“This secret,” he said at last. “If it’sreallyas bad as you make it sound, surely Bethesda won’t actually use it? Even with the Council, she’s still at the top of the clan. She has just as much to lose as we do if—”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Chelsie said bitterly. “I know our mother better than most, and I can promise you that, at least in her own mind, Bethesda has more on the line right now than anyone. She was able to stomach your Council because, in her mind at least, she hasn’t actually lost yet. So long as she has me to enforce her will, my sword will always be on the clan’s neck, which means she willalwaysbe the Heartstriker in the only way that matters to her. Unfortunately, I’m also the last piece she has on the board. If she loses me, she really is defeated.” She frowned. “Honestly, I think that’s the only reason she hasn’t ordered me to kill you yet. She doesn’t want to risk flaunting just how much power she still has until the Council is complete and she’s safely unsealed.”
That was a disturbing thought. Julius had been so caught up in the Council’s power to make official clan decisions, he hadn’t even considered how easily his mother could undermine that with Chelsie behind the scenes. But while Julius considered that even more of a reason to free his sister, Chelsie just looked defeated, as though she’d already fought and lost.
“Don’t count us out yet,” he said with a smile. “We’re not going to sit by and let her keep the power she signed away. Besides, even if she does order you to kill me, I know you’ll just find a way around it. Like you said, it’s blackmail, not mind control, and you’ve gotten around her orders before when you helped me in the DFZ.”
“That was different,” Chelsie growled. “She didn’t hate you as much then, and you were less of a threat. Now you’re at the top of all her lists, which means it’s only a matter of time before the order comes down. Less if you keep pushing.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you think I keep telling you to keep a hand on your Fang? It’s not to protect you from the others. It’s because having your hand on the hilt at all times is the only chance you have of surviving me.”
That resigned practicality in her voice was enough to turn Julius’s blood to ice, but even when she was giving him tips on how not to die when she came for him, he couldn’t make himself believe thatChelsie—the sister he’d come to know as one of the most secretly kind dragons in the family—would willingly remain in her position as Bethesda’s blade, killing her siblings and keeping the mother she hated above all else in power, just to keep a secret from six hundred years ago.
“You see?” she said, glaring at him. “This is why I didn’t want to talk to you. I can already see you trying to think your way out, but thereisno escape, Julius. I’m all Bethesda has left now. If you try to take me from her, you can bet your feathers she’ll blurt my secret out in the next breath, because that’s how she operates. Bethesda will cut deals all day if she thinks she can get out of them, but she’d sooner die and take us all down with her than give up even a fraction of what she considers her actual power. That’s why I keep telling you to kill her. If she dies, my secret dies with her, and all of this becomes moot. But so long as she’s alive, all it will ever take is one word for her to do far worse than kill me, which means I will never be free. Not while she lives. So.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now that you know as much of the truth as I can give, I’ll ask one more time. Will you kill Bethesda?”
Julius took a deep breath. In the end, though, he could only shake his head. “I know she deserves it for what she’s done, especially to you, but I did this to end the killing, Chelsie. I want to make this clan a better place, somewhere we don’t have to be afraid all the time, and awful as Bethesda is, we don’t get somewhere new by repeating the same bloody choices of the past and expecting a different outcome. That’s why I didn’t kill her during the coup, and it’s why I can’t kill her now.”
Chelsie’s eyes narrowed. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.”
“Yes, we do,” he said, clenching his fists. “Because this isn’t the same clan it was two days ago. We’ve already changed so much. We can change this, too, I know it! I might not be exactly sure how yet, but I refuse to let you give up on everything just because I won’t kill our mother.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” she growled. “Do you know how many times I’ve given up, Julius? I’ll give you a hint. It’s exactly the same number of times I’ve let myself believe what you’re spouting right now. Over the centuries, every time something changed in the clan, I used to think that maybe this was it. Maybe, just maybe, this time things would get better, and every single time, I was wrong.”
