Chapter 9
When he’d jumped down the bolthole in Bethesda’s closet, Julius had fully expected to end up in a panic room. Powerful as his mother’s paranoia was, though, even she couldn’t control physical space. The cramped quarters that came from living inside a mountain peak simply didn’t allow for a private bunker. As a result, Bethesda’s emergency exit dumped Julius, Fredrick, and Chelsie into Bob’s room one floor below.
Through the ceiling. Of a dragon-sized cave.
Naturally, Chelsie and Fredrick took the twenty-foot fall just fine, landing on their feet as dragons should. Julius’s descent wasn’t nearly so graceful. He didn’t quite plummet like a rock, but it was close. Thankfully, there was plenty of junk around to break his fall.
He landed in a pile of old magazines, dusty Post-It notes, and at least a dozen boxes containing T-shirts for the New Mexico Carrier Pigeon Appreciation Society. He was struggling to get his feet under him when Chelsie grabbed his arm.
“We have to keep moving,” she said, yanking him up. “I don’t think they’ll chase us, but that doesn’t mean I want to be here if they do.”
She finished with a sharp shove toward the door, but now that he was back was on them, Julius planted his feet stubbornly on the stone. “We need to talk.”
“What is it with you and talking?” Chelsie snapped, turning to Fredrick. “Grab him and let’s go.”
Fredrick clenched his jaw and moved toward Julius, but not to grab him. Instead, he took up position at Julius’s side, turning to face Chelsie with his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.
“Seriously?” Chelsie said.
“Yes,” Fredrick growled back, his not-quite-green eyes gleaming in the dark. “Julius is right. You have a lot to explain.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“Then we’ll make time,” Julius said. “Because this is important.” He stared pleadingly at his sister. “What are you doing, Chelsie?”
“What I always do,” she snapped. “Saving your tail feathers.”
“Not that,” he said angrily. “I meant what are you doing down here? Why aren’t you upstairs right now talking to the Qilin?”
“Because that’s a terrible idea.”
“Why?” Julius demanded.
Chelsie’s reply was a silent death glare before turning away. She was walking to the exit when Julius said, “I know what happened in China.”
“I know,” she said, yanking Bob’s door open. “I’ve been stalking you, remember? How do you think I got there in time to save you?”
Julius hadn’t actually thought about that. He was so used to her just appearing behind him, he hadn’t realized what that meant. “So then you heard the Qilin say—”
“I heard enough,” Chelsie growled, sticking her head into the hall. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we settle this,” Julius said stubbornly. “He still loves you, Chelsie.”
She stepped back from the door with a long, bitter sigh. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know you were in love with the Qilin,” he said. “I know he was your Chinese dragon, the one who painted the picture in your bedroom. I also know that he’s doing all of this for you. Stopping Algonquin was never anything but an excuse, because even though he thinks you betrayed him, he couldn’t bear to let you die. All he wants is for you to be safe, and I don’t understand why you keep running away.”
“You wouldn’t,” she muttered, glaring at him over her shoulder. “Drop it, Julius.”
“No,” he snarled, clenching his fists. “Can’t you see? You’re our way out of this mess! Whatever happened in the past, it’s obvious you both still care for each other. That’s why you’ve been doing this stupid dance. But if you’d stop running for five minutes and talk to each other, this whole invasion could be over.”
He stopped there, waiting for an answer, but none came. The whole time he’d been talking, Chelsie had been pulling into herself, folding her arms over her chest and hunching her shoulders until they were up to her ears. Even her eyes were down, locked pointedly on the floor as she muttered, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Julius demanded.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“No,” Fredrick said. “But you do owe me one.”
Julius looked at the F in surprise. He wasn’t sure what Fredrick was referring to, but Chelsie must have known, because her face went from angry to spooked. “Stay out of this, Fredrick,” she warned, voice shaking. “This isn’t your business.”
“This is all of our business,” Fredrick growled, taking another step forward. “Mother.”
The room went silent. Even Julius was stunned speechless, his brain racing as he looked back and forth between Fredrick—eldest of the six-hundred-year-old F-clutch who’d been kept in the mountain and treated like a dirty secret since birth, despite Bethesda’s frenzy to boost her ranks—and Chelsie, who’d returned from China also six hundred years ago after running away from her lover with no explanation. Returned with Bethesda, who’d supposedly laid F-clutch within days of returning despite not being pregnant when she’d set sail and not flying a mating flight in China…
Julius slapped his hands over his mouth. That was it. That was the secret. “You’re F-clutch’s mom!”
The words exploded out of him, but no one was listening. While he’d been putting the pieces together, Fredrick and Chelsie seemed to have forgotten he existed.
“Who told you?” she said at last.
“No one,” Fredrick said with a sneer. “We’re not stupid. Bethesda might have frightened everyone else into not asking questions, but we were the ones who were told that our birth was the reason we’d been sealed and trapped in servitude. Naturally, we investigated, and once we started digging, the truth became obvious pretty quickly. The only thing we didn’t know was which member of the Golden Emperor’s court was our father.”
“Why does that matter?” Julius asked, genuinely confused. “None of us knows who our dads are. I certainly don’t know mine.”
“It doesn’t matter to you because you’re Bethesda’s actual son,” Fredrick said bitterly. “She cared enough about your clutch not to want to share, but we were different. Despite claiming to be our mother, Bethesda never treated us like she did the rest of you. We were servants to her, not dragons. She didn’t even bother trying to manipulate us.”
