Love in the Time of Dragons

  “No one is killing anyone—you bastard!” I gasped as Dr. Kostich, whirling around when the wind caused the door to close loudly, sent a blast of arcane power into the tray of leaded crystal goblets. “Those were for the après-sárkány lemon sorbet! Right! That’s it! No more Miss Nice Whatever-the-hell-I-am!”

  “Dragon,” Dr. Kostich said at the same moment Baltic said, “Mate,” and Jim added, in not nearly a quiet enough voice, “Crazy lady?”

  I snatched up a small Chippendale chair with a cream and pale blue striped seat, and lunged toward the mage with it held out before me, as if I were a lion tamer and he were a particularly obstreperous lion. “Back! Back, I say! You can’t have the sword! You can’t have Baltic; he’s mine! Go away, and don’t bother us again! Er . . . do I get paid for the last two weeks even though you put the interdiction on me? Because I haven’t seen my paycheck deposited yet, and I promised Brom he could pick out a large dehydrator for his birthday, and that’s only a couple of weeks away.”

  A burst of whitish blue light flared in front of me, the chair I held disintegrating as the arcane power blasted it to smithereens. I stared in surprise first at my hand, which held one surviving leg of the chair, then up to Dr. Kostich. “You aimed that at me!” I said, aghast.

  A low growl of anger came from Baltic, and suddenly, the room was full of a white dragon, fire erupting around him as he slammed into Dr. Kostich, the two of them tumbling to the highly polished marble floor in a confusion of dragon limbs, tail, and flailing mage legs.

  “No one touches my mate,” Baltic snarled, pinning Kostich to the ground, puffing a few wisps of smoke a scant inch from Kostich’s face.

  “Oooh. He’s drooling on him. That’s just completely gross,” Jim said, watching from the safety of the stairs.

  “Those who live in glass houses,” I told the demon before marching over to Kostich’s head and poking at him with the chair leg. “And you owe us for this chair, too! It was an antique!”

  Kostich squawked something, his face beet red, his body writhing as he desperately tried to get air into his squashed lungs.

  No one heard the front door open until the voice spoke.

  “Are we early? Oh. Er. Hello, Dr. Kostich.”

  “Heya, Ash,” Jim said, hopping down the stairs to greet its demon lord. “Lemon sorbet’s not ready yet. Why don’t you come back in an hour?”

  “Uh . . .” I blinked at the people crowding the doorway. Aisling, Drake, and his two redheaded bodyguards were crammed into the door, all with the same identical expressions of surprise. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Aisling said, looking at where Baltic was flattening Dr. Kostich. “Hello, Baltic. I don’t think we’ve formally met.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Dr. Kostich spat out, somewhat breathily, to be sure. “I lead the Committee!”

  I straightened up and smiled at the dragons as Aisling stepped carefully over the broken crystal goblets, Drake right behind her. “You are a little bit early, but that’s all right, although as Jim says, the sorbet isn’t ready yet. Oh, hell! Jim!”

  “I can have you all banished to the Akasha! I’m just that powerful!” Dr. Kostich wheezed.

  I ignored him and turned to glare at the demon. “What? Who? Me? I wasn’t smelling his butt!” Jim said quickly, backing away from where Baltic lay crushing Dr. Kostich.

  “You’re all going to be charged for these grievous crimes against my august person!”

  Baltic swung his neck around to send a little circle of fire at the demon. I caught the fire as it passed me and tossed it back to him with a frown.

  “You’re supposed to be elsewhere, so that Aisling has to make Drake do what she says!” I told the demon. “You can’t be a hostage for their good behavior if you’re right here!”

  “That’s not my fault,” Jim said, sitting on Kostich’s foot.

  “Including the demon, who has just broken my foot! Get off, you soulless beast of Abaddon!”

  “Aisling is the one who came early,” Jim added.

