No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished

by Rachel Aaron

  “Fight back!” he screamed, raking his claws yet again over Julius’s crumpled body. “Fight me back now, or I swear, I will kill you!”

  Even through the pain, the threat was enough to make Julius smile. Ian was right. When they tried to kill you, that was when you knew you were winning. It was small comfort considering this victory would probably be his last, but while he’d never been a good one, Julius was still a dragon. He had his pride, such as it was, and it gave him the strength he needed to push himself up on his broken claws and say, once again,

  “No.”

  The quiet word echoed through the silent desert air, and then Gregory roared, engulfing him in a ball of the hottest fire yet, turning Julius’s world white with pain before burning it out entirely.

  ***

  Back at the top of the mountain, Chelsie was in as close as she came to a true panic.

  Outside, she could hear Gregory tearing Julius to pieces, but she couldn’t get up to watch. She was stuck kneeling beside Justin, her hands moving faster than even she could see as she tried desperately to patch the holes she’d put in her little brother. A task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that he wouldn’t. Stay. Still.

  “Stop it,” she snarled, grabbing his shoulders and shoving them into the stone as hard as she dared before snatching her fingers back to the bandage she was trying to wind around his leg. “I’m trying to save your life, idiot.”

  “Yeah, well, who endangered it in the first place?” Justin snarled back, wiggling harder than ever. “Let me up. Julius is getting murdered out there.”

  “He’ll be fine,” she lied. “Worry about yourself.”

  “Why are you even doing this?” Justin growled, glaring at her with the too-common look of pure hate that still stung even after all these years. “So you can stab me again?” He jerked his head at Bethesda, who was watching the fight from the broken wall with a look of pure glee. “You’ve always been her backstabber. I bet the two of you planned this together.”

  That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. If Chelsie had known her mother’s plans for Gregory, she would have killed him this morning when she’d caught him conspiring with David. But she hadn’t given Bethesda enough credit. She’d thought the summons today was just more of the usual posturing. Even when Bethesda had brought Gregory out, she’d assumed Justin would beat him and that would be that. Bethesda always had enjoyed a good, bloody duel. It wasn’t until her mother had ordered her to strike that she’d finally realized just how badly her mother’s back must be against the wall, and by that point, it was far too late.

  “Just stay still,” she said, focusing her attention on the task at hand. “I was too good at getting your arteries. If you keep moving, you’ll bleed out, and I don’t want to lose two brothers today.”

  “You don’t have to lose any,” Justin growled. “We’ve never gotten along, but I know you like Julius. I can’t do my job thanks to you, but you can still redeem yourself.”

  His green eyes darted to Bethesda, who was standing with her back to them, watching the fight outside with gleeful anticipation. “All those times you took me out, I never smelled her magic on you. There’s no compulsion, nothing holding you back but a moldering old life debt.” He looked back at her, bloody fists clenching. “Fight it, Chelsie! Whatever she’s got over you, kick it out. Break free and go save our soft-hearted idiot of a brother before it’s too late!”

  Chelsie’s hands began to shake where she was holding his wounds, and then she gripped down harder than ever. “I can’t,” she whispered, refusing to meet his eyes. “I can’t fight her. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “You’re pathetic,” Justin sneered, pushing off the ground again. “Looks like it’s up to me to—”

  Chelsie released her grip on the sliced artery at his knee. After so much blood loss, it took only seconds of free bleeding to make him pass out. She clamped her hand back down as soon as he went limp, her chest heaving as she yelled for Frieda.

  Bethesda’s aide was there in an instant. So was Fredrick, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’d always been the most rebellious of her Fs. Sneaky, too, which was the only reason he was still alive.

  “We’re taking him to medical,” she said, indicating where they should hold Justin to keep him from bleeding out any more than he already had. “You keep him steady. I’ll cut.”

