“My sister doesn’t tolerate nonsense,” Julius said, smiling at the absurdity of a court full of stuffy dragons trying to intimidate Chelsie. “She must have caused quite a stir.”
“Like nothing else before or since,” the Qilin said proudly. “My mother disapproved greatly, of course, but I wouldn’t allow her to send Chelsie away.”
“Because you already liked her?”
“Because I loved her.” The smile slipped off the golden dragon’s face as he looked back up at the painting. “From the first moment I saw her, I loved her. I know it’s foolish, but I was young, and she was just so…”
“Beautiful?”
“Free,” he said wistfully. “In a way I could never be. I understood that, but I still wanted my share. I wanted to forget with her. To laugh and not care, even if it was only for a little while.” His jaw clenched. “I was a selfish fool.”
That was the same thing Chelsie had said when she’d told Julius her extremely truncated half of this story, and now, as then, he heaved a frustrated sigh. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy.”
“Maybe not for you,” he said. “But I was, am an emperor. I have a duty to my family, to my clans and my land. I knew that, and I still allowed myself to become infatuated with someone who was utterly unsuited to be empress.” His lip curled in disgust. “I ignored my obligations to satisfy my desires. That is the definition of selfishness.”
“It doesn’t mean you were wrong,” Julius said angrily. “And in what world is Chelsie unsuited to be empress? She’s the most competent, hardest-working dragon in Heartstriker. But even if she wasn’t amazing, which she is, that shouldn’t have mattered if you loved her.”
“My feelings were never in question,” the emperor said. “I was willing to make her empress no matter what the others said. She was the one who did not care.”
Julius flinched. He hadn’t known it was possible for a voice to change so much in a single sentence, but by the time the Qilin finished, he sounded like a completely different dragon.
“I was a fool,” he said again, the words quivering with rage. “I lived with your sister for a year in stupid, ignorant happiness. Over the months, my mother tried to warn me several times of your family’s reputation, but I did not want to listen. I thought I was different, that the viper of Heartstriker would not bite me.” He clenched his fists. “I was an idiot, a mouse transfixed by your treacherous snake of a sister, and I would have lost everything to her if my mother hadn’t intervened.”
This wasn’t going to be good. “What happened?”
The Qilin looked down at the floor. “Reality,” he said bitterly. “I thought I’d kept our affair a secret, but I was sloppy. By the time six months had passed, all of China knew what was going on. They pretended not to because I was emperor, but behind my back, the clans whispered that I was the Heartstriker’s puppet. My mother told me what was going on and warned me to break it off before I did irreparable damage to our reputation, but I was too infatuated to listen. I thought Chelsie and I were greater than the rumors. That together, we could beat anything. She said so, too, but it was all a lie. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear, and then, one spring morning a year to the day after I found her in my garden, Chelsie vanished without a trace.”
Julius blinked in surprise. “Vanished?”
The emperor nodded. “Naturally, I was upset. I thought something had happened, that she’d been hurt or killed. It didn’t even occur to me that she would run away until my mother caught her.”
“She ran away,” Julius repeated, incredulous. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, growling deep in his throat. “But she was on a boat to Russia when my mother’s guards cornered her. She nearly killed one of them before they subdued her and dragged her back.”
This story made less sense by the word. “Why did they drag her back?” Julius asked. “You going after her makes sense, but I thought the empress would have been happy to see Chelsie gone.”
“She would have been,” the Qilin agreed. “But I told you, I was upset.”
He said that the same way someone else would say “berserk,” and a cold chill ran up Julius’s spine. “What happens when you get upset?”
The golden dragon walked away, moving to the small, paint-splattered table beside the easel where all his art supplies lay neatly arranged. He fidgeted with them for a moment, rearranging the brushes and dropping the dirty ones into the tin cup of murky rinse water. Then, just as Julius was reaching the end of his patience, he answered.
