by Rachel Aaron
She wasn’t sure if the spirit heard her. By the time she’d finished, Ghost had faded away entirely, leaving her kneeling empty-handed in the glaring sun directly in front of a giant, bloody, and very pissed-off-looking blue-and-orange feathered dragon.
“You,” Gregory growled, smoke curling from his mouth. “How did you survive? I hid in the sun. I know you didn’t see me. How did you—”
He never got a chance to finish. Before the hateful words could leave his mouth, Marci shot to her feet, grabbing a fistful of Amelia’s magic fresh from the fire before pelting him right in the face with the industrial-strength fist version of her Force Choke spell.
With the power of the Planeswalker behind it, the invisible blow was enough to send the massive dragon flying head over tail into the souvenir shop across the street, crashing through the glass storefront and sending posters of Bethesda flying. He was rolling back to his feet when Marci hit him again.
“You hurt my cat!” she screamed, slamming Gregory right back into the broken glass. “You hurt Julius!”
She was reaching for more magic to hit him a third time when her fingers hit the flames of Amelia’s actual fire. There was powerful magic there, more powerful than anything she’d touched yet, enough to finish Gregory for good. But tempting as that was, Marci knew if she used that magic, it would be the end. All of Amelia’s fire would be gone, which meant not only would she be undermining Julius’s grand slam of nonviolence, she’d have to break her promise to Amelia in order to do so.
Angry as she was, that price was too high, and Marci lowered her glowing hands, glaring at the battered dragon, who was only now pushing himself out of the rubble. “You’re not worth it,” she spat, jerking her head down the road toward the open desert. “Get out of here.”
“And go where?” Gregory snarled, shaking the broken glass and concrete off his wings. “Thanks to your whelp, I’m banished forever. But while I couldn’t kill Julius, I can kill you, which is almost as good. You will both suffer for my—”
A flash of light cut him off. A split second later, it was followed by a deafening thunderclap loud enough to make Marci’s ears ring, and then Gregory fell over, gasping and spasming in the street as he tried in vain to clutch the smoking, perfectly round, trash-can-lid-sized hole that had just appeared in the center of his left wing.
“That’s enough of that.”
The dragon roared in pain, flipping over to hide his wound from General Jackson, who’d just stepped in front of Marci with her smoking hand held out in front of her.
Marci stared at the general in wonder. She’d known from the moment she’d first walked into the diner that General Jackson was heavily modified, but given the crazy body augs you saw every day in the DFZ—giant fake muscles, twitchy wired reflexes, camera eyes, and so forth—she hadn’t thought too much of it. Now, though, staring at the smoking, obviously metal, spellwork-covered hand that was clearly visible beneath the burning remains of the general’s leather glove, Marci was starting to realize just how much she’d underestimated the woman. She didn’t even know there were implanted weapons that could produce an attack like that, but whatever Emily Jackson was packing in her arm, it was a lot more than Gregory had bargained for.
Too bad he didn’t seem to understand that yet.
“I don’t know who you think you are, woman,” the dragon hissed, crouching protectively over his injured wing. “But you should have aimed better. I can smell the magic on you, and I know you don’t have enough to do that again. This”—he lifted his smoking, useless wing—“will heal, but you’ll never recover from what I’m about to—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. The moment he showed his wing again, Emily shifted her hand and fired. There was no warning, not even the twitch of rising magic. Just a blinding flash of light from her palm followed by the thunderclap as she shot Gregory’s wing clean off. The boom was still echoing off the buildings when she turned and shot off the other one as well, her free arm stretched protectively in front of Marci as the critically wounded dragon began to thrash in the rubble, his roar of pain lost in the crash of the godlike weapon’s aftershock. She was aiming her hand at his chest to finish the job when Marci finally came to her senses.
“Stop!”
She grabbed the general’s arm with both of hers. “You can’t kill him!”
General Jackson looked at her like she was crazy. “He just tried to kill you.”
“That doesn’t mean you should return the favor!” Marci cried, tugging on the general’s arm, which was about as effective as tugging on a steel girder.
