Chapter 7
“It’s you.”
The Qilin’s golden eyes flicked back to him questioningly, but Julius couldn’t explain what he still couldn’t believe himself. Even with the proof staring him in the face, the idea that Chelsie’s disastrous affair in China hadn’t been with some random noble son, but with the Golden Emperor himself seemed ludicrous. How had she managed to pull that off? How had they even met?
But crazy as the whole thing sounded, at least this explained why the Qilin had stopped to look at her back in the desert. At the time, Julius had written off the emperor’s interest as caution. Chelsie was famous for being Bethesda’s backstabber, after all. Now, though, he realized that was stupid. The Qilin was luck incarnate—he had nothing to fear from Bethesda’s Shade. He’d been looking up at her in longing, the same longing that was plain on his face right now as he turned back to the unfinished painting. A painting that was obviously from the same expert hand as the picture Chelsie kept hidden in her room.
“It was you,” Julius said with an excited grin. “You’re her Chinese dragon!”
“Spoke of me, did she?” the emperor said, crossing his arms tight across his chest. “I’m surprised. One would think she’d tire of bragging about a six-hundred-year-old conquest.”
The bite in his voice was enough to make Julius take a physical step back. “Whoa,” he said putting up his hands. “I don’t know what you think’s going on, but she definitely wasn’t bragging.”
“Why shouldn’t she brag?” he said bitterly. “I was her greatest conquest.” He glanced over, clearly expecting Julius to agree. When it was obvious the younger dragon had no idea what he was talking about, though, the Qilin’s angry scowl faded into confusion. “You really don’t know what happened?”
“No,” Julius said, shaking his head wildly. “You have to understand, no one tells me anything. Chelsie almost took my head off once just for mentioning China. That’s not hyperbole, either. She literally had me pinned on the ground.”
A smile ghosted over the emperor’s lips. “That sounds like her.”
“Then you know how stubborn she can be,” Julius said desperately. “Please, I’m begging you, tell me what happened in China. Give me something to work with.”
Give me a way to fix this.
The Qilin gave him a funny look. “I knew you were an odd sort of dragon,” he said, turning back to the painting. “It’s not a story I like to remember. I certainly don’t come off looking like a glorious emperor. But the whole point of bringing you here was to make you understand why I have to conquer your clan, and you can’t understand without knowing, so…”
He trailed off with a long sigh, staring at the picture he’d painted of Chelsie with an emotion Julius couldn’t name.
“This was how I first saw her,” he said at last, reaching up to brush a finger over the delicately painted flush of Chelsie’s cheek. “I was walking in my garden, and she was just…there. Like a bolt of lightning. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she’d been sent to China by Bethesda as a special envoy for the emperor’s coronation. Needless to say, this was news to me. Old news at that since I’d been emperor for two months already at the time. When I told her she was too late and asked why she hadn’t come to the palace to announce herself, she just shrugged and said the guards had turned her away.”
“Wait,” Julius said, confused. “So she didn’t realize you were the emperor?” Because he had no idea how anyone with eyes could miss that.
The Qilin smiled. “In her defense, I wasn’t dressed for court. I also wasn’t expecting to meet an envoy from another clan in my private garden at the heart of the palace. To this day, I have no idea how she got in. My mother’s security was very tight. There were wards, walls, guards, alarm spells, everything that could be had back then.”
“Chelsie is the master of being places she shouldn’t,” Julius agreed. “But what was she doing in your garden if your coronation was over? What was she after?”
The emperor’s expression grew sheepish. “I asked the same thing. Demanded, really. Naturally, I assumed she was there for me. The mate of the Qilin becomes his empress, and I’ve had to chase ambitious dragonesses out of stranger places than my garden. When I confronted her about it, though, it became clear that not only did she have no idea whom she was talking to, she didn’t care. She claimed she’d only infiltrated my palace because she’d gotten bored with the city outside.”
Julius arched an eyebrow. “And you believed that?”
“Honestly?” He smiled. “I did. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but she had a frankness to her that I’d never encountered. It certainly wasn’t the normal awe of the Qilin. I was…charmed, I suppose. And a little insulted, because she seemed far more interested in the fish than she was in me. She’d never seen a koi before, apparently.”
That mental image was enough to make Julius grin. He could absolutely see his blunt sister giving an emperor the cold shoulder. He also understood why someone like the Qilin might find that refreshing. “Is that what attracted you? Because Chelsie didn’t treat you like a god?”