“The Qilin is the heart of the empire,” he said quietly, keeping his back to Julius. “When he is serene, good fortune favors everything his presence touches. When he is not, the opposite happens.”
His shoulders hunched tighter under his golden robes with every word, but Julius wasn’t paying attention. His mind was back in the desert this morning, to the strange pressure he’d felt building like a storm after Chelsie had vanished, ready to crush them all. “I see,” he said at last, voice shaking. “Your luck goes bad.”
“It goes far worse than that,” the Qilin said, finally turning to face him. “My mother would have endured anything to pry me free of your sister, but not that. She has always been an empress first, and so long as I was being selfish, the empire needed Chelsie. She hated every second of it, but she tolerated my indiscretion for the sake of harmony. When Chelsie ran away, I was…”
He trailed off, rubbing his hands over his face. “I was not myself,” he finished at last. “I was out of control, a danger to my empire, and so my mother, ever the dutiful empress, bent all her resources to bringing Chelsie back to me by any means necessary. What we didn’t yet know, though, was that Chelsie hadn’t just been running. Bethesda’s Shade had also reached out to her clan, calling in her mother to aid her escape and then, after she was caught, to beg on her behalf.”
Julius had a very hard time believing that. No matter how bad the situation, he couldn’t imagine Chelsie asking their mother for help. Ludicrous as it sounded, though, here again, Chelsie and the emperor’s stories matched up. She’d told him herself that Bethesda had begged for her, and their mother had held a life debt over her head for it every day since. But even if this was all true, “What could Bethesda do?”
“Nothing,” the emperor said angrily. “She tried a great deal, offered us wealth and power, lands, everything at your clan’s disposal. But I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted Chelsie back, but she wouldn’t even look at me. When I demanded to know why, the truth came out. She never loved me. She’d only seduced me for power, just as I’d accused her of conspiring to that first night in the garden. And it had almost worked. Before she ran, I’d been ready to name her my empress over my mother’s objections, giving the Heartstrikers control over all of China.”
That sounded more like Bethesda than Chelsie. It also made zero sense. “If she was seducing you for power, why would she run away just when you were about to give it to her?”
“Because she’d been found out,” the Qilin said. “I was too besotted to see what she was doing, but my mother knew what Chelsie was up to. But while she was willing to turn a blind eye when it was just an affair, she’d never tolerate a Heartstriker as empress. None of my dragons would, and with the entire court aligning against her, it was just a matter of time before it all blew up. Chelsie knew that, so she did what any proper snake would do and bolted before she got trapped.”
Again, that didn’t sound like Chelsie. “Are you sure that’s why she ran?”
“Why else would she do it?” he demanded. “I was her fool! Her pawn, just like everyone said. Even after she confessed everything to me, I was still ready to forgive her, but she threw my mercy in my face. She knew the game was up, but she also knew I didn’t have the heart to execute her. She and Bethesda embraced their banishment and sailed home laughing, while we were the ones who suffered.”
Julius dropped his eyes. The emperor’s story was actually wor
se than he’d anticipated, if it was true. The Qilin clearly believed what he was saying, but nothing about his description fit the Chelsie that Julius knew. She’d admitted she wasn’t proud of what she’d done in China, and six hundred years was a very long time, but no matter how much she might have changed, he simply couldn’t imagine his sister betraying someone like that. Especially not someone she cared about as much as she still clearly did for the dragon who’d painted her picture. She definitely wouldn’t laugh about it with Bethesda. Whatever had really happened, though, it was obvious the emperor felt he’d been betrayed, which begged the question…
“If you think she was using you, why are you here now?”
The Qilin heaved a long, defeated sigh. “Because I’m still her fool.”
He turned away, putting his back to Julius again as he stared up at the painting. “The Heartstrikers were well named. Once their claws are in, you can never really dig them out. I should know. I’ve tried for six hundred years. I thought I was far enough away to manage it, that the years had finally buried what I never should have touched, but all it took was one glimpse, and I was seeking you out to ask after her. I even painted this ridiculous thing.” He shook his head at the lovely portrait. “I’m eternally an idiot, it seems. But as much as I hate your sister for what she did, nothing has changed. I couldn’t kill her then, and I can’t leave her to die now.”
