The malice in her voice was enough to make Julius flinch, but for once, that was as far as it went. His mother was still terrifying, still cruel and conniving, but he was no longer the same dragon he’d been. He might never be able to face his mother without flinching, but that didn’t change the weight of the sword on his hip or the bulk of the paper contract he still clutched in his hand. The one she’d signed on her knees when he’d spared her life, giving him the power to say what he was going to say next.
“There will be a vote,” he said, amazed that his voice didn’t shake. “Algonquin will always be a threat. We have a much better chance of standing up to her if we do it together, but we can’t do that if Bethesda keeps trying to wiggle out of her agreements.”
His mother’s eyes flashed with anger, and Julius put a proactive hand on his sword. “David is right. We need to get our clan up and running again as soon as possible. That said, a surprise election where the only candidate is your chosen successor is not acceptable. So, since this is supposed to be aCouncil,I suggest we compromise and have the vote tonight. It’s still too fast, but at least this way everyone will have a chance to actually get to the mountain and learn what’s going on before we spring this on them. That way, if one of them wants to run, they’ll have a few hours to prepare, giving us a chance at a fair election.”
“Or an epic mess,” Bethesda snarled. “You have no idea the can of snakes you’re opening here, but I suppose a good compromise should leave no one happy.” She sighed. “Fine. I don’t see how a few hours will make a difference, but if it will shut you up, we’ll have the vote tonight at six.”
He’d been thinking eight, but Julius was ready to take what he could get. They’d only been at this for fifteen minutes, and he was already exhausted.
To be fair, part of that was natural. Between everything that had happened last night and visiting Marci this morning, he hadn’t actually gotten a chance to sleep last night. Or the night before. Now that he thought about it, actually, he hadn’t slept since Marci had left with Amelia after they’d failed to break the Sword of Damocles. Given how much of that he’d spent fighting, fleeing, and being otherwise terrified for his life, Julius was amazed he was still conscious. But while he definitely felt run down, he wasn’t nearly as bad as he should have been. Apparently, being unsealed had done a lot more for him than he’d first realized. Now he just had to escape this room before his mother sapped what little energy he had left.
“Six it is, then,” he said tiredly, opening the door. “See you then.”
No one spoke as he left. The moment the door closed behind him, though, the plotting began fast and furious. A proper dragon would have stayed to listen, but Julius wasn’t a proper dragon, and he didn’t particularly want to hang around in a hallway, eavesdropping while his mother and his brother discussed how to undermine everything he’d worked for. He just wanted to go to bed, so he turned away, striding out of his mother’s lair as fast as he could without actually running. But his plan to get downstairs as fast as dragonly possible hit a bump when he opened the door to the throne room just in time to see Katya entering from the other side.
Unlike everything else today, this was a pleasant surprise. The last he’d heard, the new head of the Daughters of the Three Sisters had taken her clan out to hunt for Svena, who had yet to return from her mating flight. Not that anyone expected her to. Given what Estella had done—brainwashing her and sending her on a mating flight with Ian as part of an elaborate scheme to kill Bethesda and destroy the Heartstriker clan—Julius wouldn’t have been surprised if Svena never set foot on this mountain again. But clearly he wasn’t giving the White Witch enough credit, because moments after Katya entered, Svena swept in behind her looking no worse for wear. Even more surprising, Ian was right beside her, walking arm in arm with the dragoness with the smuggest smile Julius had ever seen.
Okay, the smug part wasn’t surprising at all, but the fact that Ian was still alivewas. He would have put money on Svena eating the younger dragon for breakfast the moment Estella’s chain broke. But Ian and Svena had always had an odd sort of relationship, and whatever miracle had returned his brother to the mountain alive, Julius was glad of it, especially since both of them looked so uncharacteristically happy.
The other remaining Daughters of the Three Sisters were coming in as well now, but as Julius lifted his hand to greet them, something froze him in his tracks. It was so sudden, Julius couldn’t even say what was wrong until Ian looked straight at him. Even then, it took him several seconds to pin down what his danger instinct was freaking out about. When he saw it, though, he didn’t know how he’d noticed anything else.
Ian’s eyes were no longer green.