“I think it’s a perfect reason to,” the general growled, glaring at the dragon with a deep, old anger. “He’s banished, which means killing him is no longer an act of war against Heartstrikers. He also clearly has a personal vendetta against you, which means if we don’t take him out now, he’ll be a thorn in your side forever. Both of those sound like excellent reasons to kill him.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “And the world can always use one less dragon.”
That sounded like it came from personal experience, but Marci didn’t let go. “I know,” she said. “I hate him and his stupid traffic-cone-colored feathers more than you ever could, but I’m not going to let you kill the dragon Julius just nearly died trying not to fight!” She turned back at Gregory, who was now crouching in his own blood, his green eyes wild with pain. “You’ve done your job. He’s not going to be attacking anyone like that. The Heartstrikers have already punished him, and I’ve proven I can put him in his place. If he comes after me again, I’ll just put him through an even bigger wall, but I will not let you undo everything Julius has fought for.” She released her grip on the general’s arm and stepped forward, putting her own chest between Gregory and the general’s deadly hand. “Let him go!”
General Jackson sighed deeply, and then she lowered her arm. “You heard Miss Novalli,” she growled at the dragon. “Your life is spared. But if I ever see you near her again, I’ll consider it an attack on the UN itself, and unlike Conrad Heartstriker, we don’t have the luxury of being merciful. Now get out.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. Her threat was barely finished before Gregory bolted, racing down the street as fast as his legs would carry him. It wasn’t as fast as Marci was used to—dragons were built for flying, not for running—but Gregory was still gone before she realized it, vanishing around the corner behind a billboard advertising this year’s Heartstriker-branded ready-to-wear fashion line.
“That was a terrible idea,” Sir Myron said, pulling up his incredible ward with a sweep of his hand. “Dragons never forget humiliation, and they can regenerate any part of their body. He’ll be back.”
“Then I’ll just kick his butt again,” Marci growled, putting a hand to her chest to check Amelia’s flame. Despite her reckless use, it was still burning, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Ghost was another story, though. Amelia was still burning, but the little nook inside Marci’s magic where her spirit lived was far too still. She reached inward to give him a mental poke, just to be sure, but there was nothing there. The space where Ghost should have been was empty. Marci didn’t know if that was because he’d climbed further inside her than she could reach, or if it was because he’d faded too far for even her magic to feel. Either way, it made her blood run cold.
“What’s wrong?” the general asked, her already serious frown pulling even deeper. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Opposite problem, actually,” Marci said shakily, running her hands through her hair. “Change of plans. Forget what I said about finding something local. We need to take Ghost home right now.”
Sir Myron had the gall to look smug about that. Fortunately, Raven beat him to the punch. “And where is home, exactly?” the spirit asked, fluttering back down to the general’s shoulder, which he’d abandoned when she’d started shooting.
Marci bit her lip. No one was going to like this, least of all her, but after what had just happened, she
didn’t think she had any other choice. “I need you to take us to the DFZ.”
The UN team exchanged a grim look, and then General Jackson reached up with her metal hand to retrieve the military phone from her jacket pocket.
“Let me get the jet.”
Chapter 13
The first thing Julius became aware of was an itching on his chest.
His whole body itched, actually. It also hurt. Just the act of breathing caused a hitch in his ribs, and moving his arms felt like an impossible feat. If he didn’t move, though, he wouldn’t be able to scratch everything that itched. He was contemplating the conundrum when someone cleared their throat beside him.
“Welcome back, Great Julius.”
Julius’s eyes popped open. He was back in his human form, lying on his back in a large bed in what was clearly a medical room. A quick check told him he was still all there, but every inch of his body was wrapped in white bandages. He was working his arm out of the sheets to push aside the gauze and see what was underneath when Fredrick grabbed his hand.
“I wouldn’t suggest that, sir,” he said, pushing Julius’s hand back down into the mattress before returning to his chair beside the bed. “You were very badly burned, and matters were further complicated by your return to your human form despite being unconscious. Frances said she’d never seen an injured dragon revert to being human. Most go the other way. But you seem to defy stereotypes at every turn, and it did make you easier to bandage.”
