by Rachel Aaron
Chelsie’s expression darkened. Julius didn’t like the sound of this “Reclamation Project” either, but he knew better than to ask. The only reason a beaten enemy dropped hints like that was when he was laying bait. For all they knew, Algonquin was already on her way.
“Enough,” Julius growled, crouching down in front of the defeated spirit. “Where’s my brother? You said he was alive?”
“Very,” Vann Jeger said with a toxic grin. “It barely took a scratch before he sold you out.”
Julius opened his mouth, but Chelsie beat him to it. “Impossible. Justin’s a thick-headed idiot, but he’d die before he betrayed the clan.”
“Think that all you like,” the spirit said. “But my Lady set up the deal herself. Your whelp of a brother sold you out to the Northern Star for a sword and a chance at revenge. Not that it’s surprising. Your kind was born to betray.”
“Shut up,” Chelsie growled, reaching down to dig her nails into the spirit’s neck until he gasped in pain. “How is Estella involved in this?”
“How should I know?” Vann Jeger choked out. “You snakes are the ones who’re always meddling with the future. Algonquin merely played you against each other, and your brother was more than happy to play along.”
Chelsie let his neck go with a muttered curse, sliding down to press her palm against his chest. A moment later, Julius felt the bite of her magic, and Vann Jeger went stiff with a cry, his head jerking back in pain as Chelsie’s stolen Fang ripped its way out of his chest and returned to her hand.
She clutched her blade with a smile, shaking off the black blood as Vann Jeger fell gasping to the ground. When she’d cleaned the blade to her satisfaction, Chelsie turned to position it over the prone spirit.
“What are you doing?” Julius asked as she took aim.
“Finishing this,” Chelsie said, swinging down.
“Wait!” he cried, but it was too late. Chelsie’s Fang was already slicing through Vann Jeger’s neck. Still weakened from having his final stolen sword ripped out, the spirit didn’t even try to dodge. He just lay there, grinning at them as his head rolled off his shrunken body, and then the corpse collapsed back into water.
“Why did you do that?” Julius cried, staring in horror as the puddle that had once been Algonquin’s greatest dragon hunter seeped back into the ground. “What happened to ransoming him to Algonquin for Justin?”
“You heard what he said,” Chelsie said, cleaning her Fang once more before returning it to its sheath. “Estella’s involved.”
Julius couldn’t believe this. “And you took him at his word?”
She nodded. “On that, yes.”
“What about Justin?”
Chelsie’s eyes narrowed. “The situation’s changed. I don’t want to believe Justin would sell us out, but seer plots are never straightforward, and we’re neck deep in one designed to bring us all down. If Algonquin’s working with Estella, then keeping Vann Jeger alive only complicates matters. Better to remove him from the situation entirely than risk having him come back and bite us later.”
“And what if she’s not working with Estella?” Julius said. “I’ve never heard of Algonquin working with a dragon.”
“Then we’ve just proven we’re a force to be reckoned with and given the Lady of the Lakes even more reason to keep him alive for bargaining,” Chelsie said, glaring at him. “Use your head, Julius. What makes more sense? That Vann Jeger would lie for Estella, or that he’d try and rub it in our faces? Considering every disaster over the last two days has led straight back to the Northern Star and the fact that she’s been specifically targeting high-ranking Heartstrikers, we’d be stupid not to suspect her now.”
He shook his head. “But—”
“The last thing we need on top of a seer is a vengeful, dragon-hunting spirit with a chip on his shoulder coming back to screw things up,” his sister snapped. “Especially if Algonquin really did give Justin to Estella and thus can’t trade him back to us.”
Julius didn’t want to believe it, but his sister’s argument made a cynical sort of sense. “So this was all for nothing, then?”