The emperor looked at him like he was crazy. “I was attracted because she was beautiful. Have you seen your sister?”
“Not in that way,” Julius said, face turning red.
“She was the most beautiful dragon I’d ever seen,” the Qilin went on. “And she was the daughter of the infamous Bethesda, whom even we’d heard rumors about. Anyone would be intrigued. But that was just what caught my attention at the beginning. What held it was Chelsie herself. She was…” He trailed off, scowling in frustration. “I don’t know the word in English. It’s what animals are.”
“Wild?” Julius suggested. “Scary?”
“Unworried,” the Qilin said, his golden eyes bright. “The Golden Court is a place of tradition and status. It can be intimidating and cruel to outsiders, especially ones like her. Many of my dragons considered her an ignorant barbarian and treated her accordingly. But where anyone else would have taken offense, and rightly so, Chelsie didn’t care. Quite the opposite. She used their disdain as an excuse to do whatever she wanted.”
“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 worse 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.
“I’m not questioning the strength of your magic,” he said, trying a different angle. “But I still don’t think this conquest plan is going to accomplish what you want. Heartstriker is a big, stubborn clan. Even if you go completely hands off and let us rule ourselves, we’re going to be a lot more trouble than you give us credit for. Why put yourself through that if Chelsie’s the only one you really care about? If you’d just talk to her—”
“Absolutely not,” the emperor said, glaring down at him. “Were you not listening? I must remain calm if the magic that protects my clan is to work. Talking to Chelsie isn’t part of that.”
“I get that,” Julius said. “But that’s no reason to drag us all into—”
“Your sister betrayed me!” he cried. “Just because I don’t want her to die like a dog to Algonquin doesn’t mean I’m willing to let her near me so she can do it again! Bringing Heartstriker into my empire lets me protect her without exposing myself to her treachery. It’s the only way everyone stays safe. Why can’t you see that?”
“Because I don’t think you’re right!” Julius said angrily. “You’re making all these plans based on the assumption that Chelsie used you and then dumped you when things got too hot, but that’s not the Chelsie I know.”
The Qilin looked away. “Then she’s deceived you, too.”
“I don’t think so,” Julius said, stepping back into his line of view to make the golden dragon look at him. “I don’t claim to know her as well as you did, but Chelsie’s still my sister, and she’s put her life on the line for me more times than I can count. That’s not the sort of thing you can fake.”
“Of course she saved you,” he said dismissively. “You’re her clan head.”
“Not back then,” Julius said. “I’m at the top now, but a month ago, I was the runt of J-clutch, the lowest of the low. Chelsie had no reason to even know my name, and yet she was always there. When I got myself in life-or-death trouble, she fought hard to get me out. She always comes to our rescue and never asks for anything in return. That’s why I can’t believe your story is as cut-and-dried as you say. I mean, you’re claiming she worked with Bethesda to betray you, but the Chelsie I know hates our mother. The only way she’d ever ask for Bethesda’s help was if she was absolutely back-to-the-wall desperate, which she must have been, because Bethesda’s been holding whatever happened in China over her head for the last six hundred years.”
“What are you talking about?” the Qilin sneered. “I might live on the other side of the world, but I’m not ignorant. I know Chelsie is Bethesda’s Shade. They work together all the time.”
“Not willingly!” Julius cried. “Chelsie only obeyed Bethesda because she was trapped in a life debt. They did a lot of awful things together, yes, but Chelsie was there as her slave, not her partner.”
The emperor stared at him for a long time. “I never heard any of this,” he said at last.
Julius shrugged. “Not many outside our clan have, but ask any of my siblings, and they’ll tell you the same. Ask Fredrick. He’s F-clutch, and you already know how Bethesda treated them. Now take the worst of those rumors and double them, and you might have something close to what my mother did to Chelsie. If you need more proof, I can show you the edict we signed to set Chelsie and F-clutch free when we formed the Council. Or you can just go out into the throne room. The Fang of the Heartstriker Chelsie threw down when she quit being Bethesda’s Shade is still right where she dropped it. Go touch it yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“I did try, actually,” the Qilin said, looking down at his hand as if it hurt him. “I knew it was hers from the scent, but…” He sighed. “This is very different from what I’ve always thought.”
“I know,” Julius said. “That’s why I’m saying you shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. I have no doubt that whatever Chelsie said to you back then was awful, but things in my family are rarely what they seem. You should know this. You loved her once. Would the Chelsie in that painting betray you?”
