Julius couldn’t begin to respond to a statement like that. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to matter. Bethesda took his obedience as a given, no confirmation needed.
“Good boy,” she cooed. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“Yes, Mother,” he whispered, but she’d already hung up, leaving Julius alone with his growing panic.
He forced it down with a deep breath. Panic was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now. His only chance to survive was to dig up the calm, plotting dragon that lurked somewhere inside him and figure this out. But as he was sitting down on the bed to do just that, his phone rang again.
Julius swore under his breath, but when the AR threw the name up in front of him, it wasn’t his mother. It was the Unknown Caller, which was almost worse. With a surge of longing for the days when the powerful members of his family couldn’t be bothered to look his direction, much less call him, Julius brought the phone back to his ear. “Hello, Bob.”
“Wrong.”
The cold female voice chilled him to the bone, and Julius almost hung up right there. The only reason he didn’t was because he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Hello, Chelsie.”
He could almost hear the Heartstriker family enforcer giving him her famous deadly smile before she ordered, “Go to the window.”
Julius obeyed at once, standing up and walking over to the suite’s enormous window overlooking Lake St. Clare. He was wondering if Chelsie was going to tell him to jump out of it when she said, “Look down.”
He did, and found her at once.
Thanks to its location up on the skyways, the Royal Hotel was perched high above the lake it overlooked. It also boasted an impressive elevated boardwalk that extended almost fifty feet out over the water below. It was the middle of the day, and the bright white boards were packed with tourists and other wealthy people getting lunch from the numerous restaurants and cafes that ringed the edges of the cliff-like dock. From his high window, the crowd looked more like an undulating mass than a group of individuals, but even so, Chelsie was impossible to miss thanks to the ten-foot ring of empty space the colorful river of humanity was giving her.
No matter how civilized people became, some instincts never really went away. To the casual observer, Chelsie would look completely human, just another woman enjoying the summer sun on a bench by the water. Julius couldn’t even tell what she was wearing from so far away, but it wouldn’t be anything crazy. A dragon’s predatory aura didn’t rely on trappings or appearances, and Chelsie’s was a mile wider than most when she chose to let it show. Even safely tucked inside his hotel room a dozen stories up, Julius could feel the bite of her attention like an icy claw on his spine, and his heart started pounding all over again.
“I have more important things to do with my time, so I’ll be brief,” she said. “I know Mother just called you.”
The obvious question had barely formed in Julius’s mind before Chelsie answered it. “I’ve lived with her for a long time. I know how she thinks. I also know that you are likely a mess right now. I don’t blame you for feeling that way, but I do want you to look out at the water.”
Her tiny figure turned toward the lake as she said this. Julius’s eyes followed, but all he saw was the white pillar of Algonquin’s tower.
“That’s right,” Chelsie said, her voice barely more than a whisper even over the magically augmented speakers. “That is who rules this city. I know you’re feeling backed against the wall at the moment. You might even be considering doing something reckless, so this is a courtesy call to remind you of the price of acting out in a city where the slightest failure in judgment could bring the Lady of the Lakes down on all our heads.”
“Wait,” Julius said, confused. “You want me to watch out for Algonquin? You’re not calling to tell me not to act out against Mother?”
Chelsie scoffed. “My job is to keep the Heartstriker clan alive and in line, not babysit her plans.”
There was a note of ingrained frustration in her voice that Julius had heard a thousand times in his own, and for a moment, he felt a whisper of empathy for the sister who’d had to deal with their mother far more and far longer than he had.
“I’m not telling you not to crack,” Chelsie went on, her voice flicking back to its normal sharpness like it had never left. “I’m just asking that you do it in a way that won’t cause trouble for the family. I’d hate to have to come down on you for something as stupid and preventable as making a scene in Algonquin’s city.”
“I have no intention of making a scene anywhere,” Julius said. “But I appreciate the warning.”
“Everyone gets one,” his sister replied. “And for what it’s worth, I wish you good luck. You’ll need it.”
Julius placed his hand on the cold glass, unexpectedly touched. “Thank you, Chelsie.”
“I’m not doing it for your sake,” Chelsie snapped. “I’m doing it for mine. I hate killing dragons under fifty. You’re barely more than hatchlings, and it’s just depressing. So don’t make me do it. And don’t forget I’m watching.”
Like Julius could. But before he could say anything else, the call cut out. He lowered his phone with a sigh, watching his sister’s tiny figure far below as she got up from the bench and vanished into the colorful, swirling crowds that mobbed the boardwalk. When he could no longer see her, he sank back down on his bed.
It was nice to know Chelsie didn’t relish the idea of killing him. That wouldn’t stop her, of course, but his sister’s unexpected warning had made him feel slightly less alone in the face of Bethesda’s plots. But while it was comforting to know he wasn’t the only one, his sister had been absolutely right. He was up against the wall, and his only hope of getting down again was to find Katya as soon as possible. He’d just started typing a message to his old guildmate to see if his tracking program had found anything when he heard a soft knock on the door that connected his suite to Marci’s.
It was a sign of how flustered he was that he went ahead and told her to come in before he remembered he wasn’t wearing anything but his boxers. Thankfully, he’d been working on his speed all morning, and he managed to grab his pants and shove them on before she opened the door.
“Hey,” she said as she came in, “I just—” Her voice cut out as she stopped short, eyes flicking to the bathroom full of soggy towels, then to the bed torn up by his tossing and turning, and finally to him, standing shirtless and sweaty in front of the window. “Rough night?”
“Sort of,” Julius said, wiping his face with the towel around his neck so she wouldn’t see his embarrassed wince. When he looked up again, Marci’s eyes were locked on his bare chest. She stared just long enough for Julius to see her cheeks turn bright pink before she whirled around and walked swiftly to the doorway that led into the relatively untouched living room portion of Julius’s suite.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said when she got there. “But I heard you talking, so…” She stopped with a frustrated sound, drumming her fingers on the door frame. Then, like she’d come to a decision, Marci turned around again and looked him straight in the eye. “I wanted to tell you I’m very sorry about what happened earlier.”
After the horrors of the last twenty minutes, it took Julius several seconds to figure out what Marci was talking about. By the time he remembered, she’d already blazed ahead.
“My actions were completely out of line,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. “I breached the bounds of a professional relationship, and I sincerely apologize. My only excuse is that I was exhausted and making bad decisions, but I’m feeling much better now, and I promise I’ll never put you in that position ever again. So, if it’s okay with you, I’d like it if we could just forget about the whole thing and move on with our business together.”