  I frowned at the woman as she stopped in front of Baltic and Dr. Kostich. “You did this deliberately, didn’t you? You came here early just so you would catch me in the middle of my preparations, just so you could make me look bad. That’s really not at all nice, and after I went to the trouble of making a cheesecake!”

  “What sort of preparations?” Drake asked, pulling Aisling back a couple of paces when Dr. Kostich freed one hand and tried to grab her. “Were you setting traps for us? Arranging for an ambush? Another bomb?”

  “Lemon sorbet and canapés,” Jim said, drooling on the mage’s leg. “Ysolde let me taste-test the smoked salmon rolls, too. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to the kitchen. Brom is in there with Pavel, helping him with the cucumber-crab munchies, and the kid has a hollow leg. I bet he’s getting to lick out the dish.”

  “I insist that you free me!” Dr. Kostich demanded. “I will not be able to eat canapés if my ribs are crushed into my lungs!”

  “You’re catering the sárkány?” Aisling asked, looking almost as if she didn’t believe it.

  “There, you see? Even the green mate agrees it’s ridiculous to serve food at such a time,” Baltic told me with infuriating self-righteousness.

  “I am not catering anything,” I said with a frown at both of them. “I’m just making a few little nibblies to enjoy while we’re discussing this issue of whether or not they’re going to execute me.”

  “What?” Baltic asked, his head whipping around to me.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said, nodding toward the others.

  “You’ll tell me about it now!” he ordered, tapping his claws in an annoyed fashion.

  “Argh!” Dr. Kostich yelled.

  Baltic shifted his forefoot so his claws weren’t directly on Kostich’s face. “What do you mean, whether or not they will execute you? What reason does the weyr have for wishing you dead?”

  “That’s it! I have reached the end of my patience. I will destroy you myself if no one is going to save me from this fat dragon!”

  “He is not fat,” I snapped, and thought seriously about kicking the archimage. “All dragons look like that!”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you were lying here in my place,” Kostich grumbled.

  Jim opened its mouth to say something, but stopped when both Aisling and I glared at it.

  “Er . . . why is Baltic lying on Dr. Kostich?” Aisling asked.

  “Well, you know, I’ve heard a rumor that Ysolde kind of likes a little mano a mano action—” Jim started to say. I threw the chair leg at it, followed by a small ball of arcane magic. Midway to the demon, it turned into another banana. “Ooh, more snacks. Thanks.”

  “Mate, you will answer me!”

  “I can’t see. Everything is going black. If you kill me, I swear I will haunt you all!”

  “Did you just conjure a banana at Jim?” Aisling asked, taking a step to the side to watch Jim eat the banana.

  “Yes.” I sighed, gesturing toward my former employer. “He put an interdict on me. None of my magic works right.”

  “You shouldn’t have magic, period, and you won’t by the time I’m through with you and this obese behemoth—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, tugging on Baltic’s tail. “Let him up. If we’re going to have explanations, we’d do better having them in a civilized manner.”

  “With lemon sorbet and bacon-wrapped mushroom caps,” Jim agreed.

  Baltic glared down at Kostich, who was moving feebly beneath him, but shifted back into human form, dusting himself off as he got to his feet.

  The two green dragon bodyguards helped Dr. Kostich up, half carrying him over to a chair where he collapsed, breathing heavily and spreading fulminating glares amongst everyone present.

  Silence fell. Baltic and Drake stared at each other for a few seconds.

  “Baltic,” Drake said at last when Aisling nudged him with her elbow.

  “Drake Vireo,?
?? Baltic said, acknowledging the greeting.

  They stared some more, not outright growling at each other, but I could tell their hackles were up.

  “Drake,” Aisling said, the word full of unspoken meaning as she nodded toward us.

  He sighed. I tried not to giggle at the martyred look on his face. “You look well, Ysolde. As does your mate.”

