“Too what?” he prompted.
“Lovely,” she finished at last, her voice wistful in a way he’d never heard from her before. “Absolutely lovely, inside and out. Smart and thoughtful and charming, not to mention the handsomest dragon I’d ever seen. Even in his human shape, he had eyes like you wouldn’t believe. They were the exact color of golden coins, the heavy, beautiful, yellow ones dragons kill for. Ironic, actually, since I don’t think he’d ever killed anything in his life.”
“He didn’t kill?” Julius said, amazed. Other than himself, he’d never even heard of a dragon who didn’t kill, but Chelsie was nodding.
“He didn’t need to,” she explained. “He was the eldest son of a very powerful clan. No one dared to touch him, much less challenge him. Even during the drought when humans forgot about us, dragons still lived like royalty in China. He’d never even had to hunt for his own food.” Her lips quirked. “I was quite a shock to him. As a dragon from the uncivilized lands across the sea, I think I was the most savage creature he’d ever met.”
“But he must have liked you, too,” Julius said with a smile. “No one paints a picture that lovely of someone they don’t care about.”
He’d meant it to be a compliment, but the moment the words were out of his mouth, Chelsie’s wistful look died so fast he wished he’d never said them.
“He did care,” she said stiffly, turning the picture over so the watercolor was hidden against the wall. “More than he should have, and definitely more than I deserved. We both knew it couldn’t last, but we were young and stupid enough to think the rules didn’t apply to us. We kept telling each other that we were different. Toward the end, I think we even believed it. But reality doesn’t care what naive young dragons think, and by the time we realized we were crashing, it was far too late.”
She sounded so sad by the time she finished, Julius was afraid to ask, and yet he had to know. “What happened?”
Chelsie sighed. “What always happens when a nobody dragoness from a backwater clan gets seriously involved with the eldest son of a powerful one. We were found out, and his mother objected.”
Julius blinked in surprise. “That’s it? His mother objected?”
“I’m sorry my sordid past isn’t dramatic enough for your liking,” Chelsie growled. “But when you’re a twenty-year-old whelp alone in China, the matriarch of a territory’s biggest clan isn’t someone you want objecting to you. The moment she found out what was going on, she put an end to it, which included putting an end to me. She was about to do it, too, when Mother arrived to intervene.”
Julius’s jaw dropped. “Bethesda went to China to save you?”
“I know,” Chelsie said, shaking her head. “It sounds ridiculous now, but you have to remember this was right after she lost her first two clutches. Bethesda spent the decades after her father died laying eggs faster than anyone thought possible, but even with D- and E-clutches already hatched and growing, she simply didn’t have enough dragons yet to risk losing even one. When I cried for her help, she came to China personally to negotiate for my life. Unfortunately, there was nothing to negotiate. Even the wealth of the Heartstriker paled in comparison to the Golden Emperor’s. When all was said and done, Bethesda simply had nothing they wanted more than my death, and so she was forced to do the only thing left that she could.”
“Which was?”
Chelsie’s jaw clenched. “She begged.”
“Begged?” he repeated, incredulous.
“On her knees,” Chelsie said grimly. “She got down in front of the Golden Emperor and begged him to spare my life. Her humiliation amused them, and I was set free that same afternoon. Naturally, I’ve been paying for it every day since.”
That went without saying, Julius thought, glancing down at the bloodstained stone of her bedroom floor. He’d always known Chelsie’s story would be unique, but he’d never expected that. Even when her own life had been on the line, Bethesda hadn’t begged. He couldn’t imagine how high the stakes must have been to make her to do it for Chelsie. But while this explained how his sister had gotten so deeply in debt to their mother, it still didn’t add up why she was refusing to let Julius get her out of it now.
“I get that between the begging and everything else, you owe Bethesda a crazy life debt,” he said carefully. “But it’s been six hundred years. Entire civilizations haven’t lasted as long as you’ve been paying this off. Surely you’ve done your time.”
Chelsie arched an eyebrow. “Have you met our mother? Forgive and forget aren’t in her vocabulary.”
“But that doesn’t give her the right to keep you in debt forever,” he said firmly. “And even if she’s vowed never to let you go, none of this has anything to do with F-clutch. They’re only…” He paused to do the math in his head. “Six-hundred-years old themselves. Were they even hatched while this was happening?”
“No,” she said, her voice strangely strained. “They were laid shortly after Mother and I returned home.”