“I never thought so,” he said. “But that’s why it worked so well. Seduction for power isn’t much use if your target doesn’t believe you’d never sell them out.”
“Or,” Julius countered, “that could have been the real Chelsie, and the part where she betrayed you was the lie. You tell me which makes more sense. That she faked being in love with you for an entire year only to give up and confess everything the moment she got caught, or that she always loved you, but then something happened, and she had to lie.”
“To what end?” the Qilin cried. “I offered to save her! What possible benefit could she have from throwing that back in my face?”
“I don’t know,” Julius admitted. “Which is why this doesn’t make sense yet. But if you’re right, and she really was playing you the whole time, then why did she run? You said your mother already suspected Chelsie, but could she actually have stopped you from marrying her if you’d really wanted to?”
The emperor shook his head. “She’d have fought me every step of the way. Was fighting me, actually, but she couldn’t have stopped me if I’d been determined.”
“There you go,” Julius said, spreading his hands. “You’re assuming she ran because she found out her jig was about to be up, but if she actually was the sort of dragon who’d seduce an emperor for power, then suspicion from your family would have only made her dig into you harder. Your opinion was the only one that actually mattered, so if you believed her, why would she care what anyone else said? Under those circumstances, running was actually the worst choice she could have made because it made her look guilty. So either Chelsie was both good enough to fool you for a year and bad enough to screw it up at the end, or she wasn’t fooling you at all. She really was what she appeared, and something else happened to make her flee.”
“But what could that be?” the Qilin demanded. “What would she be running from if not me?”
“I’m afraid only Chelsie knows that,” Julius said. “But that story would definitely fit her better. My sister would never betray anyone, but she has a bad habit of running from her problems. Particularly the emotional ones, which definitely includes you. That’s how I knew what you were telling me couldn’t be the whole truth. You claimed Chelsie didn’t care, but I know for a fact that she did. She still does.”
The Qilin flinched. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Julius said stubbornly. “And I can prove it.” He pointed at the painting between them. “She still has the watercolor you painted of her when she was asleep hanging on the door of her bedroom.”
The emperor’s golden eyes went wide. “She kept it?”
“Treasures it,” Julius said with a smile. “She wouldn’t tell me who painted it, but you don’t keep paintings like that hidden in your room where you can stare at them from dragons you’ve betrayed.”
For a moment, the Qilin stood in spellbound wonder. Then, like a door closing, the amazed expression vanished. “It’s probably a trophy,” he said bitterly. “My paintings are highly prized. Her hoarding one is not proof of lingering feelings.”
“No,” Julius said stubbornly. “I got that from her face. I saw the way she looked at your picture, and I’d have had to have been blind not to notice how much she still cared. She looked just as miserable as you do right now when I dragged her side of the China story out of her. That’s what makes all of this so intolerable. Everything you’ve said since you got here has been based on the assumption that Chelsie betrayed you, but the sister I know? The one who treasures your painting in secret and threatens to bite the head off of anyone who so much as mentions China? That’s not a dragon who’s gotten away with something. That’s a dragon who’s been suffering for a long, long time, and if you really did love her once, you owe it to both of you to find out why.”
The Qilin closed his eyes with a long sigh. “You make a good argument,” he said at last. “But I can’t accept what you’re saying.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t,” he said, turning his back to Julius. “You should go now.”
“No,” Julius said, darting around the painting so that he was standing in front of the emperor again. “If you’d just talk to my sister, I’m sure we could get to the bottom of—”
“This audience is over, Heartstriker,” the emperor said firmly, pressing a tired hand over his eyes. “I’ve already made my decision. Our conquest of your clan will proceed as planned. I suggest you go back downstairs and make the most of your final day.”
“But this is ridiculous!” Julius cried. “Don’t you at least want to hear Chelsie’s explanation? She’s free of Bethesda now. If she was ever going to tell you the truth, this would be the—”
“Why do you think I’m telling you to go?” the Qilin cried, yanking his hand back down. It wasn’t until his eyes came into view, though, that Julius realized how angry the emperor was.
“Do you know how badly I want you to be right?” he said, voice cracking. “I’ve clung to the fact that Chelsie betrayed me for centuries because it hurt less than knowing she just didn’t care. Now here you come, saying they’re both wrong. That she still loves me, and this could all be a misunderstanding, and I want to believe you so badly it hurts.”
