out of the mountain. At this point, he was just glad his siblings were conniving to support him instead of thinking up new ways to make him miserable.
But while they clearly expected him to fall on the ground in gratitude for their newfound support, Julius drew the line at actually thanking them. It didn’t matter how they tried to spin it, he wouldneversay thank you for those years of abuse. Fortunately for everyone, Ian came to the rescue, grabbing Julius out of the circle of Js and leading him to the empty table at the front of the room, the only free seats in the house.
“Thank you all for accepting my invitation,” he said loudly as the Js who’d rushed Julius hurried back to their seats. “We’re all very proud of what Julius has accomplished. He alone, of all Heartstrikers, was able to overthrow Bethesda. Now it’s our turn to build on his successes and secure our power for the centuries to come.”
He paused there, waiting, but he didn’t have to. The moment he’d saidpower, every dragon in the room had stopped talking and started listening with the intensity of a hunter stalking prey. Even the Hs in the back were watching Ian like he was the most important thing in the room, and from the light in his new dark eyes, helovedit.
“This is our chance,” he said solemnly, his smooth voice rich with anticipation. “From the moment we were born, we lower clutches have been at the bottom of the clan, subject to the whims of dragons whose only claim to greatness was the luck of being born before us. All our lives, we’ve been told that the only path to power was through dragons far greater than ourselves, and even then, even when we won, our prize was a slightly better form of servitude to Bethesda.”
The room began to growl. Not loudly, but the frustration and suppressed anger of so many dragons was still a terrifying sound, and Ian nodded. “I know,” he said. “I was angry, too. We are dragons. We were born to take power, and yet we were expected towait. To bide our time and toe the family line until we found our opportunity to punch up at the dragons above us. Dragons who weregiventheir power purely by rank of birth. For far too long, the power of our clan—the greatest dragon clan in the world—has been determined by age, size, and our ability to flatter Bethesda’s ego. Now, thanks to our brother, that’s all changed.”