That was odd timing. If Bethesda had laid F-clutch right after getting back, that would have meant she’d been pregnant at the start of her journey, which didn’t make sense. First, pregnancy left dragonesses severely weakened, and the Bethesda he knew would never risk going up against a stronger dragon at anything less than full power, even if she was only going to beg. Second, even Bethesda—whose superpower was laying eggs—couldn’t have carried a clutch for the multiple months it took even dragons to get from the Americas to China and back again in the fourteen hundreds.
In fact, once you factored in travel time, it was actually impossible for Bethesda to have been pregnant when she’d left to save Chelsie, because E-clutch was famously only one year older than F. By that math, she must have hopped on the boat the moment the Es hatched, and even Bethesda couldn’t have gotten herself pregnant again that fast. But if she wasn’t already expecting when she’d set sail, that meant she would have had to have found F-clutch’s father in China, which seemed even less likely. There was no way any of the Golden Emperor’s dragons would fly with her after their clan head had nearly murdered Chelsie just for having a fling. Even if she’d gotten pregnant there by accident, they never would have let her leave. Eggs were deadly serious business in any dragon clan. No matter how much they looked down on her, the Golden Emperor would never have let Bethesda waltz out of his lands with a belly full of his clan’s unhatched eggs. But if she hadn’t been pregnant when she’d gone to China and she hadn’t been pregnant when she’d left, where had F-clutch come from?
He was still puzzling over this when he realized Chelsie was staring at him, her green eyes shining with a desperate, violent light. “You’ve always been an odd dragon, Julius,” she said quietly. “But you’ve never been a stupid one. I can already see that clever brain of yours putting the pieces together. For your sake, I suggest you forget them. Some mysteries are better left in the past.”
“Not if the past is still crippling the present,” Julius said angrily. “There’s obviously a lot more that happened in China than you’re telling me, but whatever it was, it’s not F-clutch’s fault. They weren’t even laid when all this happened. I understand you’re in debt to Mother up to your neck, but that still doesn’t explain why you think they can’t go free.”
He expected Chelsie to get angry at that, but she just looked sadder than ever. “You’re right,” she said at last. “It’s not their fault, and it’s not fair, but that doesn’t mean they’re not suffering for it. They shouldn’t be, but they are, and that’s my fault, too.”
“How?” he asked, clenching his fists. “I don’t want to pry into your life. I just want to fix things.”
“I know,” she said. “And that’s the only reason I’m telling you all this. Because you do care, but it’s not enough, Julius. What happened…what I did in China all those years ago hurt a lot more than just myself. You’ve never seen the fallout because I’ve kept it a secret all these years, but if the truth ever gets out, we will all pa
y. F-clutch in particular.”
“Wait,” Julius said, staring at her. “That’s why they have to stay sealed and in the mountain? Because of something you did in China?”
“I told you it wasn’t fair,” she said bitterly. “But you’re right. Because of what I did, F-clutch can never go free. I can’t tell you why for obvious reasons, but you should know it’s not just you. The only dragons in the world who know all the details are myself, Brohomir, and Bethesda. I trust Bob not to talk because he’s already seen what happens if this gets out, but Bethesda’s different. She’s a selfish, spoiled princess who cares only for her own power.”
“And you think she’ll tell your secret?” Julius finished for her.
“I know she’ll tell,” Chelsie growled. “Did you really think something as simple as a life debt could have kept me her slave for six hundred years? All my blood oath does is bind me from killing Bethesda myself. To actually force me to obey, she would have had to put a seal on me before I hatched, like she did for the Fs, and that has its own drawbacks. But Bethesda didn’t need magic to put me under her boot. Blackmail is just as effective, and far simpler. There’s nothing to break, nothing to go wrong. So long as I don’t want my secret getting out, I have no choice but to obey her every word. Simple as that.”
Julius scowled. He supposed he should be happy that his mother’s control over Chelsie wasn’t some sort of crazy blood debt, but blackmail was actually way harder to deal with than magic. A life debt he could just break, but a secret was far more insidious, especially since he had no idea what secret could possibly be horrible enough to make Chelsie willingly remain under Bethesda’s heel and keep F-clutch there with her.
“This secret,” he said at last. “If it’s really as 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 will always be 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 that Chelsie—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 there is no 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 to 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 this is different,” 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 for nothing.”
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 you won’t, which means we have nothing more to say.”
Before Julius could reply, she turned back to the door, unlocki
ng 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. Really nice 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.