Julius had to think a moment before he remembered Frances was the F in charge of the Heartstriker infirmary. “Guess I’m used to being human-sized,” he said, looking down at his mummified body. “Will I heal?”
“Of course,” Fredrick said, giving him the closest thing to a cheery smile Julius had ever seen on his dour brother’s face. “With food and rest, you’ll be good as new in a few hours.”
That was a huge improvement over what Julius was used to, and he took a moment to thank his lucky stars yet again that grabbing his grandfather’s Fang had broken his mother’s seal. And speaking of his Fang. “Where’s my sword?”
“Right beside you,” Fredrick said, nodding to the edge of the bed, where, sure enough, Julius’s Fang was waiting propped up against the side of the hospital bed, its wrapped hilt poking between the rails and the mattress in easy reach of Julius’s right hand. “Conrad set it there himself.”
Julius blinked in confusion. “Conrad?”
“That’s right,” Fredrick said. “You were out for that. Conrad saved you.”
“Conrad?” Julius was starting to feel a bit like a parrot again, but that just didn’t make sense. Conrad was Bethesda’s knight, and Bethesda was the whole reason he was in this mess. “Why?”
The F shrugged. “Who knows? He never talks to anyone except Bethesda. But whatever swayed him from her side today, it would seem that the Clan Champion is now firmly on Team Julius. He flew down and saved you from Gregory in front of the entire family.”
Julius couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The last time he’d seen Conrad, the huge dragon had been leaning against the treasury wall, impersonating a support beam while Bethesda ran rampant. Apparently, though, even their mother’s knight had his limits. Happy as that idea made him, though, his joy was overwhelmed by dread at the implications of the last part of Fredrick’s story.
“When you say he saved me,” he said with a nervous swallow. “You don’t mean he killed…”
“No,” Fredrick said, shaking his head. “And personally, I think that was a mistake. But he must have respected your dedication to not killing family, because as much as Gregory deserved to be publicly beheaded, Conrad was merciful and offered him a choice of exile instead. Coward that he is, Gregory chose banishment over death. He lives, but he’s no longer a Heartstriker.”
That was bound to come back to bite them later, but right now, Julius didn’t care. He was too busy collapsing back into the bed in relief, followed by a very draconic rush of victory.
He’d done it. He’d faced his mother’s plots and Gregory, and he’d won. Sure, that was only because Conrad had swooped in to save him, but that was a victory, too! Conrad had always been at Bethesda’s side. Now, he’d openly defied her to help Julius, and he’d done it without killing anyone. Considering how easy it would have been for him to crush Gregory utterly, letting him live had to be a conscious choice, and he’d made it in front of the entire clan. That basically amounted to Conrad openly declaring his support for Julius’s new way of running things, and when Conrad spoke, other dragons listened. “This could change everything.”
“There’s no ‘could’ about it,” Fredrick said. “Many Heartstrikers consider Conrad to be the ultimate example of draconic perfection. Whether he meant it that way or not, now that he appears to have publicly come out in your favor, the whole mountain’s falling over itself to declare how much they always secretly liked you. Ian came by three times while you were in surgery to see when you’d be recovered enough to go around with him and campaign. He’s pushing to have the vote tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow to capitalize on the current mood.”
That sounded like Ian. “And what does Bethesda say?”
“Nothing,” Fredrick said, looking smug. “Mother hasn’t come out of her rooms since the incident.”
“She never was a good loser,” Julius muttered, trying in vain to scratch through the layers of gauze. “But still, I wonder why she hasn’t sent Chelsie to…you know…”
“Kill you?” Fredrick finished. “I’m sure she wants to, but she can’t. The whole mountain and Conrad are currently rallied behind you. If Chelsie kills you now, everyone will know who gave the order. If that happens, Mother really will have rebellion on her hands, only this one won’t end in a Council. Without you there to stop them, it’ll be her head on a pike.”
That was a horribly morbid image, but it still made Julius smile, his face splitting into as wide a grin as his burns allowed. “You know what this means, right?”