  They did as she asked at once, but while Frieda followed the directions with her usual silent acceptance, Fredrick wasn’t so easy. “Who did this?” he whispered, glaring at Conrad, who was standing beside Bethesda at the edge of the hole Julius and Gregory had left in the mountain. “Was it—”

  “No,” Chelsie said, drawing her sword. “It was me.”

  The hurt and shock in Fredrick’s eyes was more than Chelsie could take, so she didn’t. She just looked away and did what she’d done for six centuries. She did her job, slicing the air on all sides with her Fang in a perfect square to form a hole in the world that would take them to the infirmary.

  As always, it was a perfect strike, but even though she knew better, Chelsie couldn’t help stealing one last look through the gaping hole in the mountain down at where the idiot whelp who’d become her favorite brother was now pinned on the ground. Pinned and dying, just like all the others.

  And yet again, it was all her fault.

  That bitter truth was the last straw. Chelsie turned away with a strangled sound, closing her eyes as the air split, dropping the four of them right into the middle of the Heartstriker’s scrambling medical staff.

  ***

  Bethesda allowed herself a small sigh of relief when she felt Chelsie leave. She’d used that particular tool very hard of late, enough that she was starting to get worried about breaking her. Even Chelsie had her limits. She was contemplating what to do about that when another unwelcome problem reared its ugly head.

  “I don’t like this,” Conrad growled, scowling down at the painfully one-sided fight below. “Gregory’s killing him.”

  “That’s the point,” Bethesda said irritably. “I didn’t put a hole in my mountain to leave the job unfinished. And anyway, I thought you liked duels.”

  “That is not a duel,” Conrad said, stabbing his finger at the bloodstained sand where Gregory was clawing at Julius like a dragon gone mad. “This was badly done, Bethesda.” His eyes flicked over his shoulder to where Chelsie had just vanished. “All of it.”

  “You’re not going to gripe about your sister again, are you?”

  “Chelsie made her own bed,” Conrad said, and from the tone of his voice, he clearly thought she deserved it. Yet another reason Bethesda had chosen him as her knight. “But I was referring to Justin.”

  “Oh, he’ll be fine,” she said with a laugh. “He’s tougher than you are. He just gets pigheaded sometimes, and he needs a stern hand to steer him back to the right path.”

  “But that’s the problem,” Conrad said, turning his cold green glare on her. “I’m not sure you know what that is anymore.”

  “Don’t start,” Bethesda growled. “It’s bad enough you had a hand in that contract to begin with, but I am still your mother, and I am doing this for all of us. Julius’s weakness would have brought the whole clan down.”

  Conrad’s glare didn’t budge. “Would it?”

  Bethesda bared her teeth, but as always, Conrad didn’t even seem to notice. “I signed Brohomir’s contract because you lost,” he said, turning back to the fight. “By your own edicts, that makes you unworthy of rule. That said, you are still my mother and part of the leadership of this clan, which is why I’ve continued to protect and support you despite your fallen status. But there is a line, Bethesda. You have never been honorable, but stabbing Justin in the back just for doing his job? Sending Gregory to maul a twenty-four-year-old child who won’t fight back?” He shook his head. “That’s too far. Even for you.”

  “I see treason week continues,” Bethesda snarled, pulling herself up to her full height
. “But you’ve gone turncoat too late, Conrad. With this defeat, my youngest son’s bizarre hold over otherwise civilized dragons will be forever broken. There’s no way any of them will follow him now that he’s been so utterly defeated by Gregory, who couldn’t even stand up to a human.” She chuckled. “That’s as low as it gets, and about what I expected from Julius. He’s nothing without help.”

  Conrad shook his head. “Were any of us at his age?”

  “That doesn’t make me wrong.”

  “It doesn’t,” he agreed, giving her a strange look. “But that’s Julius’s power, isn’t it? He sincerely wants a better future, and he’s willing to put his life on the line for it. That kind of conviction inspires others. It makes them want to help him, if only to see what kind of world he’d create if he won.”

  “Gag me with a spoon,” Bethesda said, rolling her eyes. When her son refused to join in the mockery, though, she grew wary. “Come now, Conrad,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for this nonsense, too?”

