Gregory attacked before he could finish, breathing a cone of fire in a huge spray across the entire section of sky where Julius was flying. For all its size, though, the flames weren’t actually that hot, a feint Julius realized much too late as he dove for safety only to find Gregory already waiting.
This time, not even Julius’s speed could save him. He barely had time to realize he’d been tricked before Gregory bit down on his left wing, crushing the delicate bones beneath the tough blue feathers. The attack was fast as a cobra strike, and just as deadly, because Julius was now hundreds of feet in the air with a broken wing. When his brother let him go, he fell like a stone, crashing into the sand below.
Julius had fallen plenty of times, but never when he was this large, and never from so high. He still remembered to tuck at the last moment to protect his head, but that didn’t stop him from slamming into the ground like a bug hitting a windshield. If he’d been a smaller dragon, that would have been the end, but Julius wasn’t quite as runty as he’d once been, and somehow, he held together. The crash still knocked the wind out of him, though, leaving him gasping and confused. Even his broken wing didn’t hurt in the confusion of everything else, though that changed very quickly when Gregory landed beside him and grabbed it, using the broken limb like a handle to flip Julius onto his back.
“So much for dodging,” he growled as he pressed his claws against Julius’s exposed throat. “I win.”
His lungs were too busy getting air to form words, so Julius shook his head.
Gregory didn’t seem to know what to make of that. “You’re on your back,” he snarled. “You’re defeated. I’ve won!”
“How could you win?” Julius choked out at last. “I didn’t fight.”
“I gave you a chance,” Gregory snapped. “You could have fought.”
“But not won,” Julius said. “There are no winners when brothers fight, Gregory, and you know it. But it’s not too late.”
“It isfartoo late,” his brother sneered. “Your human and Justin humiliated me! Everything I worked for centuries to build in Heartstriker is crumbling, and I’ve already left the clan. The only salvation for me now is through you. Once you’re dead, Mother will welcome me back, and I’ll finally get my place of power and respect.”
“Do you really believe that?” Julius asked, staring up at his brother. “You’ve seen how Bethesda treats those beneath her. Is that really how you want to live? Toeing her line for the rest of eternity? We have a chance right now to make something better. A clan where we attack our enemies, not each other. You want respect, I get that, but how does this”—he twitched his broken wing—“earn you anything? All you’ve done is beat up a weaker, younger, smaller dragon who didn’t fight back.”
“Shut up!” Gregory roared, slashing his claws across Julius’s belly, leaving four long wounds from his legs to the joint where his wings met his shoulder. “You think you’re so much better than the rest of us!” He slashed again, opening another, even bloodier set of gashes across Julius’s ribs, turning his bright-blue feathers an ugly purple black as they saturated with blood. “If you’re really so secretly powerful, make me stop.”
By this point, spots were dancing across Julius’s vision. Between the pain and the overwhelming scent of his own blood, he couldn’t think straight, which made it that much harder to fight the lizard brain yelling at him to bite Gregory’s exposed neck and escape. But powerful as the survival instinct was, Julius was chasing something even bigger.
From the moment he’d refused to kill his mother, he’d set himself on this path. For a dragon who refused to fightandrefused to bow, there was only one logical ending, and Julius was smack dab in the middle of it. There was no way he could beat Gregory, and that was precisely why Bethesda had arranged this. Because Juliuswasn’ta warrior, and never had been. But just because he couldn’t win didn’t mean he could be defeated. Even when Gregory lashed out, crushing Julius’s remaining good wing until it was even more mangled than the one he’d bitten through, Julius didn’t bite back. He just lay there and took it, letting Gregory break him piece by piece in front of the entire mountain.
It didn’t take long. Julius wasn’t a very big dragon, and Gregory was very good at what he did. In a matter of minutes, he’d crushed every bone in Julius’s body, leaving him a burned and broken pile of feathers in the bloody sand. But no matter how much it hurt, Julius refused to move. He didn’t run, he didn’t make a sound, and the longer he held out, the harder Gregory hit.
“Fight back!” he screamed, raking his claws yet again over Julius’s crumpled body. “Fight me back now, or I swear, I willkillyou!”
Even through the pain, the threat was enough to make Julius smile. Ian was right. When they tried to kill you, that was when you knew you were winning. It was small comfort considering this victory would probably be his last, but while he’d never been a good one, Julius was still a dragon. He had his pride, such as it was, and it gave him the strength he needed to push himself up on his broken claws and say, once again,
“No.”
The quiet word echoed through the silent desert air, and then Gregory roared, engulfing him in a ball of the hottest fire yet, turning Julius’s world white with pain before burning it out entirely.
***
Back at the top of the mountain, Chelsie was in as close as she came to a true panic.
Outside, she could hear Gregory tearing Julius to pieces, but she couldn’t get up to watch. She was stuck kneeling beside Justin, her hands moving faster than even she could see as she tried desperately to patch the holes she’d put in her little brother. A task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that he wouldn’t. Stay.Still.
“Stop it,” she snarled, grabbing his shoulders and shoving them into the stone as hard as she dared before snatching her fingers back to the bandage she was trying to wind around his leg. “I’m trying to save your life, idiot.”
“Yeah, well, who endangered it in the first place?” Justin snarled back, wiggling harder than ever. “Let me up. Julius is getting murdered out there.”
“He’ll be fine,” she lied. “Worry about yourself.”
“Why are you even doing this?” Justin growled, glaring at her with the too-common look of pure hate that still stung even after all these years. “So you can stab me again?” He jerked his head at Bethesda, who was watching the fight from the broken wall with a look of pure glee. “You’ve always been her backstabber. I bet the two of you planned this together.”
That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. If Chelsie had known her mother’s plans for Gregory, she would have killed him this morning when she’d caught him conspiring with David. But she hadn’t given Bethesda enough credit. She’d thought the summons today was just more of the usual posturing. Even when Bethesda had brought Gregory out, she’d assumed Justin would beat him and that would be that. Bethesda always had enjoyed a good, bloody duel. It wasn’t until her mother had ordered her to strike that she’d finally realized just how badly her mother’s back must be against the wall, and by that point, it was far too late.
“Just stay still,” she said, focusing her attention on the task at hand. “I was too good at getting your arteries. If you keep moving, you’ll bleed out, and I don’t want to lose two brothers today.”
“You don’t have to lose any,” Justin growled. “We’ve never gotten along, but I know you like Julius. I can’t do my job thanks to you, but you can still redeem yourself.”
His green eyes darted to Bethesda, who was standing with her back to them, watching the fight outside with gleeful anticipation. “All those times you took me out, I never smelled her magic on you. There’s no compulsion, nothing holding you back but a moldering old life debt.” He looked back at her, bloody fists clenching. “Fight it, Chelsie! Whatever she’s got over you, kick it out. Break free and go save our soft-hearted idiot of a brother before it’s too late!”