“I do,” Fredrick said, grinning back. “Gregory’s protest faction collapsed the moment he was defeated. Now Bethesda’s been forced to retreat as well, which means there’s nothing left to stand in the way of the Council vote. In other words, you’ve won.”
“We’ve won,” Julius said, clenching his fists. “We did it!” With this, everything he’d wanted—the election, the Council, the final removal of ultimate power from his mother’s hands—was finally coming true. He’d done the impossible. He’d actually changed his stubborn, snarly, prideful family for the better, and he’d done it without killing anyone!
Or, at least, he hoped he had. “How’s Justin?”
“Still unconscious,” Fredrick said. “He lost a great deal of blood. But a Knight of the Mountain won’t be killed by something so small as this. As my sister Frances says every time she patches him up, your brother is too stubborn to die.”
Julius had said exactly the same thing himself plenty of times, but hearing it from someone who was actually an expert on dragon medicine was a huge relief nonetheless. But while he was overjoyed to hear Justin would pull through, there was still another sibling he had to worry about.
“How’s Chelsie?”
The smile fell off Fredrick’s face. “The same,” he said grimly. “Her speed at getting him treatment was the only reason Justin survived. Fitting, since she was the one who sliced him up in the first place. But saving Heartstrikers is as much a part of her job as hurting them, and no matter the circumstances, Chelsie always does her job.”
His voice was so bitter by the end it gave Julius goose bumps, and he instinctively rushed to Chelsie’s defense. “She doesn’t want to,” he said. “She despises all of this as much as we do, but Bethesda has her by the throat. You can’t hate someone for doing something they were forced to do.”
“I don’t hate her,” Fredrick said. “Chelsie’s the reason we’re all still alive. She’s never been soft, but she’s protected my clutch since we hatched. S
he’s been more of a mother to us than Bethesda ever was, and yet…” His eyes narrowed, and he leaned closer to the bed, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I know she told you not to free us.”
Julius’s eyes went wide. “You heard her?”
Fredrick shook his head. “Even my ears aren’t that good. Whatever Chelsie told you in her rooms is still your secret, but I don’t have to know the specifics to guess. She’s always said we can never be free, but she’s never said why.” He glared at Julius. “Did she tell you?”
That was a very complicated question. Technically, Chelsie had told Julius he couldn’t free her or the Fs because Bethesda knew a secret that could ruin them all, one she’d use in a heartbeat if she felt her hold on Chelsie was being threatened. But while Julius had no problem believing the worst of his mother, and he was pretty sure Fredrick wouldn’t, either, Chelsie had told him this in strictest confidence. Given how close she was to F-clutch, if Fredrick didn’t know, there had to be a good reason.
Until Julius knew what that was, he wasn’t comfortable letting that dragon out of its bag. At the same time, though, he strongly felt that Fredrick deserved to know. The Fs were prisoners of this every bit as much as Chelsie herself, but unlike her, he hadn’t chosen their suffering. Chelsie might be serving Bethesda to protect a secret, but Fredrick and the other Fs were legitimately trapped through no fault of their own, and it was wrong. The whole point of the Council was to break their family out from under Bethesda’s boot. What good was his victory today if a whole clutch got left behind?
With that, something inside Julius clicked into place. Maybe he was just drunk on victory, but for once, he didn’t feel like compromising. He’d started down this path to make a better clan, one where dragons would no longer be casually stepped on or thrown away. That was the dream he’d been chasing this whole time, and he’d bled for it enough by now that he was no longer willing to accept anything less than total victory. If he was going to change Heartstriker, then he was going to do it for all Heartstrikers, F-clutch and Chelsie included. And if Bethesda tried to stop him, he’d beat her again. Whatever knife she pulled, whatever secret she trotted out, he’d find a way around just like he’d circumvented all her other plans. He didn’t care how much it hurt him personally to do it, either. At this point, pain was just part of the job. The only real defeat would be if he left someone behind, and after all she’d done to them—done to him—Julius was determined never to lose to his mother again.