“Then do it,” Julius said. “Chelsie’s here in the mountain right now. We can go talk to her and resolve all of this.”
“I can’t,” the Qilin said. “Don’t you see? I—”
His words cut off as the mountain began to shake. All around them, the stacked paintings tumbled from their piles. Rather than simply falling on the ground, though, each one seemed to go out of its way to fall directly into the others, the wooden frames slamming into the canvases at the perfect angle to leave huge, ugly scratch marks all across the painted images. One large oil painting of a tree actually slid all the way across the floor to the easel holding the painting of Chelsie. It was barely moving by the time it got there, but just the tap of its corner against the easel’s wooden leg was enough to tip the whole thing over.
Julius tried to catch it but overshot his grab, missing completely as the painting crashed down on the art table beside it, scattering the Qilin’s neatly stacked brushes and splattering the cup of rinse water in every direction. A few drops actually flew straight into Julius’s eyes, but most of the diluted paint water ended up on the Qilin’s golden robes, leaving ugly gray-green splatters across the meticulously embroidered dragons that covered his chest.
It was all just coincidence. Pure bad luck. But by the time Julius had rubbed the paint out of his eyes, the Qilin’s face was as pale as someone who’d just witnessed a murder.
“And now you see why,” he said, his voice weak and shaking as he leaned down to rescue the fallen painting. “I’ve been down this path before. When I lost Chelsie the first time, I did unspeakable damage to my empire. Even if you’re right, and this was all a misunderstanding, I can’t risk putting my subjects through that ever again.”
“But you also can’t keep pushing it down,” Julius argued. “I’m not saying it won’t hurt, but if you haven’t stopped loving her in six centuries, it’s not going to happen. Putting all of Heartstriker under your luck might save Chelsie from Algonquin, but it solves nothing. All you’re doing is kicking the can down the road. You’ll have no real peace until you deal with this.”
“I know,” the emperor said. “But I can’t right now.” He covered his face with his hands again. “Just go.”
“But—”
“Go,” he snarled as Lao burst through the doors.
“Xian!”
That must have been the emperor’s name. Julius had never heard any of the Chinese dragons use it before, but Lao was clearly calling to his cousin as he charged into the room. He took one look at the Qilin’s paint-splattered robe, and then he whirled on Julius. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” the emperor said, dropping his hands with a deep, calming breath. “It’s nothing. The young Heartstriker was just leaving.”
That was clearly meant to be Julius’s out, but he couldn’t take it. Not yet. Not like this.
“You can’t keep pretending nothing’s wrong forever,” he told the emperor. “When you’re ready to know the truth, come and find me. I’ll take you to Chelsie, no questions asked.”
Lao bared his teeth. “Do not speak that name!”
“If you can’t talk about the problem, that’s a problem,” Julius said stubbornly. “If you really cared about him, you wouldn’t be enabling this.”
“That’s enough,” the emperor snarled, hands curling into fists as the mountain shook again. “You are dismissed, Heartstriker!”
That was a final warning if Julius had ever heard one. This time, though, he took it, hurrying out the door as fast as his feet would carry him.
Fredrick pounced on him the moment he got into the hall. “What happened?”
“Tell you later,” Julius promised, grabbing his arm. “Right now, we need to go.”
He started to run, but Fredrick didn’t follow. No matter how hard Julius yanked on him, he remained frozen in the doorway, staring at the unveiled Qilin’s face as though he’d never seen a dragon before. It wasn’t until Lao starting marching toward them that the F finally snapped out of it, letting Julius pull him back into the hall seconds before Lao slammed the door in their faces.
“What was that about?” Julius yelled at his brother.
Fredrick raised a shaking hand to his face. “I—”
He cut off, his head snapping up. Julius jumped, too, hand going instinctively for his missing sword as he looked around to see what had alarmed his brother.
It wasn’t a long search. At the end of the hall, one of the twin red dragons who served the Empress was standing at the door to Bethesda’s treasury. Since they tended to come in pairs, Julius looked immediately for the other one. Sure enough, the second red dragon was behind them, blocking the doorway that led back to the throne room. This meant Julius and Fredrick were now trapped in the hallway between them. A trap that was rapidly closing now that the Qilin had kicked them out.
“Looks like the empress hasn’t forgotten about killing us,” Fredrick whispered as the red dragons began to move, stalking down the hallway toward their pincered prey in deadly, silent strides.