  Conrad shrugged. “I am the Clan Champion. I side with whoever makes us stronger.”

  “And that’s why he has to go,” she snapped. “He’s the embarrassment who’s bringing us all down!”

  “Is he?” Conrad said, glaring at Gregory, who was now breathing fire all over the much smaller blue dragon’s motionless body. “There is a great embarrassment occurring here, Bethesda, but for once, it’s not Julius.” He turned to face her, one hand resting on his sword. “Stop this,” he growled. “Or I will.”

  “Why would I stop it?” she said flippantly. “I’m winning.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before Conrad’s face changed from his usual scowl to a look Bethesda didn’t recognize, and very much didn’t like. “But you’re not,” he said, stepping toward the hole in the wall as he drew his Fang. “And if you can’t see that, then you truly have lost the right to call yourself Heartstriker.”

  “You’re blowing this out of proportion,” Bethesda argued, backtracking. “He’s just a whelp. It’s not what I—Conrad!”

  But it was too late. Conrad was already stepping out through the broken hole in the mountain. He changed the moment his boot left the cracked stone, and the sun vanished behind the shadow of a midnight-blue dragon the size of a battleship sweeping down the mountain toward the one-sided fight below.

  Chapter 12

  “You have to help him!”

  Marci stood in the diner’s parking lot, watching in terror as the fighting dragons—one hateful, giant, and orange, one small and beautifully blue—flamed through the sky beside the mountain. “He’ll die!” She turned to Bob, pleading. “Please!”

  When the seer said nothing, Marci’s panic turned to rage. “Fine,” she growled, whirling back around. “If you won’t help, then I’ll—”

  “No.”

  A hard hand caught hers, and Marci looked over her shoulder to see Bob glaring down at her, his long fingers wrapped around her wrist like iron shackles. “Let me go!”

  “No,” the seer said again, raising his eyes pointedly to the smaller of the two dragons. “He has to do this by himself.”

  That was insanity. Julius was a lot of things, but he was not a fighter. He was also losing. Badly. If Marci didn’t do something soon, Gregory was going to roast him to a crisp, but the stupid seer wouldn’t let go. “He’s going to die!” she cried, planting a foot on his car’s bumper in an attempt to pry herself free.

  “He’s not going to die.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  The words popped out of Marci’s mouth before she remembered whom she was talking to. Fortunately, the seer just rolled his eyes and moved on. “I know things look a little iffy at the moment,” he said, shielding his eyes against the glare as Gregory began to spew fire. “But if Julius is ever going to win the respect of his clan, he has to do this on his own. No help. Or at least no obvious help.”

  Marci stopped fighting. “But you are helping him, right?” Because if Bob wasn’t, her dragon was a goner.

  “I’m not exactly known for leaving things to chance,” the seer said with a sly smile. “But I can only see the future, not make it. Whether Julius lives or dies in the next five minutes depends on if he’s actually the dragon I believe him to be. But I’m pretty sure it’ll work.”

  Her stomach dropped. “Pretty sure?”

  “That’s as good as we get in this business, I’m afraid,” Bob said as he finally released her arm from his death grip. “But as I once told an old and very foolish friend: the future is never set. No matter how certain things may seem, there’s always a chance for the unexpected. That’s why the smart seer invests in the tool rather than the plot. A plot can be upset, but a good tool does what you expect it to every time, and Julius is a very good tool indeed.”

  That was the least flattering compliment Marci had ever heard. At the same time, though, it was oddly comforting to know a dragon as powerful as Brohomir had so much faith in Julius. Faith to do what, though, Marci had no idea, because from down here, it looked like Gregory was roasting him alive. The longer she watched, though, the more Marci realized that wasn’t quite right. Gregory was driving his little brother back, but not because he was stronger. He was only winning because Julius wasn’t fighting back.