“That’s a good thing,” Chelsie said.
“Is it?” Fredrick snapped, glaring at her. “Why do you think we searched so hard for our father? Given how you left China, we knew he wouldn’t be happy, but however unwanted we might have been, no dragon would tolerate his children living as slaves in another’s house. He would free us out of pride, if nothing else. For centuries, that was our hope. Even after the others gave up, I kept searching, but I never found him. Now, at last, I understand why. I was looking too low. When I saw the emperor’s unveiled face, I knew.”
Julius frowned. “How did you know?”
Instead of answering, Fredrick reached up to brush his fingers across his face. Dragon magic bit down as he moved, and when it faded, Fredrick’s eyes were no longer Heartstriker green. They weren’t even the wrong color green they’d been all morning. They were gold. The perfect, warm, buttery, metallic color of golden coins.
The moment she saw them, Chelsie recoiled. “How?”
“How do you think?” Fredrick said angrily. “We were Amelia’s guinea pigs, remember? She was just trying to show up Svena by breaking Bethesda’s green-eyed curse, but the moment she saw my eyes, she started laughing. I pleaded with her to tell me what the gold meant. I begged, but she refused. Brohomir wouldn’t say anything, either. No one would.” He lifted his fists, his body shaking with rage. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Chelsie shook her head. “I couldn’t take that risk.”
“What risk?” Fredrick cried. “He’s an emperor! And he loved you! I always assumed you ran away because our father was dangerous, but the dragon I met with Julius today isn’t like that at all. His mother is, but even she has to obey the Golden Emperor. Everyone does. He could have saved us! Why did you run from him?”
“Because he was dangerous!”
This whole time, Chelsie had been clinging to calm, but the more Fredrick, the more her son accused her, the more she cracked.
“Do you think I wanted this for you?” she yelled. “Stuck with me under Bethesda’s boot? If there was any other way, I would have killed to get it, but there wasn’t. I didn’t keep this from you because I wanted to. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth, because keeping you secret was the only way I could keep you safe.”
“Safe from what?” Julius asked.
Chelsie shot him a lethal-caliber version of the stay out of this glare, but Julius refused to be put off. Everyone had stayed out of this problem for far too long. It was going to be painful, but if they were ever to have a shot at actually fixing this mess, he couldn’t spare the wound.
“Fredrick’s right,” he said firmly. “The Qilin’s not a vengeful dragon. If he’d known he had children, I’m certain he would have come for them, and for you. He might have been upset about being lied to, but he wouldn’t have been violent.”
“Xian is never violent,” Chelsie said, her voice faltering when she spoke the emperor’s name. “It wasn’t him I worried about. It was his magic. I heard him tell you how Qilin’s luck works, but do you know why he has that power?”
“He inherited it from his father,” Julius said.
“Exactly,” Chelsie said. “The Golden Emperor’s magic is unique among dragons. When a seer dies, their power is reborn into whatever dragon of the appropriate sex happens to hatch first after their death. With the right timing, any dragon clan can have a seer, but Qilin’s power is different. It was cultivated. Xian told me that his clan has always had a tradition of fortune magic, but the power wasn’t reliable. To solve this problem, his ancestors bred their lines together, consolidating their clan’s magic into one perfect dragon, the first Qilin.”
Julius had his own thoughts about the “perfection” of the Qilin’s magic, but Chelsie wasn’t finished.
“That perfection wasn’t natural,” she went on. “Like an ornate garden, it had to be carefully maintained. To make sure all the magic transfers from one generation to another, each Qilin fathers only one child, and only after an elaborate ceremony with a mate specifically chosen for her ability to complete the magical endurance run that is carrying a Qilin egg to term. Even then, the empress doesn’t actually lay the egg until the old Qilin dies to ensure that every bit of his fire is passed on.” She sighed. “I’m sure you can see where this is going.”
Julius nodded, glancing at Fredrick, who was the oldest of a clutch of twenty and, despite his golden eyes, most definitely not a Qilin. “You laid too many eggs.”
“That’s the least of what I did,” Chelsie said angrily. “When I got pregnant, I broke the line. Even with the Golden Emperor’s luck, it takes an insane amount of preparation to arrange the auspicious circumstances necessary to create a new Qilin. Each emperor only gets one shot at passing on his flame, and I took it.”
“How can you say that?” Julius asked. “You’re acting like this is all your fault, but it takes two dragons to make a clutch, and it’s his line. I know you said you were young and stupid, but—”
“Not that young and stupid,” Chelsie snapped. “I was your age when I went to China, but I knew where eggs came from. Dragonesses aren’t even supposed to be fertile until they clear a hundred. Even then it takes a mating flight, which is why Xian and I stayed in our human forms at all times. It should have been impossible for me to get pregnant, but apparently I’m Bethesda’s daughter in more ways than one, because it happened anyway.”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” Julius said gently. “Making the impossible happen is what the Qilin does.” And considering how happy he seemed to have been with Chelsie, his luck would have been running hot indeed. “Did he want children?”
It was hard to see in the dark, but Julius would have sworn his sister blushed.
“He told me once that he did,” she said quietly. “We both knew it was impossible. Maintaining the Qilin’s fire and passing it on to the next generation is the Golden Emperor’s most sacred duty, and Xian has always done his duty. But knowing something can’t happen doesn’t stop you from wanting it.”