Julius had been thinking the same thing. “Is there another way out?”
“Not without going through them.”
Fat chance of that. Fredrick might be old and bigger than expected, but Julius was still just a J. A fast one, perhaps, but definitely not Justin. He didn’t even have his Fang thanks to Lao’s requirement that he disarm.
He could actually see his sword from where they were standing, leaning against the wall right where he’d left it by the door to his mother’s sitting room. It was barely twenty feet away, but it might as well have been with Ian in Siberia for all the chance Julius had of getting to it before the red dragons caught him. Unless he was hiding something under his fitted jacket, Fredrick didn’t have a weapon either, which meant not only were they facing superior opponents in tight quarters, they were doing it completely unarmed. Julius was still processing how epically screwed that made them when a hand grabbed his shoulder.
It was a tribute to the insanity of his optimism that Julius’s first thought was that Justin had somehow known he was in trouble and come back to do his knightly duty. The biggest J did have a sixth sense for violence, and it wouldn’t be the most unlikely stunt Julius had seen his brother pull off. When he snapped his head back to look, though, it wasn’t Justin who was standing behind him.
It was Chelsie.
Both red dragons froze. For several heartbeats, no one moved, and then one of the dragons said something in Chinese. Chelsie answered in the same language, speaking the unknown words in the low, terrifying voice she normally saved for siblings who’d particularly pissed her off. Even not knowing what was being said, the sound was enough to send chills up Julius’s spine, and he wasn’t the only one. Both of the approaching dragons were now backing off, putting up their hands in the universal gesture of surrender. When they’d shuffled all the way back to their respective ends of the hall, Chelsie’s hold on Julius’s shoulder turned into a shove.
“Move.”
“But my sword’s still—”
“We’ll get it later,” she growled, leading the way into Bethesda’s human bedroom, the one she used on the rare occasions she didn’t feel like sleeping on a pile of gold. “The fearsome twosome learned not to try me in close quarters a long time ago, but they won’t stay cowed for long. They’re probably already getting help, which means we need to go.”
That explanation raised more questions than it answered, but Julius didn’t have time to ask any of them. Chelsie had already shut the door, locking them inside their mother’s bedchamber, which was apparently the only room the Qilin’s kamikaze cleaning squad hadn’t touched yet. Julius was still wondering why Chelsie had sealed them inside an apparent dead end when she herded them both into the sprawling maze that was Bethesda’s walk-in closet. Once there, Chelsie went straight to the back, shoving aside a curtain of million-dollar dresses and hauling up the crimson carpet beneath them to reveal a wooden door the size of a porthole set flush into the stone beneath.
“Get in,” she ordered, yanking the wooden door up to reveal a narrow hole going straight down.
Fredrick obeyed first, jumping down the dark chute feet first without hesitation. Julius wasn’t quite as brave, sitting on the floor as he eased himself into the bolt-hole. “Where does this go?”
Chelsie looked nervously over her shoulder. “Somewhere safe.”
“Good,” Julius said. “Because we need to talk.”
Chelsie didn’t look happy with that announcement, but she didn’t waste time arguing. She just shoved him down the escape and hopped in after him, catching her fall on the edge one-handed before reaching up with the other to close the secret door, plunging them all into the dark.
***
Fenghuang, Consort to the last Qilin, the Empress Mother, kept the look of relief off her face only through untold centuries of practice. “So he’s chased the meddling Heartstriker out?”
The bowing red dragon—one of the twins, she’d never been able to tell them apart—nodded. “Yes, Empress. Lao is with him now.”
“And the Heartstrikers?”
“Vanished through one of the secret passages.”
That was vexing, but they would turn up again. Bethesda’s children could always be counted on to pop up like weeds. Even so. “Search the lower levels,” she ordered. “If you see a chance to kill him, take it, but don’t do anything that might upset the Qilin further. This place is dangerous enough as it is. I don’t want any more unnecessary stress placed on my son.”
The red dragon nodded obediently and backed out of the enormous empty cave that had once been the Broodmare’s gold wallow. When he’d closed the vault door behind him, the empress turned her attention back to her own unexpected problem. “You were wrong.”
“I was nothing of the sort,” Brohomir replied, his face irritatingly smug even through the terrible, grainy connection of the public AR terminal he’d insisted on calling her from. “I told you this would happen.”