Chelsie scoffed. “You call saving your human and bringing about the death of one of our greatest enemies nothing?” She nudged the mud where Vann Jeger had dissolved with her boot. “This was a great victory, and since your human was the one who actually took him down, I won’t even be lying when I tell Mother you were at the heart of it. It doesn’t matter what you said before, Bethesda would never kill the dragon who slew Algonquin’s dragon slayer. She’ll have no choice but to welcome you back to the clan, which means I won’t have to come home with your head.” She shrugged. “It might not be what we planned, but I’m prepared to call that a win.”
It didn’t feel like a win to Julius. “And what if I don’t want to go back?”
Chelsie’s head whipped around. “What?”
Julius pulled himself straight. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts to save me, but I meant what I said on the phone. I don’t want to be a part of a family that makes you sell out your sister to save your brother, and I don’t want to get back into mother’s favor. I don’t want any part of this.”
“Too bad,” Chelsie growled. “You are part of it. There is no out, Julius. You were born a Heartstriker, and you’ll die a Heartstriker. There’s no escaping that, but you’ve got a second chance right now to make something for yourself in this clan. Don’t waste it.”
He shook his head. “But I don’t want—”
“Then act like a real dragon and change the situation!” she yelled. “Do whatever you have to do. Take over the clan and rebuild it from scratch if that’s what it takes. Just find some way you can live with being a Heartstriker, because so long as Bethesda rules this family, the only way out is at the tip of this sword.” She reached down to clutch the Fang at her side. “Don’t make me kill you just when I’ve started to like you.”
Julius’s shoulders slumped. The last thing he wanted to do was fight the sister who’d just saved his life, but now that he’d finally stood up to his mother and told her how he felt, just going back to the clan, even as a hero, felt more like failure than lying down and dying to Vann Jeger. It must have shown on his face, too, because Chelsie sighed.
“Don’t think about it now,” she said, reaching out to rest her hand awkwardly on his shoulder for a moment before snatching it back. “Just focus on getting yourself and your human back to your house. You need to go check on Amelia, anyway.”
“What about you?” Julius said. “Why don’t you come with us? You could cut us all there right now.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “First, I’m not a taxi, and second, you’re an idiot if you think Algonquin doesn’t know what just happened and isn’t arranging a counter attack as we speak. You’re still sealed, which should put you beneath her notice, but I’ve been standing out here being an obvious dragon for almost an hour now. When they come, I’ll be the natural target, so I’m going to try and lead them as far away as possible while you are going to go home and keep your promise to guard our sister. Is that understood?”
Julius didn’t like the idea of Chelsie using herself as bait, but if there was anyone who was a master at keeping ahead of the hammer, it was Bethesda’s Shade. “Understood,” he said. “Just be careful.”
For a second, he thought he saw her smile at that. It must have been his imagination, though, because Chelsie’s face was as grim as ever when she drew her sword. “You, too.”
By the time the words were out, she was gone, vanishing into the dark like the shadow she was named for.
Chapter 17
Chelsie reappeared seconds later less than a block away, collapsing against the trunk of a tree growing out of what was left of a convenience store as she fought to catch her breath.
It was her own fault. She hadn’t realized Julius’s mage could take so much. Just cutting her way this far had taken what little reserve she had left. It probably would have
been wiser to just stay with Julius, but being weak in front of her baby brother was more shame than Chelsie could stand, and she hadn’t been lying to him about Algonquin’s counterattack. She was actually surprised the anti-dragon SWAT teams weren’t here already. Apparently, today was their lucky day. But no luck held out forever, which meant it was time to get moving.
Gritting her teeth, Chelsie shoved herself upright and pulled out her phone, dialing up the car she kept in long-term storage for just such an emergency. It would have been safer to just cut back home and report, but she was supposed to be laying a false trail, and it wasn’t like she had enough power to get back to Heartstriker Mountain anyway. At this point, just standing unassisted was a challenge, so getaway vehicle it was. But as she was sending her GPS coordinates to the car’s autodrive for the pickup, a breeze brushed the back of her neck.
It was a tiny thing, just the briefest sensation of cool air wafting over her flushed skin, but Chelsie hadn’t survived as long as she had by ignoring the little signs. She dropped her phone and drew her sword in a single motion, spinning around with her blade up just in time to see the dragon step out of the shadows behind her.
