No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished (Heartstrikers 3) by Aaron Rachel

Author:Aaron, Rachel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban Fantasy/Dragons
Publisher: Aaron/Bach, LLC
Published: 2016-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Twenty minutes earlier, before Marci had even made it to the diner, Justin and Julius were in the golden elevator on their way to the top of the mountain to answer Bethesda’s summons.

Julius had actually toyed with the idea of not going. Two days after her overthrow, it was finally starting to sink in that he didn’t have to jump every time his mother said frog. Also, he’d desperately needed time to think over everything Chelsie had told him and find the angle that would let them win. It had to be there. He refused to accept that Bethesda actually had Chelsie—and apparently by extension, F-clutch, not to mention the rest of the clan—in an eternal trap. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a puzzle he could just breeze his way through, and it was hard to think when his mother kept calling and calling.

In the end, he’d decided to just go. He might not owe his mother obedience anymore, but he was the one who’d put her on the Council, and it was rude to just ignore her. Besides, it might actually be important, so he’d left the Fs’ hideout at the base of the mountain, grabbed his brother, and started up the mountain toward the opposite end of the Heartstriker world to see what she wanted.

As always, Frieda opened Bethesda’s door when he knocked. His mother’s private F seemed to have recovered from her time with Amelia, but there was still something off about the way she lowered her eyes when she saw Julius, shuffling back as if she were afraid to get close to him.

“Frieda,” he said gently. “Is everything oka—”

“She’s in the treasury,” she said, her eyes still locked on the floor as she pointed down the hall. “Giant door at the end. Can’t miss it.”

Julius and Justin exchanged a look, and the knight’s hand fell to his sword. “I’ll take point,” he said, stepping inside. “Let’s go.”

Julius nodded nervously, happy to let his much larger brother go first. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about his mother’s chambers felt off this morning, and it wasn’t just Frieda. Her nervousness could be easily explained by any number of the things that had happened since Bethesda was overthrown, but this uneasy feeling was new. A nebulous, malicious threat that hung over his mother’s newly cleaned rooms like old smoke.

It was a pity, too, because under different circumstances, Julius would have really enjoyed the trip. Unlike his short journey to the sitting room yesterday, the walk to the treasury took them straight through the heart of Bethesda’s lair. Here, the human-sized apartments widened into two far grander, dragon-sized caverns. One, the egg-laying chamber, was open and empty, but the other was sealed off with an enormous iron door that prickled with dragon magic.

Given the size of it, Julius didn’t even know how they were getting in. But his question was answered before he could ask when Justin walked right up and grabbed the giant metal slab of a door, yanking it open with a tug that would have pulled his arm off if he’d been human.

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