“You told me that if the Golden Emperor spoke to Julius Heartstriker, I would lose my position as empress,” she said, scowling through the projected screen thrown up by her own, far superior, personal phone. “But your whelp is long gone, and here I sit still.” She lifted her chin proudly. “You were wrong, seer, but I knew you would be. I raised Xian to be dutiful above all else. We are nothing like you barbarians.”
“No one implied you were,” Bob said, leaning against the wall of the grubby public booth he’d crammed himself into. “But you’re thinking too short term. I’m afraid your precious golden treasure has already fallen into the well-meaning clutches of my youngest brother, and those are very hard to escape.”
“Then I will kill him,” the empress said.
“Such is the common refrain of Heartstriker Mountain,” the seer replied with a chuckle. “But Julius is harder to kill than he looks. Even if you did succeed, I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good. You lost your son years ago, Fenghuang. It’s only the duty you value so highly that’s kept you from feeling it sooner.”
“What do you know of duty?” the empress said haughtily. “You are a traitor, a seer who sold out his mother and his clan.”
“That I am,” Brohomir said cheerfully. “Funny how you find that so offensive now, yet you had no problem accepting my traitorous ways when I was serving Heartstriker up to you on a platter. No Amelia, no White Witch, no annoying siblings. Just my mother and sister, hobbled and bound, as promised.”
The empress sneered. “Hobbled and bound, indeed. Bethesda was bound, but she was never the problem, was she? That honor goes to her shameless daughter, and yet I arrived to find her still running around loose.” She leaned into the projected screen with a scowl. “You told me you had the little whore in check.”
“I’d thank you not to talk about my sister that way,” Brohomir said, his normally lilting voice sharp. “And I pulled off a miracle with Chelsie. Even with your son’s luck coming down on us like a sledgehammer, she and the Qilin have yet to cross paths. It’s coming, though, and soon, but you knew that was inevitable when you came here.”
“I had no choice,” the Empress Mother said bitterly. “Xian had been considering conquering Heartstriker for years. Algonquin’s foolish war was just the final straw. After that, there was no reasoning with him. Even I cannot defy the will of the Golden Emperor.”
“But you manipulate it just fine.”
“I used to,” she said sadly, looking down at her withered hands. “He is my only son. My treasure, bought with everything I had. I made his luck greater than even his father’s at its prime, a blessing that fell on all of us without fault, without fail. With one exception, he has always been a perfect emperor. A perfect son, respectful and obedient and utterly above reproach. The only thing that could ever break him was her.” She clenched her bony fingers into fists. “I will not let her take him from me. You must have seen the mountain quake just now. You know what is at stake. She already ruined him once. I can’t allow that to happen again. Not after all I sacrificed.”
“That’s the trouble with sacrifice,” Brohomir said. “You paid for a Qilin, but you still hatched a dragon. You can’t be shocked he has ambitions of his own.”
The empress’s lip curled in disgust. “Love is not an ambition.”
“It is when you love a Heartstriker.”
“I didn’t call you so you could make jokes at my expense,” she snapped. “You play the careless seer well, Brohomir, but you’ve worked too hard on your precious Heartstrikers for me to believe you’re throwing them away now. I know this is all part of some greater plan in your twisted mind, but even your machinations cannot stand before the will of the Qilin. His luck moves the future of all our clans. It will smash your schemes to pieces if you presume to play games with the Golden Empire.”
“A fair threat,” the seer admitted. “Even I am powerless before the Golden Wrecking Ball.”
“I’m glad you understand,” the empress said, nodding. “But just because you are lower doesn’t mean we can’t still come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Tell me how to save my son, and I will promise to spare your hateful relations.”
“Such a benevolent offer,” Bob replied, pressing a hand dramatically to his chest as he flopped against the booth’s graffitied wall. “I think I might faint.”
She gave him a cutting look, and the seer sat back up with a grin. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. I came to your aid six centuries ago when I wrote you that letter explaining how to corner my fleeing sister, but while this saved your empire from the worst ravages of a broken-hearted young Qilin, it fixed nothing. The damage was only put off, not prevented. Your son came to our mountain with pure intentions. He has not deceived you in the least. He really did plan to return home the moment he put Chelsie under his luck without seeing her at all. But while sterling duty guides his actions, his luck has always followed his emotions. From the moment he arrived, the Qilin’s desperate, repressed longing to see the dragon he loves has been warping the future like taffy. It pulled Julius to him despite your best efforts, and now, as is his habit, the Nice Dragon of Heartstriker has made things infinitely more complicated. I’ve done all I can, but at this point I’m afraid there’s not a single path of possibility remaining where your emperor and my sister do not meet, and where he does not learn the truth.”