“Gotcha,” Estella whispered, her arm shooting out to throw something long, black, and snaking around Chelsie’s neck.
She jerked back with a gasp, dropping her sword as she reached up to rip away whatever it was the seer had thrown at her throat, but there was nothing. No weapon, no talisman, nothing but her own skin and horrible feeling of a noose tightening, cutting off her air.
“You should be proud,” Estella said as Chelsie fell choking to her knees. “Of all Bethesda’s spawn, you were by far the hardest to corner.”
Chelsie ignored her, fumbling across the ground for her dropped sword only to have it knocked from her fingers when the seer kicked it away.
“I might not have been able to pull it off at all had you not shown me your weakness last month,” Estella continued, crouching down beside her. “I can’t tell you how hard I laughed when I discovered that the Heartstriker Enforcer has a weakness for whelps, but I must say it worked like a charm. All I had to do was drop a hint to Algonquin’s hunter so he’d put pressure on the babies, and pop.” She snapped her fingers. “You appear like a rabbit out of a hat.”
She smiled as she finished, but all Chelsie saw was red. “It was you,” she whispered. “Vann Jeger, the trap, it was all you.”
“Oh, child,” Estella said, her eyes gleaming like ice in the dark. “Haven’t you learned by now? It’s always me. Now go to sleep. We have much to do.”
The suffocating feeling grew heavier with every word Estella spoke, but Chelsie would have none of it. She would not go down like this. Not with so much left unfinished. Not to Estella. She had to escape. Had to get away.
The thought had barely cleared her mind when fire washed over her body, igniting the grass at her feet as her human disguise burned away. At this point, changing wasn’t even a conscious decision. It was instinct, the overwhelming need to run taking physical shape. But as she spread her still-forming wings to take off, Estella’s noose cinched tighter.
Maybe if she hadn’t been so weakened to start with she could have made it, or maybe she’d been doomed from the beginning. Either way, Chelsie barely made it ten feet into the air before she came crashing right back down, collapsing into the still smoldering grass at Estella’s feet. The last thing she saw with her darkening vision was the seer’s smug face hovering over her as sirens began to wail in the distance.
***
“Marci,” Julius said, nervously looking over his shoulder in the direction of the approaching sirens. “Time to go.”
“Just a sec,” she called from her crouch on top of the mountain of priceless, ancient, magical weapons that now stood like a monument in the middle of the field where they’d defeated Vann Jeger. “I’m almost done.”
Julius sighed. If he had a dollar for every time she’d said that… “I thought we were supposed to leave the weapons alone?”
“The ones that don’t belong to us, yes,” she said, grunting as she moved a battle ax that was almost as tall as she was. “But Ghost says Tyrfing’s in here. Vann Jeger must have taken it when Justin lost.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but I can get another sword, and the cops will be here any second.”
“But I’ve almost—ah ha!” She yanked her arm up, tugging a short, familiar, mirror-bright blade out of the pile. “Ta da!”
Happy as he was to see his sword again, Julius was far more relieved that she was finished. “Thank you,” he said quickly, running over to take it from her. “Now can we please—”
A flash of light cut him off. Somewhere on his left, something was flaring emerald green in the night. By the time Julius whipped his head around, though, it was gone. He was wondering if he’d imagined it when Marci yelled, “What was that?”
Julius wasn’t sure. It’d looked like dragon fire, but there was only one dragon currently in the DFZ who could produce green fire, and she certainly wouldn’t do so now. But even as he told himself it was probably just a really desperate hobo throwing weird stuff into his campfire, the wind shifted, bringing him the scent of ash and blood. Very familiar blood.
“Come on,” he said, stomach clenching as he ran back to the truck. “Let’s go look.”
Marci ran after him. “But didn’t you just say we had to get out of here?”
He nodded, tossing his recovered sword into the back of the truck cab before jumping in himself. “We’re just going to take a look,” he assured her as she got in. And make sure I’m wrong, he added to himself.