Julius let out a relieved breath. “So you did come here to save her.”
“Don’t romanticize it,” he growled. “Coming to your lands was even more selfish than falling for Chelsie’s ruse in the first place. What sort of emperor uproots his subjects and marches them into enemy territory for the sake of a dragon that publicly betrayed him? I never should have come, but I couldn’t see any other way. Heartstriker is doomed. Algonquin’s on the warpath, and your clan’s right on her doorstep. Even if the lake spirit let you live, another clan would come to finish the job. You’re too wounded and too rich a prize to ignore. Sooner or later, someone was bound to reach out and take you, and as Bethesda’s enforcer, Chelsie’s head would be the first to roll. I couldn’t let that happen, but I also couldn’t betray my subjects by involving them in a clan war half a world away. I was caught, stuck between two impossibilities. The whole thing seemed hopeless until I realized there was a way for me to have both.”
Julius nodded. “Your luck.”
“Exactly,” he said, turning back around. “My good fortune falls on all my subjects, no matter where in the world they are. If I conquered Heartstriker, then my luck would protect you just as it does all my other clans, and since you were already on the verge of collapse, coming here posed no risk to my dragons. Now do you understand why I couldn’t take an alliance? You were right about it being the smarter move, but I don’t care about fighting Algonquin or expanding my territory. All I want is to keep Chelsie from dying, and bringing Heartstriker into my luck is the only way I can do that without endangering those who depend on me. That’s why I invaded your mountain, and it’s why I can’t leave it as anything other than your emperor. Now do you understand?”
He did. Julius understood the emperor’s position perfectly now, and it made him want to bang his head against the wall. “I get what you’re trying to do,” he said when the urge had passed. “And I deeply admire the care you’ve taken not to hurt anyone in this, but surely it would be simpler to just, I don’t know, talk to Chelsie instead of conquering her entire clan?”
The emperor arched a perfect eyebrow. “Do you not want my protection?”
“I do,” Julius said quickly. “I’m not blind. I know how much trouble Heartstriker’s in, but there has to be a better way to keep her safe than strong-arming all of us into your empire. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s necessary,” the Qilin said firmly. “You’ve seen my luck in action. Once you’re part of my empire, even Algonquin won’t be able to touch you. The terms of surrender I’ve offered could not be more generous. Other than good fortune and protection, you won’t even know you’re in my empire. What more do you want?”
“Our freedom,” Julius said stubbornly. “We might be down, but we’re still dragons. We’re not going to roll over and give up our sovereignty just because it solves a problem for you. Especially if it locks us under your dubious good fortune.”
He jerked back. “There’s nothing dubious about—”
“Everything about it is dubious!” Julius cried. “You talk about your luck like it’s a sure thing, but from what you just told me about your behavior after Chelsie’s disappearance and the way I’ve seen your court treat you, your ‘unbeatable’ good fortune isn’t unbeatable at all. It depends on you not getting upset, on your serenity, and that’s not good enough. I don’t care how amazing your luck is, it’s irresponsible for me to stake my clan’s future on a power that’s governed by something as capricious as an emperor’s moods.”
He must have hit the nail on the head with that one, because the Qilin dropped his eyes. “You’re not seeing me at my best,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “This whole mountain smells of Chelsie, and it puts me on edge. I’m normally much calmer.”
“But your luck does depend on your feelings.”
The Qilin said nothing, which was answer enough. “Well,” Julius said with a sigh. “At least now I know why Lao was so insistent about not upsetting you.”
“My cousin is overprotective,” the emperor said dismissively. “But remaining calm is part of the responsibility of being Qilin. I’ve maintained my serenity and showered good fortune and prosperity on my clans for centuries. It will be no different once Heartstriker joins.”
