Julius stared at her in disbelief. “But there already is,” he said. “You’ve already signed your powers away. You’ve lost, Bethesda. There’s no going back.”
“Oh, darling,” Bethesda drawled. “When will you learn? Ineverlose. If I experience a setback, I simply find a new way to win. That’s whyI’mthe Heartstriker, and you’re about to be a stain on my floor.” She lifted her head, raising her voice as she called to someone behind him. “Isn’t that right, Gregory?”
Justin began to growl as both Js looked over their shoulders to see Gregory walking through the heavy vault door.
“What areyoudoing here?” Justin said, lifting his lips in a snarl.
“What you should have done,” Gregory snarled back, stopping to stare Justin down. “You call yourself the Knight of the Heartstrikers, but when the Heartstriker was overthrown, you stood by and let it happen. Now you’re protecting her usurper, who didn’t even beat her in combat.” He looked away with a sneer. “You don’t deserve to stand at the top of this mountain.”
Justin snorted. “Big talk from a dragon who got taken out by a human girl and her kitten.”
Gregory’s face turned scarlet, but Bethesda just laughed. “Please,” she said airily. “Julius’s human defeated Vann Jeger, whom even Chelsie couldn’t hurt. I’m starting to think she’s the secret to the little whelp’s success. If Julius was less obnoxious, I’d actually be proud. Seducing more-powerful creatures and turning them into weapons is a Heartstriker specialty.”
The way she said that made Julius feel filthy all over. “That isnotwhat I—”
“Oh, I know,” his mother said. “Even when you’re competent, it’s only by accident. But it matters not. Your little girlfriend can’t help you now, and neither can Chelsie, whom, by the way, I’ve strictly forbidden from offering you further assistance.”
“Assistance with what?” Julius said, trying his best to sound confident. “Whether you use Gregory or Chelsie, it doesn’t make a difference. So long as I have this”—he gripped the hilt of his Fang—“we both know I’m untouchable. The moment Gregory seriously considers hurting me, he’ll be stuck like a fly in honey. You’re all bluff.”
“There is no bluff,” Gregory said, a chilling grin spreading over his face. “You forget. Your little parlor trick only works on Heartstrikers, and after not even twenty-four hours of seeing how you’d run this clan, I don’t want to be one anymore.” He turned to their mother. “I quit.”
“What?” Justin roared, looking more insulted by that than he had at anything else. “You can’t quit! No onequitsbeing a Heartstriker!”
“Ian quit for a one-night stand with the White Witch,” Gregory reminded him. “Next to that, my reasoning’s far nobler. Besides, it’s not actually Heartstriker anymore, is it?” His green eyes flicked back to Julius. “We’re his clan now, and I refuse to be part of anything that has a worm likehimfor a leader.”
“I don’t blame you a jot, dear,” Bethesda said sadly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Normally, the rule is no one gets out of this clan alive. But killing you would help Julius, which Chelsie’s been strictly forbidden from doing, and with the Council still pending, there’s no one else who can officially force you to stay.” Her lips curled in a cruel smile. “Looks like we have no choice but to let you go.”
The moment she said that, magic shivered over the room. It was the same clan magic Julius had felt many times before, but oddly distant, like an echo, probably because there was no actual clan head right now. But while the magic was distorted, it clearly still worked, because Bethesda and Gregory both shivered from head to toe. On the very edge of his mind, in a place he didn’t even know he could touch, Julius felt it, too: a quick, sharp sting, like a taut wire had just snapped.
“I forgot how much that hurts,” their mother said, pressing a hand to her head. “That’s why I accepted Ian back. Kicking dragons out is dreadfully destabilizing. Do that enough times, and you’ll break a clan.”
“Sometimes the only way to heal something is to break it,” Gregory said, rolling his shoulders as his green eyes locked on Julius. “Tell me, Mother. If I fix your broken clan, will you welcome me back?”
The pained look fell off Bethesda’s face, immediately replaced by a triumphant sneer.
“With open arms.”
The moment the words left her mouth, Gregory attacked. He came on so fast, Julius barely got his sword up in time. But while he felt the Fang’s biting magic rise to meet him as it always did, Gregory didn’t freeze. He didn’t even slow down…because he was no longer a Heartstriker.
In hindsight, the ploy was obvious, but knowing didn’t help. In the few seconds it had taken Julius to realize his Fang was useless, Gregory’s hand had wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground. But then, right before Gregory delivered the twist that broke Julius’s neck and ended it all for good, Justin’s sword flashed between them.
Gregory’s hand vanished from Julius’s throat. At first, Julius thought this was because Justin had chopped it clean off. But Gregory must have been faster than Julius gave him credit for, because though he was bleeding buckets, his arm still looked to be intact when Justin turned on him with a roar of pure fury.
“Youtraitor!”
“That’s my line,” Gregory growled, cradling his bleeding hand. “I left the clan to save it. You’re standing there protecting its downfall!”
“That’s rich coming from a dragon whowasn’t even there,” Justin snarled. “But I was. I saw Julius defeat the enemies of this clan and take power with his own hands.”
“But you let him take it!” Gregory cried. “You betrayed—”
“Motherlost!” Justin roared. “By what she taught us, that means she doesn’t deserve power. Julius was the one who gave her a choice, and she chose to stay alive. Now she’s trying to get her power back, and while I don’t blame her for that, I will not step aside from my duty to protect the rightful head of this clan from jealous backstabbers like you.”
His growl at the end left zero doubt of how Justin meant to do that, and Julius scrambled to his feet. “Justin! Don’t—”
But it was too late. His brother was already swinging for Gregory’s head, his enormous Fang slicing through the air with a building wave of razor-sharp magic. But then, just before the inevitable happened, Justin froze.
It all happened so quickly, it took Julius several seconds to realize that what he’d assumed wasn’t actually what had happened.Justinwasn’t frozen. It was his sword that had stopped, the blade stopped cold in mid-air despite Justin pulling on it with all his might.