  “Thank you,” I said, glancing at Baltic. He stared moodily at Drake. I pinched his arm. He continued to stare. I dug my nails into his wrist until he snapped, “For god’s sake, woman! I am the dread wyvern Baltic! I do not make polite conversation!”

  “You do now. Go ahead. It won’t hurt you.”

  He took Drake’s martyred look to a whole new level of pain. “My mate has decreed that you are welcome in our home.”

  “You can do better than that,” I said, pinning him back with one of my most effective mom looks.

  “One day, mate, you will push me too far!” he informed me with narrowed eyes and flared nostrils.

  I kissed the tip of his nose. He just looked even more outraged.

  “Go on. You can do this.”

  A small wisp of smoke escaped one nostril. I smiled at it; his answering scowl promised retribution at the earliest opportunity. But in the end, he managed to say to Drake, “Your appearance is much as I remember it from the last time I saw you.”

  “Now that didn’t hur—”

  “The last time you tried to kill me, that is,” Baltic interrupted. “When you ran me through with a long sword, and tried to decapitate me with a battle-ax. I believe you also shot a few crossbow bolts into my legs in an attempt to break the bones.”

  Silence filled the hall again. Drake studiously picked a piece of nonexistent lint off his sleeve.

  “And if I’m not mistaken, you had a dagger or two that you used on my spleen.”

  Aisling stared at her husband, who was now blithely examining a painting on the wall.

  “Not to mention the grappling hook that you creatively used by sinking it deep into my—”

  “That’s your idea of a welcome, is it?” I asked, stopping Baltic before he could make me sick to my stomach.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t mention the two morning stars he used to try to bash out my brains. I could have, but I knew you would prefer to keep things on a social level.”

  “I think that’s one for our team,” Jim said, nodding its approval.

  Aisling transferred her gaze to it. “Hello! You’re my demon! You’re on our team, not theirs!”

  “Soldie kidnapped me. That means I’m on her team until she lets me go. Right, guys?”

  “Why do I suspect that the only reason you want to be on my team is because I have a kitchen full of canapés?” I asked it.

  “A demon has to have priorities.”

  “Jim, heel,” Aisling said wearily.

  “Oh, fine!” I stopped the demon as it was about to obey. “Just go right ahead and ruin all of my plans! You aren’t supposed to be here yet. Jim is supposed to be hidden away! I try to have a nice sárkány, but no, everyone has to ruin it.”

  “Hello,” May said, popping up behind the two red-haired bodyguards who had taken up positions behind Drake. She slipped between them, looking around with interest. “Are we late?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Why does Dr. Kostich have his shirt off?”

  “I’m checking for broken ribs,” the mage answered May, looking up. “Is the healer here? I will need witnesses to the assault charges I will be laying against these dragons.”

  “Yes, he’s here. Gabriel?”

  The two guards moved aside to allow Gabriel’s entrance.

  “Good afternoon, Ysolde.” His eyes flickered to Baltic, narrowing on him.

  The air positively bristled with electricity. I scooted in front of Baltic, so my back was against his chest. “No fighting. I’m tired of fighting. People who fight will not get any lemon sorbet. If you insist on ignoring me, I will turn you into a banana. Got that?”

  “Oh, man!” Jim complained behind us. “Way to ruin a good sárkány.”

  Gabriel looked startled. “A banana?”

  “Her magic is off. Dr. Kostich did something to her,” Aisling told him.

  “Interdict,” Dr. Kostich snapped, still feeling his ribs. “The fat dragon and she will pay for this.”

  “He is not fat!” I yelled. “He’s just big- boned! Look!” I yanked the tail of Baltic’s shirt out of his pants, pulling it up to expose his belly. “See? Classic six-pack!”

  “Oooh, very nice,” Aisling said, admiring Baltic’s lovely ripple of muscles.

  He rolled his eyes and tucked his shirt back into his pants.

  Drake set fire to Aisling’s feet.

  “I was just looking,” she told him. “I’m allowed to look.”