“Are you sure?” Julius asked. “We’re the biggest clan in the world. Adding us will more than double the number of dragons you’re protecting, not to mention we’re on the other side of the planet. Can your luck even manage that?”
“Of course it can,” he said proudly. “Thanks to my mother’s sacrifice, I’m the strongest Qilin ever born. Even half a world away, my magic will protect all of you.”
That sounded more inescapable than protective, but it was the first part of his statement that really caught Julius’s attention. “Wait, your mother? I thought you got your power from your father.”
“The luck magic passes from father to firstborn son,” the emperor said. “I am the Qilin, as my father was before me, and his father was before him. But while the golden luck passes through the male line, it’s always the dragoness who determines how strong her children will be.”
“How?” Julius asked.
“By controlling their fire.” The Qilin gave him a pitying look. “Not all clans follow the Heartstriker’s shortsighted strategy of quantity over quality. By the time she’d defeated her rivals and won the right to become the Qilin’s mate, my mother had already been hoarding her magic for a century in preparation. They were planning their mating flight when the drought struck, and all ambient magic vanished from the world.”
“Why did that matter?” Julius asked, because the loss of magic certainly hadn’t stopped his mother. Bethesda had popped out eggs like she was the Easter Dragon all through the drought, and she’d been young. Age was power for dragons, and the Empress Mother certainly had that. Add in a century of stored-up magic and the Qilin’s mother should have been able to lay as many eggs as she wanted, but the emperor was shaking his head.
“If I were anyone else, it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “But the birth of a Qilin is different from other dragons. The preparation of the egg requires an enormous amount of magic, more than any single dragoness can hold on her own. Even with my father’s luck to help her, with no ambient magic to lean on, my mother’s chances of producing a Qilin egg strong enough to survive outside her body were nearly impossible.”
That was unexpectedly bad luck for the clan of good fortune. “So what happened?”
“My mother did,” the emperor said proudly. “She’d beaten a hundred other dragonesses for the right to be
the mother of the next Qilin, and she refused to give up on her ambition. Even when the world grew so dull and magicless that lesser dragons were trapped in their human forms, she hoarded her magic patiently, cannibalizing her own fire to ensure that I wouldn’t just be a Qilin, I’d be the best. She even convinced my father to hold on to his fading life for another century so he could die at the most auspicious time.”
“Wait, die?” Julius said. “Why did he have to die?” What kind of mating flight did it take to make a Qilin?
“The old flame must die before the new can be born,” the emperor said sagely. “Each Qilin’s magic is built from the combined fires of all those who came before him. That’s how the golden flame grows: leaping from father to son in an unbroken line that goes all the way back to the ancient clans of our lost homeland. As the latest to possess it, I would have been the strongest Qilin by default, but thanks to my mother’s sacrifice, I am greater still. My luck is twice that of my father’s, and my reach stretches not just across my empire, but all around the world. This is what my mother sacrificed to give me, and I thank her for it every day by ruling in serenity so that my good fortune may flow to everyone who depends on me. That is what it means to be Qilin.”
He looked so proud of that, Julius didn’t have the heart to tell him how horrible it sounded. To hear the emperor talk, you’d think he’d been given a great gift, but all Julius heard was the story of a dragon who’d been force-fed both his parents’ fires for the sake of amplifying his power. A horrible, uncontrollable power, that required him to never get angry or upset.
At least now Julius understood why the Empress Mother looked the way she did. She wasn’t withered because she was ancient. Her shriveled body was all that was left after she’d spent her fire supercharging her son. But while the Golden Empire’s philosophy of putting all their eggs in one golden basket seemed to be working given how long they’d been around, Julius couldn’t shake the feeling that entrusting your fortunes to a magical ruler who could never be unhappy was not a good idea. There were way too many ways this could all come crashing down on their heads, and the more Julius heard, the more desperate he became to find a way out.