  If it were anyone else, Marci would have called that the stupidest plan in the world. But she liked to think she knew her nice dragon pretty well at this point, and from him, not fighting was the only course that made sense. There was no way he could win a head-to-head fight with a G, but by refusing to fight and denying Gregory his dominance, Julius was fighting in his own way. Everything he’d said about ending the cycle of violence and rejecting the might-makes-right system he’d hated all his life, he was actually doing it, and Marci was so proud of him it hurt.

  That didn’t make the fight any less terrifying to watch, though. Especially once Gregory actually caught Julius, breaking his wing with a sickening crunch of his teeth. Marci almost lost it then. She’d already started sucking in magic from Amelia’s fire to blast Gregory out of the sky when Bob grabbed her shoulder.

  “Wait for it.”

  “Wait for what?” she cried, chest heaving as she watched Julius fall like a stone, vanishing out of her sight behind the line of buildings as Gregory shot down after him. “He’s killing him!”

  “Not yet,” Bob assured her, raising his green eyes to the blasted-out hole that now marred the peak of Heartstriker Mountain. “It’ll all be over in three…two…one…”

  The silence after one dragged on for over a minute, broken only by the terrible sounds of Gregory’s rage and Marci’s own panicked breathing. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She yanked out of Bob’s hold, pushing magic into her bracelets as she got ready to run for it. But before she’d even made it out of the parking lot, a shadow blocked out the sun, throwing them all into darkness.

  When she looked up to see what it was, she nearly fell over. She had no idea where it had come from, but there was suddenly a new dragon in the sky. An enormous one with a massive, heavily muscled body that rippled beneath sleek midnight-blue feathers. Strangest of all, he was armored. Marci had never even heard of an armored dragon, but this one boasted a full set of building-sized bone-colored plates that covered him like an exoskeleton from the crown of his crested, wedge-shaped head to the tip of his long, feathered tail.

  “Who is that?”

  Just going by the size, her first guess—and greatest fear—was that this was Bethesda herself come down to finish the job. But while Marci had never personally seen the Heartstriker as a dragon, pictures of the Heartstriker Matriarch in all her rainbow-feathered glory were plastered all over town, and this monster was obviously not the same dragon. She also knew for a fact that Bethesda was still sealed, which prohibited this kind of display. But if the new battleship-sized dragon wasn’t the Heartstriker, then who—

  “Conrad,” Bob said, his voice lightened by something th
at almost sounded like relief. “Finally.”

  “That’s Conrad?” Marci said, eyes wide. “I had no idea he was so big.”

  “I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear you say that,” Bob said, checking his phone. “Of course, I’d be delighted if he was more punctual.” He gritted his teeth. “Lazy snake always waits until the last minute.”

  That sounded suspiciously like Bob had been worried, but Marci couldn’t think about that right now. She was too busy staring at the giant midnight-feathered dragon as he swooped in for a landing directly beside the black plume of smoke where Gregory had dragged Julius down. “What is he wearing?”

  “His Fang,” Bob said. “Didn’t you notice Julius’s crown when he changed in the throne room? Conrad’s is no different, except he gets armor.” The seer smiled wide. “Grandfather always had a flair for the dramatic. Seems to run in the family.”

  Marci couldn’t argue with that. She also supposed it made sense that the Fangs would change with their owners—a human-scale sword wouldn’t have been much use to a dragon Conrad’s size—but it seemed a little unfair that his would be so much bigger. Julius’s crown had barely fit on his head. Conrad got full-body coverage, and for him, that was a lot. Even now that he’d landed, he was so big she could still clearly see him over the buildings even from inside town. She couldn’t see Gregory or Julius, but a second later, Conrad solved half of the problem by lashing out with his front claws, grabbing the terrified orange-and-blue dragon and lifting him up until he was dangling at eye level with his much, much larger brother.

  “Gregory.”

  The name came out in a growl that shook the ground, and Gregory froze, staring up at the bigger predator with green eyes the size of beach balls. Marci was too far away to hear what he said in reply, but it must have pissed Conrad off something fierce, because the bigger dragon began to squeeze.