Chapter 2
And that was how, five minutes later, Julius found himself standing beside his mother in the ruined throne room for hissecond-ever meeting as part of the Heartstriker Council.
At least Bethesda looked the part this time. Julius wasn’t sure how, but somewhere between his leaving and Ian’s arrival, she’d changed into a flowing emerald silk gown with an elaborate golden headpiece and a full face of flawlessly contoured makeup. The transformation was miraculous considering she’d been in the Bethesda equivalent of pajamas when he’d last seen her. But perfect as she now looked, even the Heartstriker herself couldn’t compete with Svena.
Julius had always thought the White Witch of the Three Sisters was beautiful in a cold, terrifying way. All dragons were lovely to look at, of course, but Svena had always had that something extra that set her apart. Even under Estella’s chains, she’d had the self-possession of a true monster: confident in her power and utterly unafraid. This morning, though, everything about her seemed to have been multiplied by a power of ten.
Unlike Bethesda, she was not dressed for an audience. Quite the opposite. With her bare feet, windswept hair, and simple white shift dress of conjured, unmelting snow, Svena looked as if she’d flown straight here from the desert. Not that that seemed to matter. Julius couldn’t put his finger on what had changed, but this morning, he was convinced Svena could have been wearing a potato sack and still looked like a conquering queen.
It was victory, he decided at last. Standing in front of her sisters with Ian at her side, Svena didn’t look like a dragon who’d barely survived her seer’s treachery. She looked like a soldier who’d fought andwon, and she wore that triumph like a crown, smiling viciously at Bethesda, who—in her green silk—was starting to look like a sour grape by comparison.
Both dragonesses were staring at each other as though bloodshed was more of awhenthan anif, leaving the rest of their respective parties—Julius, David, and Conrad (who’d appeared from nowhere the moment there was a chance of violence) on one side of the room, Katya, Ian, and the other Daughters of the Three Sisters on the other—standing like spectators at the world’s most elegant cage match. Julius was already reaching for his Fang to head off the inevitable attack when Bethesda broke the silence with a cold, sharp command.
“Ian. Get over here.”
Ian brushed his hair away from his new dark-brown eyes with a slow smile.
“No.”
Bethesda went perfectly still, and Julius’s stomach began to clench. The other Heartstrikers were already stepping back to a safe distance when Svena burst into laughter.
“Poor little Broodmare,” she cackled. “My sisters told me the whole story. It seems you’re only a third the dragon you used to be.” She pursed her lips in false concern. “What will the other clans say, I wonder?”
“Save your wondering for yourself,” Bethesda snarled back. “I see you wasted no time taking your clan back, or what’s left of it. Did Katya the Backstabber roll over for you, or did you have to fight her for the scraps your dead mothers left behind?”
Katya hissed, and Julius shot his mother a dirty look, which she ignored. For her part, Svena didn’t even give Bethesda the satisfaction of looking insulted. She actually seemed pleased by the outburst as she turned to wrap her arm around Ian’s shoulders.
“Low blows do you no favors, Heartstriker,” she said, shaking her head. “But I expected nothing less from you. Your ambitions have always been as shallow and gaudy as your taste. But I enjoy watching you try to keep up, so I don’t mind telling you that my littlest sister did, in fact, offer me the rule of our clan this morning. And I turned her down.”
Bethesda blinked. “What?”
It hardly seemed possible, but Svena’s grin got even wider. “Some of us have higher goals than merely ruling over our dead parents’ shadows, Princess of the Quetzalcoatl. For thousands of years, my mothers were the greatest dragons left alive in this world. As of last night, though, they’re dead. All that drama and buildup, and they went down in a single shot in front of the entire world. But that just goes to show that the legacy of past power is as false and rotten as those who cling to it, and that real power, the true right to rule, is something you must seize with your own fangs. Not ones you steal from your poor betrayed father.”
She finished with a pointed look at the sword on Julius’s hip, but Bethesda was staring at Svena in insulted disbelief. “How stupid do you think I am?” she snapped. “You’ve coveted your mothers’ magic since you were born! Did you actually think I’d believe you when you claim you’ve given up on it now?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you really here, White Witch? Too scared of Algonquin to go into the DFZ and take back the magic from your mothers’ corpses?”
