He could do a lot better than that. “Fredrick?” he asked, glancing up the stairs. “Would it be possible to get a car to take Marci into town?”
“Absolutely, Great Julius,” the F said, turning to the human with a painfully polite smile. “If you would follow me, Miss Novalli.”
Marci shot Julius a nervous look. “Is he for real?”
Julius nodded. “I’m sorry he was rude to you before. Fredrick’s had a rough time of it here in the mountain, and it’s given him some odd ideas about things. But he seems like an honest dragon who’s good at his job. You should be fine.”
By the time he finished, she was grinning at him. “Look at you, all official! It’s almost like you’re part of the ruling Council of a dragon clan or something.”
Julius winced. “Please don’t say that.” It sounded as if she were praising him for being his mother.
“It was meant in the nicest way possible,” Marci assured him, clutching her bag. Then, without warning, she rose up on her toes and pressed a kiss against his cheek. It was the barest brush, a quick touch of her lips that was over almost before it started, but that didn’t stop it from sending a jolt of electricity straight down to his toes. He was still reeling when she pulled away, slinging her bag securely across her chest.
“I’ll call you to report the moment the meeting’s over,” she said as she hurried up the stairs toward Fredrick. “And I haven’t forgotten you promised to take me flying, so make sure to leave room on your schedule tonight, okay?”
Still speechless, Julius could only nod, watching in a haze as she flashed him a final smile and took off, following Fredrick up the stairs and out the door at the next landing. He was still grinning like an idiot when Justin finally stood up to join him.
“It’s like that now, is it?”
“You’re just jealous,” Julius said, not bothering to wipe the happy grin off his face as he reached up to touch the spot on his cheek where Marci had kissed him.
His brother rolled his eyes in disgust. “Yeah, well, if you’re done staring after your mortal like a lost puppy, we’ve got real problems.”
“Like what?” Julius asked, because this crisis had ended fantastically better than he’d expected.
“Gregory to start,” Justin said, leaning over the railing to glare down the center of the stairwell. “He was obviously after the girl to get leverage on you, which isn’t a bad plan given how stuck on her you are.”
He paused there, clearly waiting for his brother to sputter and deny it. When Julius just kept grinning, Justin continued with a sigh. “Your mage sent him running, so I doubt he’ll bother her again. Now that I’ve spread his failure around to the entire clan, though, he’s going to be madder than ever, which means we might actually get a real fight.”
Now it was Julius’s turn to sigh. “Don’t say that like it’s a good thing. The entire point of this is to end the cycle of brother fighting brother, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean some brothers don’t deserve to have their tails kicked,” Justin said stubbornly. “He talks a big game, but that Amazonian gutter snake clearly doesn’t have the guts to take me head on, which explains why he went after your human. Now that I’ve put his failure out there for everyone to see, though, he’ll have no choice but to put up or shut up.”
“That’swhy you did it?” Julius cried. “To antagonize him?”
“Well, that and it was hilarious,” his brother said with a shrug. “But this needs to happen, Julius. Dragons like Gregory don’t just forget. If we don’t shut him down hard now, he’ll be a thorn in your side forever.” He cracked his knuckles. “I say we go find him now while he’s still licking his wounds and put an end to this nonsense for good.”
“No,” Julius growled, fists clenching. “For thelast time, Justin, you don’t free a dragon clan from threats of violence byusing threats of violence!”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to threaten,” Justin assured him. “I was just going to do it.”
“That’s even worse!”
“Says you,” Justin snapped. “But you’re a freak of nature: a pacifist dragon. The rest of us are normal, and if you want to make a point to anormaldragon, you need to use claws.”
“That’s not true,” Julius said stubbornly. “We’re not animals, Justin.”
His brother snorted. “Gregory is.”
Considering he’d just attacked Marci, defending Gregory was not high on Julius’s list, but he couldn’t let that slide. “Gregory is angry,” he said, trying his best to stay calm and reasonable. “He’s only acting like this because I’m threatening his position. He’s a traditionally strong dragon, which means he was at the top of the old system. Now I’m changing things and threatening to upset that, so he’s fighting back the only way he knows how. I’m not excusing what he’s done, but fighting back in the same way isn’t going to make things better. We can’t make a clan free from bullies by being bullies ourselves.”
“So you’re just going to roll over for him?” Justin said. “If you let this slide, he’ll be after you forever.”
“No, he won’t,” Julius said confidently. “Because no dragon bangs his head on the wall forever. Once he realizes the old violence doesn’t work anymore, he’ll find new ways to solve his problems. Hopefully ones we can work with. But I don’t care what he does, we are not going to go looking for a fight, and that’s the end of it.”
Justin looked surlier than ever by the time he was done, but to Julius’s amazement, he didn’t keep pushing. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t keep arguing, either. A fact for which Julius was incredibly grateful, at least until his brother changed the subject.
“What I really want to know is where was Chelsie during all of this?” he said angrily. “You won’t let me punch in Gregory’s head, but policing family idiots is supposed to be her job. Why wasn’t she here doing it?”