Her lips curved in the hint of a smile. “I thought it was sweet. When I told him I wanted children too, though, he freaked out. He told me never to say that, to never give him hope. At the time, I thought it was a lot of trouble for nothing, but that was before I understood just how little control Xian had over his luck. If he wants something—even subconsciously, even if he knows it’s a bad idea—the Qilin’s magic works to make it happen. So when he said he wanted a family…”
“He got one,” Julius finished with a sigh.
Chelsie nodded, lowering her head to stare shamefaced at the floor. “I should have realized it sooner. I should never have encouraged him, but I didn’t understand. I thought so long as we were together, we could take on anything, but we couldn’t. Because of our selfishness, the Qilin’s line is broken forever. Even if Xian finds a perfect mate with perfect bloodlines and perfect control, there will never be another golden dragon.”
“That’s terrible for them, I’m sure,” Fredrick growled. “But what does that have to do with us? The damage was already done. Why did we have to suffer for it?”
“Because the damage isn’t over,” Chelsie said, her head shooting up. “Don’t you get it? The Qilin does not control his luck. That’s how I got pregnant even though it should have been impossible. Because Xian secretly wanted a family, so his magic gave it to him. Now, what do you think that magic is going to do when the Qilin realizes that he’s failed his most sacred duty?”
Julius bit his lip. “It’s going to lash out.”
“Exactly,” Chelsie said. “The Qilin’s luck exists to make him happy. That includes removing any causes of unhappiness. Xian was raised his whole life to believe he’s the custodian of a priceless gift. When he realizes that’s gone, it won’t matter that killing you won’t actually change a thing. So long as you and your siblings are the living incarnation of his failure, his luck will seek to remove you, and the only reason—the only reason—it hasn’t done so already is because he doesn’t know.”
The whole time she was talking, Julius’s stomach had been sinking lower and lower. “That’s why you ran,” he said softly. “Why he thinks you betrayed him. You lied.”
“Of course I lied,” Chelsie said. “The moment I discovered I was pregnant, I ran as hard as I could, but you can’t get away from a luck dragon. Every escape I tried failed catastrophically. When they finally cornered me and dragged me back to the palace, I knew it was all over if the truth came out, so I did the only thing left that I could do: I lied my feathers off. I let him think the absolute worst of me, made sure he never wanted to see me again, and it worked. It hurt, but it worked. When he banished me, the only ones who knew the truth were Bethesda, Bob, and me. We’ve kept the secret ever since.”
Julius sighed. All of that made sense, he supposed, except, “Why did you tell Bethesda?”
“Because I had no one else,” Chelsie said with a helpless shrug. “Don’t forget, this was six centuries ago. I wasn’t Bethesda’s Shade back then. I was just a young dragon with no connections thousands of miles from home. If the Empress Mother decided to kill me, there was nothing I could do to stop her. But as terrible as she was, Bethesda was still the head of a major clan. Even in China, that was power, and I was alone and pregnant with eggs I couldn’t protect by myself.”
“So you just gave us to her?” Fredrick snarled. “Sold us into slavery to Bethesda?”
“I kept you safe,” Chelsie snapped.
“Safe?” he roared. “We’ve spent our entire lives locked in a mountain!”
“Exactly!” she yelled back. “I didn’t sacrifice to save your lives so you could be reckless with them! Why do you think I locked you up?”
Fredrick froze, shocked into silence, and Chelsie clenched her fists. “I’m happy to let you hate Bethesda,” she said, more calmly now. “She deserves it, but not for this. I was the one who asked her to seal you in the mountain. I didn’t want to, but I felt I had no choice.”
“Why?” Fredrick whispered.
Chelsie sighed. “Because Xian’s not stupid. I’d done my best to make him hate me, but if you were out there in the world being normal Heartstrikers, it’d only be a matter of time before he looked at the dates and started to wonder. Once that happened, his luck would inevitably drag everything out into the open. I couldn’t take that risk. I had to keep you secret, no matter the cost, but I swear on my fire, Fredrick, I did everything I could to make it easier on you. I served Bethesda like a dog to keep you all alive. Maybe not happy, maybe not free, but alive.”
Fredrick looked down with a curse. Julius couldn’t say anything, though at least now he understood how Bethesda had gotten such complete control over Chelsie. She’d had her children by the throat. But that was over now. Chelsie and F-clutch were free, and he saw no reason to let any of this continue.
“Is there anything else?” he asked. “Any other secrets about China we should know?”
“Nope,” Chelsie said, giving him a sour look. “Congratulations, Julius. You’ve finally ferreted out my entire sordid history.”
“So what do we do about it?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm. “How do we fix this?”
“We don’t,” she growled. “Weren’t you listening? The only way to keep the Qilin from going nuclear on us is to make sure he never learns the truth.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Julius argued. “No one keeps a secret forever.”
Chelsie set her jaw stubbornly. “I’ve kept this one for six centuries.”
“By keeping your children locked in a mountain!” he cried. “But there’s no putting this dragon back in the bag. The Qilin is here, and if we don’t find a safe way to deal with this, being conquered is going to be the least of our problems.”
“And whose fault is that?” she said, baring her teeth. “If you weren’t constantly prying into other dragons’ business, none of this would have happened!”
“If Julius hadn’t pried, we’d still be slaves,” Fredrick said coldly. “But he didn’t bring the Qilin here. The Golden Emperor came to save you from Algonquin, so unless you want to lay the death of the Three Sisters at Julius’s feet, you can’t blame this situation on him. Quite the opposite. If not for Julius’s efforts, all of us would have still been enslaved to Bethesda when the Qilin arrived, and you know she would have sold us out in a heartbeat. You’d have been delivered to Qilin on a silver platter the moment he landed, and how long would your secret have lasted then?” He placed his hand on Julius’s shoulder. “It’s because of your brother that you have a chance to keep this secret at all. You should be thanking him, as I do, not trying to pin blame.”