“But thisisdifferent,” he argued. “We’re—”
“Not for me,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you think you’re being a good brother by trying to give me hope, but there’s nothing nice or kind about giving someone something they can’t use. So long as Bethesda lives, there is no hope. Not for me, and not for them.” She pointed through the wall at the F-clutch hallway. “I hate that more than you can ever know, but hating the truth doesn’t change it. It’s taken a long, long time, but I’ve finally made peace with that, and I refuse to let you undo all of my hard work with your false promises.”
“They’re not false!” he cried. “And you shouldn’t be at peace with this! If you keep thinking like that, nothing will ever change!”
“Nothing changes now!” Chelsie yelled angrily. “I respect what you’re trying to do. It’s a noble effort to try and fix something as broken as Heartstriker. But don’t tell me things are getting better when the sword I’ve been living under for six hundred years is closer than ever to falling on my head! You’ve already pushed Bethesda to the edge, but all that means is that she’s clutching me even tighter. If you try to pry her claws off, she’ll use my secret as brutally as she can to spite us all, and everything I’ve suffered to protect for all these centuries will be fornothing.”
Julius shook his head frantically. “But—”
“No,” she snapped. “No more buts. I’ve already told you more than I’ve told anyone in centuries. I even told you exactly what you need to do to fix the problem, but youwon’t,which means we have nothing more to say.”
Before Julius could reply, she turned back to the door, unlocking the dead bolt before stepping aside to let him pass. When he didn’t leave quickly enough, she shoved him into the hall, closing the door behind him. Julius caught it at the last second, wedging his shoulder into the crack.
“This isn’t over,” he said. “I’m not going to kill Bethesda, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on setting you and the Fs free. The answer’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to find it.” He looked her in the eyes. “I haven’t given up on you, Chelsie.”
“That’s too bad,” she said, pushing him out of the way. “I have.”
And then she shut the door in his face.
Julius stared at the blank wall of wood for a long time after that. He was still standing there when he heard his phone buzzing on the floor where Chelsie had tossed it, the screen flashing with an angry message from Bethesda, demanding his presence in her chambers five minutes ago.
Chapter 10
It was amazing what having an inside dragon could accomplish.
Despite the crowd of surly humans packing the section of Heartstriker Mountain Marci now thought of as the human holding pen, Marci had zero problems. One word from Fredrick, and the human staff had whisked her away to a private room with a full bath suite. By the time she’d finished cleaning up, someone had even laid new clothes out for her.Reallynice clothes.
Given where she was, Marci supposed that was par for the course. With the exception of Julius, most dragons dressed like they wanted to be ready to shoot a fashion editorial at a moment’s notice. But even if this was business as usual for the Heartstrikers, Marci still found it thrilling in a Cinderella sort of way. The work-appropriate wardrobe wasn’t exactly gowns and glass slippers, but Marci would take meeting Sir Myron Rollins over a ball any day. The only downside was that Julius wasn’t there to see her when she actually looked decent for once.
“He liiiiiiikes me,” she sang happily as she tried on all the shoes the staff had left to find the pair that fit best. “He really liiiiiikes me.”
Of course he likes you,Ghost said grumpily from the bed.You’re one of his best tools.
“Don’t be a downer,” she scolded as she slipped on a pair of spindly heels before shaking her head and going back to the comfortable black flats. Never knew when you were going to have to book it around here. “Let me have my moment, would you?”
And oh, what a moment it was. After months of crushing hard on Julius, all the time knowing she didn’t have a chance due to the whole “human” thing, things had taken a dramatic turn for the awesome. She’d known something was up when he’d kissed her before Vann Jeger, but she’d written it off to pre-battle jitters. Since then, things between them had been a mess of interrupted conversations and the hesitation she’d always assumed was disinterest, but was now starting to realize was actually Julius’s crippling shyness. When he’d found her on the stairs just now, though, Marci had finally understood that it wasn’t just friendship for either of them. Julius cared about a lot of people, most of them dragons, but he’d never looked that scared for anyone but her. And yeah, part of it was probably the natural attraction of having gone through so much together, but when she’d taken a chance and kissed his cheek, he’d looked every bit as happy about it as she’d felt. That wasverypromising, and after the week she’d had, Marci was ready to jump on it.