Any hope of that vanished as soon as they started driving. Even with the windows up, the smell of dragon smoke rapidly became overpowering as they drove less than a block to the place where they’d seen the light. Julius tried to hold on to a silver of optimism by telling himself that the smoke was probably just left over from the dragon’s escape, but even that hope went out the window when they rolled to a stop in front of a ruined convenience store that had been completely taken over by a tree.
“Holy—” Marci cried, leaning out the open window. “What is that?”
Julius swallowed against the knot in his throat as he stared wide eyed at the dragon curled in a ball at the base of the tree. “That’s my sister.”
Until this moment, Julius had never actually seen Chelsie in her true shape. Even when she’d snatched Justin out of the sky in front of him last month, he hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of a long, snaking shadow in the dark. He’d always just assumed she had some kind of magic that let her be so sneaky, like a camouflage spell or something. Now, though, he saw that the truth was much, much simpler. He’d never seen Chelsie flying because the feathered serpent lying on the grass was black. Not shiny black, either, but matte black, the kind of color even dragon eyes passed right over.
“Are you sure that’s your sister?” Marci whispered, pulling herself back inside the window. “I thought you guys were, you know, tropical colored?”
“We are,” Julius whispered back. “I think she dyes them, but that’s definitely Chelsie.” No other dragon in the world had that scent.
Marci grimaced. “What happened to her? Wasn’t she supposed to be leading the cops away?”
Julius had no idea, but with the sirens getting closer by the second, he knew what they had to do. “Come on,” he said, throwing open his door.
Marci scrambled out after him, and together they crept across what was left of the overgrown parking lot toward the sleeping dragon. The closer they got, the more worried Julius became. Given who they were approaching, he’d expected to be knocked on his back with a claw in his throat by now, but his sister hadn’t even cracked her eyes.
“Chelsie!” he called softly, reaching down to brush his fingers over her black feathers. “It’s me. Wake up.”
The dragon didn’t move. Worse, she didn’t even twitch, which made Julius’s blood run cold. Dragons were p
aranoid creatures by nature, but Chelsie was in a class by herself. If she wasn’t even demonstrating an involuntary threat response to another dragon touching her, something was seriously, seriously wrong. “Is she under a spell?”
“Nothing I can see,” Marci said, staring at the sleeping dragon in wonder. “You guys are seriously pretty in this form, though.”
Julius wasn’t sure if she meant magically or literally. Knowing Marci, probably both. Then again, weird as it felt to admit about his own sister, there was no denying that Chelsie—with her lithe snaking body, delicate eye-ridges, and elegantly tapered feathers—was a ridiculously beautiful dragoness. She was also a soon-to-be dead one if they didn’t get a move on.
“Chelsie!” he yelled, louder this time. “Chelsie!” Again, no response, and Julius stepped back with a curse, peering around the bushes at the flashing lights he could now see in the distance. “We have to get her out of here.”
“How?” Marci said, standing up from where she’d been cautiously petting Chelsie’s long feathers. “Look at her. Even curled into a ball, she’s the size of a tractor trailer. It’s not like we can just roll her into the back of the truck.” She bit her lip. “Isn’t there someone you can call for help with stuff like this? Like a Heartstriker hotline or something?”
“She is the Heartstriker hotline,” Julius said, pulling out his phone, though to call whom, he had no idea. Amelia was down, Bob was who knew where, and he didn’t trust any of his other siblings not to seize the opportunity to take Chelsie out while she was defenseless. He supposed he could call Bethesda, but given how she’d treated Amelia, Julius didn’t know if that was a good idea or not. Also, he really didn’t want to call his Mother for help after their last conversation.
He had to do something, though. Already, the first wave of police cars were pulling into the field where they’d killed Vann Jeger. No one was looking their way yet, but it was only a matter of time before they started searching the area. He was about to say screw it and call Bethesda anyway when his ears caught the soft but unmistakable sound of a phone vibrating.