Julius looked down, face burning. He hadn’t expected Fredrick to say all that. But while Chelsie looked chastised, she didn’t look defeated. “I don’t think you appreciate just how bad this is about to get. When the Qilin finds out—”
“How will he?” Fredrick asked. “He’s already seen me. I was there in his room with Julius for an entire conversation, and he never suspected a thing. Amelia showed me how to cast the illusion that makes my eyes look green before she died. All I have to do is put that back on, and no one will be the wiser.”
“That won’t work much longer,” Chelsie warned. “It doesn’t matter how much magic you paint over it, the more you draw the Qilin’s interest, the better his luck works against you. If he suspects anything, whatever you’re using to hide the truth from him is going to break at the worst time, and then everything will come out.”
“So I’ll find another way,” Fredrick said angrily. “I can keep a secret, Chelsie. I’ve kept yours for years. Why are you treating me like I’m incompetent now?”
“I’ve never thought you were incompetent,” Chelsie said quickly. “But even with the illusion, have you looked in a mirror? For the love of fire, Fredrick, you look just like him.”
It was true. Julius hadn’t realized it until she pointed it out, but Fredrick really did look just like the Qilin. He had the same thin mouth and sharp nose, the same straight eyebrows. Add in the golden eyes and he was the spitting image of his father. Even after he returned the illusion, popping the magic back into his eyes, Julius couldn’t unsee it, and that worried him. Everything about this did.
Keeping secrets from the Qilin while he was on the other side of the world was one thing, but trying to do it when he was right on top of them felt like a losing game no matter how well they played. Even if Julius put his head down and surrendered Heartstriker tomorrow without a fight, they’d still be part of the Golden Empire. The whole point was to wrap Heartstriker in the Qilin’s luck, and once that happened, it wouldn’t matter if the Qilin went home to China or to the moon. Chelsie’s secret was bound to come out, and the more Julius thought about that, the more this whole thing felt like a fool’s errand.
“Maybe we should try something else.”
“There is nothing else,” Chelsie snapped. “How many ways do I have to explain this before you understand? The Qilin can’t learn that he has children. Ever. And the only way that happens is if those of us who do know keep our mouths shut.”
She looked pleadingly at Julius. “I’ve learned the hard way not to underestimate your ability to think outside the box, but there is no box this time. No matter how clever you get, there’s no win-win solution to a binary problem. If the Qilin finds out we’re the death of his line, we die. End of story.”
“But what if it’s not?” he said desperately. “You’re assuming the Qilin will be terminally upset when he finds out his line is broken.”
“I assume nothing,” she growled. “It’s fact. I know him.”
“You knew him,” Julius corrected gently. “But the last time the two of you talked was six hundred years ago. That’s a long time, even for dragons. I, on the other hand, just spent half an hour listening to him talk about you. I’d never claim to know Xian as well as you do. I didn’t even know that was his name until a few minutes ago. But none of that changes the fact that the dragon I met up there dragged his entire clan across the ocean against their will and his own better judgment to save you, the one he believes betrayed him the most. Any normal dragon would have broken out the popcorn and enjoyed Heartstriker’s fall, but not him. He knows coming here makes him look like an idiot. He feels like an idiot, but he put you ahead of his pride because he loves you and he wants you to be safe, even if it’s not with him. Those are the facts I’ve observed, and they’re why I think you’re selling him short in this. I have no doubt that he will be very upset when he learns the two of you accidentally destroyed his magical line, but you’re forgetting that the primary goal of the Qilin’s luck is to make him happy, and for Xian, happiness is you.”
He finished with a hopeful smile, but Chelsie had already closed her eyes. “Stop it, Julius.”
“Stop what?” he asked. “Trying to see his side?”
“Stop getting my hopes up,” she said, her green eyes popping back open with a resentful glare. “Maybe you don’t realize what you’re doing, but I do. You’re not ‘seeing his side’ or ‘stating facts.’ You’re spinning the truth into wild shapes with your ridiculous optimism just like you always do. You’ve gotten away with it up till now because you had a seer in your corner, but Bob’s not here anymore. This isn’t some misunderstanding you can nice your way out of. This is my life. His life.” She pointed at Fredrick. “I didn’t do Bethesda’s dirty work for six centuries to let you play dice with the children I gave everything to protect!”
“I’m not playing dice,” Julius said, truly insulted. “And I’m not spinning the truth into anything. I really do think you’ve got this all wrong because you’re making assumptions based on old information.”
“Better than speculating wildly off a thirty-minute conversation!”
Julius’s jaw clenched, and his sister looked away with a huff of smoke. “Look,” she said, gently now. “I understand you want to fix the problem. You always try to fix things. Normally, I like that about you, but there’s no fixing this. Xian’s held on to me this long because he’s a romantic, but there’s nothing stopping him from finding another dragoness and being happy. He can let go of the past anytime he wants, but even if he lives in perfect happiness for the next ten thousand years, he can never fix what we broke. Nothing can. That’s the cold, hard truth, and no amount of talking is going to change that.”