The empress closed her eyes with a shudder. “Then it is finished,” she whispered, pressing a shaking hand to her eyes. “We are all finished.”
“Not quite.”
She lowered her fingers to see the seer leaning into the camera, his face filling the screen with a predatory grin the empress was not accustomed to seeing aimed at her. “Delightful as this has been, I didn’t risk calling you just to rub your face in bad news. It’s true there’s no future left where your son remains only yours, but there’s still a way to make sure he’s not hers.”
“Why would you betray your sister for me?”
“Because I’m not doing it for you,” Brohomir said. “I’m doing it for me. The fact that you also benefit is merely a happy coincidence, but the choice still has to be yours.”
The empress scoffed. “What choice? You said it was inevitable.”
“It is,” he assured her. “Nothing can stop the hammer now, but if you’re quick, you can still choose where it lands. That’s power, Empress. The only power you have left.”
Fenghuang looked down at her red-lacquered nails, making a show of thinking it over, but only a show. In truth, her mind was already made up, because the seer was telling the truth. She’d fed Xian enough of her fire to make him the greatest Qilin ever born, and for twenty-one years, he had been. Then, just as he’d come of age and entered what should have been his full potential, the Heartstriker girl had ruined him.
Not immediately. The first year they were together, Xian’s magic had been even more magnificent than she’d dreamed. His happiness brought more good fortune to their empire than his father’s last two centuries combined. So much that even she had willingly turned a blind eye to the mud he was rolling in. A shortsighted, foolish mistake. Breeding always told, and when the Heartstriker girl showed her true colors at last, they had all suffered for it.
It had taken centuries to recover from the catastrophes the Qilin’s misery brought down that year. Even after she’d patched things up, convincing her son that he had been betrayed, that it was all the Heartstriker’s fault, his luck was never again what it should have been. No matter how many lovelier, better dragonesses she’d found for him, he’d always remained distant, and while his luck never truly faltered again after that first, horrible year, neither had it blossomed. He was simply diminished, her great work squandered. But then, just when the loss grew painful enough to make her actually consider summoning Chelsie back, the rumors arrived, and Fenghuang finally realized why the girl had run.
That was the final stroke. She had no proof, nothing but hearsay, but if any of it was true, then the Heartstriker truly had taken everything from them. Worst of all, she hadn’t even done it on purpose. A calculated attack would have at least been something she could respect, but Bethesda’s daughter had destroyed their clan out of foolish, selfish ignorance, which was as unforgivable as it was irreparable. Nothing could fix what the stupid girl had broken, so Fenghuang had done the only thing she could. She’d buried everything, walling off her son and her empire from the rest of the world. And for six hundred years, it had worked. Now, though, everything was unraveling.
From the moment they’d embarked on this cursed journey across the sea, this end had been inevitable, but like any proper dragon, Fenghuang could not accept defeat. So when the Seer of the Heartstrikers offered her a chance, any chance, to mitigate the damage, for all her hatred of his family and his smug green eyes, she found that she could not refuse.
“What must I do?”
The seer’s smile grew sharp. “Exactly what I say.”
Fenghuang had never hated anything as much as those words. But an empress did her duty even in defeat, so she swallowed her anger and nodded.
“Excellent,” Bob said, reaching off camera to grab something waiting outside of the booth. “I have detailed instructions, multiple stipulations, and one ironclad rule you must never break, all of which I will explain in exhaustive detail. Before we go down that rabbit hole, though, there’s someone you need to meet.”
The Empress Mother had no idea whom he could be talking about. She wasn’t even sure where Brohomir was, other than somewhere filthy. Certainly not the sort of place where any dragon worthy of her interest would be found. When he came back into view, though, there was indeed a dragoness with him.
She was a hatchling, a young one. How Brohomir had gotten a whelp that young into human form, she’d never know, but whatever he’d done to her, the child was obviously a Heartstriker. She looked like a mini-Bethesda with her thick, dark hair and high, haughty cheekbones, but her eyes were the wrong color. Even through the terrible camera, Fenghuang could see no green in them at all. Just gold. The pure, rich, glittering, metallic color she’d seen only twice in her life looking out at her from the little dragon’s face.
And that was when Fenghuang knew to her bones that all was truly lost.