“I’m not claiming it will,” Julius said. “I’m just saying maybe that doesn’t matter as much as you think. All your doom and gloom is based on the assumption that Qilin will be so upset when he learns the truth, his luck will wipe you all out before he realizes what he’s done. But that claim doesn’t match his actions. If the Qilin really valued his line and his duty above everything else, then he would have stayed safe in China and let Algonquin eat us, but he didn’t. He came here, bending all of his luck and power and resources to the point of conquering our clan against the will of his own people, so he could protect you.”
He held out his hands to Chelsie. “If actions speak louder than words, then his are screaming from the rooftops that you are what’s really important to him. That’s why I can’t believe you when you say we can’t fix this. Because if you’re really as vital as his behavior shows you to be, then there’s no way his luck—the same luck that got you pregnant despite physical impossibility because he wanted a family with you—would let you die.”
Chelsie dropped her eyes. He could still feel her anger radiating through the room like a physical force, but something he’d said must have gotten through, because she didn’t keep arguing. Fredrick, on the other hand, was watching Julius with intense excitement. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
“I do,” Julius said with a deep breath. “A simple one. We tell him the truth.”
“I knew it,” Chelsie snarled, head snapping back up to glare at him. “You can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Because leaving this alone will only make it worse. The truth is going to come out one way or another, but if we tell him ourselves instead of letting him discover it on his own, we have a much better chance of controlling the impact.”
Fredrick nodded. “We can break it to him gently. Soften the blow.”
“I don’t think this blow can be softened,” Julius said sadly. “If Chelsie’s right, and the Qilin’s line is truly lost forever, that’s a huge loss no matter how we spin it. But it’s not all bad.” He smiled at his sister. “You did say he always wanted children. Now he’s got twenty. That gives him something to hold on to and protect.”
“Or a list of targets,” Chelsie grumbled.
Julius slumped. “Why are you always so negative?”
“Because someone has to be,” she snapped. “Everything you’re saying sounds good in theory, but if you tell him the truth, and you’re wrong, then we’re dead. Sorry if that makes me a killjoy, but the potentially horrible demise of everyone I love puts a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm for experimentation.”
“It is a risk,” Julius admitted. “But no more of one than trying to keep this secret. We’re up against the wall either way, so why not go for the solution that would actually make things better? All we get in return for successfully keeping the secret is the chance to go through all of this again. But if we tell the Qilin the truth, and he gets past it, then everything changes. I think that’s worth the risk.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not risking anything.” She jerked her head at Fredrick. “Ask him. It’s his life you’re gambling.”
That was a fair point, but when Julius turned to look at his brother—nephew, he realized belatedly—Fredrick looked more resolute than ever. “I believe in Julius.”
Chelsie gaped at him. “You told me last week you thought he was delusional!”
“I did,” Fredrick said. “But that was last week. Since then, I’ve seen him do the impossible. He overthrew Bethesda. He set us free. He set you free. He’s changed our clan with nothing but his will and his words. If he says the Qilin’s luck won’t kill us, I believe him.”
“You ready to bet your life on that?”
“Yes,” Fredrick said without missing a beat. “Because according to you, my only other option is to stay a secret forever. I think I speak for my entire clutch when I say that I’d rather gamble on Julius than live out the rest of our lives as Bethesda’s shame.”
Chelsie gritted her teeth. Fredrick glared right back at her, daring her to argue again. When she didn’t, Julius took his chance.
“We have to try, Chelsie,” he said gently. “And not just because we can’t keep this secret anymore. Even if it will hurt him, telling Xian the truth is the right thing to do.” He smiled at Fredrick. “They’re his children, too. He deserves to know them.”
Fredrick smiled back at him, but Chelsie just turned away, reaching up to dig the heels of her palms into her eyes. “How do you always do this?” she muttered. “How do you always convince me to go along with things I know are suicidally stupid?”
“Because you’re secretly an optimist,” Julius said confidently. “Does this mean you’re on board?”
She dropped her arms with a sigh. “What do I have to do?”
“Nothing much,” Julius assured her. “Just talk to him.”
“‘Nothing much,’ he says,” Chelsie grumbled, giving him a sideways glare. “You know, for a dragon who claims not to be greedy, you sure do have a habit of asking for the moon.”
Julius could only shrug at that, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she groaned. “Fine, fine, fine. You win. I’ll talk to him. But not right now.”
Julius—who’d already started walking to the door to go back upstairs—whirled around. “Why not?”
“Because this is a delicate operation, and he’s already caused two quakes today,” Chelsie said in a practical voice. “This is going to be hard enough without him being upset before we even start. Also, I’d like some rest. I haven’t slept for more than four hours at a time since we overthrew Bethesda, and I’d rather not walk into a conversation with the dragon I’ve spent the last six hundred years avoiding when I’m too tired to string together a proper sentence.”
Considering she had no problem stringing together arguments against them, that sounded like an excuse to Julius, but he didn’t call her on it. He’d already pushed Chelsie a lot today. It’d do no good to push her over the edge just when he’d gotten her to agree with him. Unfortunately, they didn’t exactly have the luxury of time. Between the Golden Empire’s takeover of the mountain and everything that had come after, the twenty-four-hour reprieve he’d won was almost gone.
“Don’t worry,” Chelsie said before he could mention it. “I’ve been stalking you, remember? I know the schedule. I promise I’ll talk to Xian well before tomorrow’s surrender.”
Julius breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
She shrugged. “I don’t want Heartstriker to be part of the Golden Empire any more than you do. Sordid history notwithstanding, I like Xian, and I wouldn’t wish Bethesda on my worst enemy.”
That sounded more like the sister he knew. “Thank you, Chelsie.”
“Don’t thank me,” she said with a wince. “This whole thing is my fault. If I’d had an ounce of sense when I was your age, none of this would have happened.”
She said that flippantly, but the moment it was out of her mouth, Julius felt Fredrick stiffen. “I’m glad it did,” the F said quietly. “Or my siblings and I wouldn’t have been born.”
“At least some good came out of it,” Chelsie said, walking toward the door. “I’m going downstairs to sleep. Call me if you hear anything from Bob, and keep an eye on—”
“Do you regret us?”
The question came out of nowhere, making Chelsie freeze. Julius didn’t dare move, either. There didn’t even seem to be a safe place to put his eyes as Fredrick stepped forward, his normally blank face so full of emotion, Julius hardly recognized him.
“You’ve always said what happened in China was a mistake,” he said, voice shaking. “We knew Bethesda didn’t want us, but I thought that you…”
He trailed off, the words crumbling, and Chelsie sighed. “You were always the sharpest one, Fredrick,” she said as she turned back around. “So I won’t insult you by lying. The day I found out I was pregnant was the worst day of my life. I thought I’d ruined everything: my future, Xian’s future, a hundred thousand years of carefully cultivated magic. Everything. That’s why I ran to Bethesda. I didn’t just need a bigger dragon to hide behind. I needed a fix for what I’d broken, and horrible as she is, my mother’s the greatest expert on dragon eggs alive. I thought if she could teach me how to change the eggs before I laid them, I could still salvage the situation. But new dragon fire catches hot and fast, and even with Bethesda’s help, I was decades too young to control it. I couldn’t even condense your fires into fewer eggs, much less the single male egg needed for a Qilin. I couldn’t do anything.”
“I see,” Fredrick said, his eyes sinking to the floor. “So you didn’t want us.”
“That’s not what I said,” Chelsie said sternly. “I was in a panic trying to fix what I’d broken. When I realized I couldn’t, I decided then and there to spend the rest of my life making sure you suffered as little as possible for my stupidity. I swore to keep you secret so the Qilin’s curse could never touch you. I would have saved you from Bethesda, too, if I could, but it was already too late on that score. The moment she learned the truth, you became the rope she wrapped around my neck. There’s no force in the world that could’ve stopped her from abusing that, but I did everything I could to lessen your suffering. I know the last six hundred years have been miserable, but I’ve kept every single one of you alive. I didn’t get to choose how you began, but you’re still my son, and I love you.”
A strange expression came over her face as she said that, and Julius realized with a start that that was probably the first time Chelsie had ever spoken the truth out loud.
“My son,” she whispered, reaching up to cup Fredrick’s face. “My oldest, cleverest son. I hate the events that brought you into this world, but I’ve loved every single one of you from the moment you hatched, and I…”
Her voice cracked after that, but Fredrick didn’t say a word. He just stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his mother. Chelsie held out for a few more seconds, and then, like a dam breaking, she threw her arms around him as well, her whole body shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Fredrick. All of you. Your suffering was all my fault, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Fredrick said, hugging her hard. “You were the one who protected us. When the rest of the clan treated us worse than the human servants, you cared for us and taught us and kept us together. Even before we suspected the truth, you were always our mother.”
That last part set Chelsie sobbing all over again, and Julius decided it was time for him to go. This was a private family drama, but it wasn’t his anymore, and he didn’t want to intrude. But while that was a perfectly polite excuse, the truth was that he didn’t want to deal with painful, irrational jealousy that came from seeing Fredrick hugging a mother who honestly and wholeheartedly loved him. He might not envy the F any other part of his life, but Julius would have traded mothers with him in a heartbeat.
He was still brooding over that as he stepped into the dark hallway outside Bob’s room. But as he leaned against the wall to wait, his phone buzzed in his pocket. For an irrational moment, he hoped it was Bob. This was the sort of dramatic timing the seer lived for, and even if the source couldn’t be trusted anymore, Julius would gladly welcome any hint at the future.
When he pulled the phone out of his pocket, though, the ID that popped up wasn’t the Unknown Caller. It was the one that never failed to make his heart sink, and Julius couldn’t even look at it now without feeling like the target of some special brand of universal irony as he raised the phone to his ear.
“Hello, Mother.”
The greeting came out even sourer than usual. But while he was sure Bethesda noticed, she gave no sign that she cared. “Where have you been?”
“With the Qilin,” he answered, which was true enough. “I met his mother first, but then—”
“Never mind that,” she said impatiently. “Get to the main hangar as fast as you can. I’m already on my way down.”
“Why?” he said, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” she said with a mirthless laugh. “But at this particular moment, it’s Ian. He’s coming home.”
“Now?” Julius said, checking the time. “But it’s only six. The surrender’s not until nine a.m. tomorrow. Didn’t you send him the message to stall?”
“Oh, I sent it,” she growled. “But it seems there’s been a change in plans. Considering how badly the rest of the sky is falling, though, there’s a chance this might actually work in our favor.”
Julius didn’t see how that was possible, but he knew better than to ask over the phone. His mother would tell him when she was ready, which would probably be as soon as Ian arrived with whatever undoubtedly bad news he was bearing. “I’ll be right there.”
“Hurry,” she snapped. “Main hangar. Five minutes. Don’t be late.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “And Mother…”
“What?”
Julius sighed. “Nothing. I’m on my way.”
She hung up before he could finish, leaving him standing alone in the empty hallway, talking to no one.
***
The main hangar was one of Heartstriker Mountain’s many side buildings. Located just off the runway Bethesda had built to keep her remote desert citadel connected to the rest of the world, it was big enough to house both of the clan’s private jets. But since Ian had taken the newer plane to Siberia, and Conrad had made off with the backup last night, the giant metal building was empty when Julius walked in except for Bethesda herself.
“Took you long enough,” she snapped, tapping her alligator-skin stilettos in a nervous rapid fire against the cement. “Did you crawl down here?”
Considering he’d made it all the way from Bob’s cave at the top of the mountain out to the hangar, a total journey of a mile and a half, in six minutes flat, Julius didn’t dignify that with a response. “Where’s Ian?”
Bethesda nodded through the open door at the brightly lit runway. “About to land.”
The words weren’t out of her mouth when Julius heard the low rumble of a jet coming in fast. That was all the warning they got before a plane broke through the low clouds like a rocket. It touched down a few moments later, skidding onto the runway faster than any vehicle should ever hit the ground. If it had been a traditional jet, that would have been the end, but Bethesda spared no expense with her private planes, and the custom AI pilot managed to save the landing by spinning the jet out into the soft dirt at the end of the runway. Proper dragon that he was, Ian had the rear door open before the almost-crashed plane finished moving, jumping the ten feet from the hatch to the ground as easily as a normal person would step off a curb.
“Do you mind?” Bethesda yelled over still-spinning engines. “That’s my custom suborbital Gulfstream you just put in the dirt!”
Ian shot her a murderous look. Everything about him looked murderous, actually, which was even more alarming than the botched landing. If the normally collected and calculating Ian looked this upset, things were a whole new level of bad. Even Bethesda picked up on it, stepping back to give her seething son space as he stalked down the pavement toward the hangar, motioning for them to follow him inside. Nervously, Julius did, ducking under the rolling door along with his mother before Ian slammed it down.
Bethesda eyed the jangling metal warily. “I take it things didn’t go well.”
“They didn’t go at all,” Ian growled. “Svena sealed herself inside her mothers’ ice fortress before I got there. I couldn’t even find the door.”
“So why did you come back?” Bethesda asked angrily. “Svena was always a long shot, but I thought I made it clear in my message that you being in Siberia was the only thing keeping the Golden Emperor from—”
“I am well aware of our situation,” he snapped. “I didn’t come back because I wanted to. I came back because I didn’t have anywhere else to run.”
Julius and his mother exchanged confused looks, and Ian rolled his eyes in disgust. “Does no one watch the news?” He had his phone out before they could answer, waving his hand over the screen to bring up a series of photos in the public AR, which he proceeded to shove in their faces. But though Julius’s field of vision was now crammed with floating pictures, he still didn’t understand what he was supposed to be looking at.
“That’s just the DFZ,” he said, flicking through multiple pictures of cars crammed like sardines onto the Skyways. “Traffic looks worse than usual, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“That’s not traffic,” Ian said. “It’s an evacuation. Algonquin ordered the entire city out.”
“What?” Julius grabbed his brother’s phone, flipping through the pictures with new horror. “Why?”
“No one knows,” Ian said, snatching his phone back. “But it’s got every mage in the world in a panic.”
Bethesda arched a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Human or dragon?”
“Both,” Ian said, his new brown eyes grim. “Svena’s still refusing to talk to me, but Katya says she’s moved their entire clan, including my children, into the Three Sisters’ old sleeping chamber beneath the ice. I’ve never been down there myself, but it’s supposed to be one of the most heavily warded locations in the world. It’s also the place Svena hates most, so if she’s down there voluntarily, she’s legitimately scared of something, and she’s not alone. I keep multiple human mages on call for my various businesses. We’re talking two dozen mages on three continents, and every single one of them has called me in a tizzy about some kind of mana surge building under the DFZ.”
“Mana surge?” Julius frowned. “Are you sure? I haven’t felt anything.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Ian said, disgusted. “You’re a dragon. Unless you’ve been studying magic all your life like Svena, the only magic from this plane that we can feel is the local ambient kind. This is much deeper, down in the primal magic, and it’s big. Ten minutes after Algonquin’s evacuation started, the United Nations issued an international casting ban, which includes magically augmented flight decks. Thankfully, I’d already decided to come back at that point, and the ban didn’t cover planes that were in the air. I’m just glad I took the suborbital jet. If I’d been in the old supersonic, I’d still be over the Atlantic.”
“So you just ran home?” Bethesda said angrily. “Without my eggs?”
“Yes,” he snarled. “Because if this is as bad as it looks, my children are safer under Svena’s wards. We should find a way to follow suit.”
“How?” Julius asked. “You’re talking about magic big enough to make Algonquin panic, but without Amelia or Svena, we’re helpless. We have no wards, no shelter. Even our staff mages didn’t show up for work. What are we supposed to do, hide in the panic bunker?”
“I don’t think the panic bunker’s going to be deep enough,” Ian said gravely. “That’s why I decided to come home. With me back, the Heartstriker Council is complete again, which means we can go ahead and surrender to the Golden Emperor tonight.”
Julius stared at him in horror. “Surrender?” he got out at last. “You’re the one who said you didn’t crawl your way to the top of two clans just to lose both!”
“I know,” Ian snapped. “I still feel that way, but the situation’s changed, and at this point, the Golden Emperor’s our best shot at surviving it. I read the surrender document you and Bethesda sent over, and while I agree it’s suspiciously generous, we don’t have time to be picky. Unlike us, the Qilin has mages, not to mention his luck. If we join his empire, we’ll get both. And let’s be honest, unless a miracle happened, we were going to surrender tomorrow morning anyway. We might as well do it now and get our protection from whatever this thing is in the bargain.”
“But you don’t even know what it is!”
“I know it’s more than we can handle,” Ian said, glaring at him. “I fought for this clan just as hard as you did, Julius, but it’s time to face facts. We’re in over our heads. There’s no point in standing firm if the ground’s washing out from under us. The Golden Emperor has offered us extraordinarily generous terms of surrender. I say we take them and use his luck to the hilt to keep ourselves alive. When this current disaster is over, we can rebuild and rebel at our leisure.”
“That’s what I said!” Bethesda cried. “Finally, another dragon who understands reason. Julius has been gone all afternoon, running after some crazy idea he thinks will save us.”
“It’s not crazy,” Julius growled. “I know why the Qilin is here now. I know what he wants, and I think I know how to help him get it, without conquering our clan.”
Bethesda rolled her eyes at that, but Julius kept his locked on Ian. “If there’s a way we can get through this without joining the Golden Empire, we need to try, because rebelling against the Qilin will not end well for anyone. Just give me until tomorrow morning.”
“We don’t have until tomorrow,” Ian snapped. “This disaster is happening now. I’m sure you think you’ve got the answer to everything, but do you realize how stupid it would be if we missed our shot at safety by a few hours because you were trying to have your gold and spend it, too?”
“But that’s exactly what we might get,” Julius argued. “If I can pull this off, the Qilin will be our ally, not our emperor. We can keep our clan and enjoy the shelter of his luck. Just give me an hour. I’ll go wake up Chelsie right now and—”
“Chelsie?” Bethesda said sharply. “She’s your plan?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “She’s—”
“Forget it,” the Heartstriker snarled, turning to Ian. “Don’t listen to him. Whatever his plan is, it’ll never work. I don’t know what delusion he’s under, but Chelsie would die before she’d do anything with the Qilin.”
“But she’s already agreed to talk to him,” Julius said frantically. “All I have to do is convince him to talk to her, too, and this whole thing could be—”
“Don’t listen to him, Ian,” Bethesda warned. “I can’t explain the details since someone made me swear not to, but trust me when I say that Chelsie and the Golden Emperor will never make peace. Normally, I’d be content to let Julius learn that lesson the hard way, but if things are truly as bad as you say, then upsetting the Qilin is the absolute last thing we want to do. We should be keeping Chelsie as far away from him as possible, not smashing them together.”
“But that’s what got us into this mess in the first place,” Julius said. “This may be our only chance to keep our clan intact, and we might just fix six hundred years of broken relations with the second-largest dragon clan on the planet in the process. We have to take it.”
“The only thing we have to do is stay alive,” Bethesda snarled. “I will not be told what to do by a whelp who’s never even—”
“Enough,” Ian roared, shocking them both into silence. When the echo faded from the hangar, he turned to Julius. “Can you fix the problem tonight?”
Julius nodded determinedly, and Bethesda threw back her head with a hiss. “This is suicide. You’re toying with a nuclear weapon. If Julius’s stupid plan upsets the Golden Emperor, he could cause the disaster, not stop it.”
“I know,” Ian said.
“You came home to prevent this,” she went on. “This entire thing was your idea!”
“I know!” he yelled. “But that was before I knew Julius had a plan.”
Bethesda took a step back. “You’re trusting him over me?” she said, eyes wide. “Who do you think built this clan?!”
“As of right now?” Ian jerked his head at Julius. “He did, and so did I. This isn’t your show anymore, Bethesda. It’s ours. I was prepared to bow if that was what was necessary to save Heartstriker, but if Julius thinks he can do it without giving up what we’ve fought for, I’m willing to let him try. At this point, I’ve seen him do the impossible too many times not to.”
Julius broke into a grin, but the smile slipped off his face just as fast when Ian turned back to him. “You have until midnight,” he growled. “If the Qilin hasn’t agreed to shelter us as allies by then, my vote goes with Bethesda to surrender.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Ian said darkly. “Because if you screw this up for us, I will eat you myself, Fang or no Fang.”
Julius swallowed. He’d thought he was used to death threats, but Ian looked like he really meant that one. When it was clear Julius understood he was serious, Ian leaned down to grab the hangar door.
“I’m going to change my clothes,” he announced, throwing up the rolling steel. “And then I’m going to find someone to help me get my plane out of the dirt. Call me the moment you have something concrete.”
Julius nodded again, but his brother was already gone, leaving him alone with Bethesda, who looked as if she was going to be sick.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, shooting him a poisonous look. “Every time I think you couldn’t possibly ruin us more, you find a way.”
“I’m not ruining us,” he said angrily. “I’m—”
“I don’t care,” she said, pulling out her phone. “You do whatever you want. I’m going to check informants to see if I can pinpoint when we’re all going to die. If you need me, I’ll be in the bunker. The deep one. Maybe when you’re done destroying everything, I can come out and be queen of the mutants who remain.”
From anyone one else, Julius would have called that a joke, but Bethesda looked absolutely serious as she stalked out of the hangar as fast as she could without actually running. A few seconds later, Julius followed suit, except he did run, sprinting as fast as he could down the brightly lit runway back toward the mountain.