  Drake’s eyes were shiny emeralds. Pissed-off shiny emeralds. “No, you’re not.”

  “Look, you’re in enough trouble already, Mr. Having Foursome Orgies in Medieval France.”

  “It’s all that lemon sorbet you’re feeding him, no doubt,” Dr. Kostich said to me, pulling up his pant leg to look at his shin. “Very fattening. Well, you won’t have any of that while you’re suffering for eternity in the Akasha, so you might as well enjoy it one last time.”

  “Lemon sorbet? I love lemon sorbet,” a light, airy voice said, followed by the arrival of May’s twin, Cyrene. “Where’s the sorbet?”

  Kostya was on her heels, a fact Baltic didn’t realize until the black wyvern entered the house.

  “Traitor!” Baltic suddenly roared, shoving me aside, shifting into dragon form again. I tripped over Jim and fell onto the bottom stair, my head hitting the chair leg where it lay.

  “Baltic!” Kostya screamed in reply, and he too changed. Everyone scooted to the sides of the hall as the black and white dragons tumbled around, their claws slashing, dragon fire blasting everything.

  “I have had enough!” I yelled at the top of my voice, and snatching up the chair leg, started beating the two dragons with it. “You boys are not going to fight in my house!”

  “Uh-oh. Someone’s in trouble with Mom,” Jim said. “You better watch out, Balters, or she’ll bananate you.”

  “Mate!” Baltic protested as I whomped him on the butt with the chair leg.

  Kostya snarled and lunged at Baltic, but I smacked him under the chops with the chair leg, causing him to stop and shake his head, a shocked look on his dragon face.

  “You change back, both of you, or else it’s banana time!” I said, shaking the chair leg at them.

  “This is intolerable,” Baltic said, shifting back as he stalked toward me, his hands on his hips. “You will not treat me in this manner! I am a wyvern!”

  “Of what sept?” Kostya asked, wiping a thin trickle of blood from his nose as he, too, shifted into human form.

  “We’ll get to that at the sárkány,” I said, absorbing the fire that Baltic snorted on me. “Calm down, please, Baltic. I know you feel that Kostya betrayed you, but . . . but . . . oh, no, not again . . .”

  The world spun. I reached out blindly, desperate to find Baltic, his hand catching mine just as I swirled into nothing.

  Nothing but white. It was all around me, biting cold and deep into my blood, roaring in my ears. The roaring resolved itself into the sound of the wind, an endless shriek that whirled around and through me.

  The white ebbed and flowed in time with the wind, and I realized that I was standing in the middle of a blizzard.

  “Snow,” a voice said behind me.

  I turned. Baltic still held my hand, looking around us with interest.

  “What are you doing here? This is a vision. You’re not supposed to be in my visions.”

  “I participated in the last one you had,” he pointed out.

  “That wasn’t really a vision. It was just more a reliving of a moment in time, triggered by the love token.” I touched the chain I wore around my neck, the token lying between my breasts,
my fingers trailing down the front of the fur- lined cloak that was clasped about my neck. “This is different. This is the same sort of vision or dream that I’ve had before.”

  “Perhaps the shaman is right, and your dragon self is urging you to wake up,” he suggested, turning around. “Dauva. We’re on the hill outside of Dauva.”

  “I don’t think it’s quite that simple.”

  “Ysolde!”

  I whirled when my name was carried on the wind.

  “Constantine!” Baltic snarled, reaching for the sword that he no longer carried.

  A dark shape emerged from the whirling snow, his hair white with it as he stretched his hands out to me. “My love, you should not be out here. If one of my men had seen you cross before I did—”

  “You will die for that!” Baltic shouted, leaping forward to grab Constantine, but nothing met his grasping hands, his momentum sending him straight through Constantine to a deep snowdrift some feet behind.

  “I had to come,” I heard myself say, evidently locked into the past enough to repeat what I’d said so many centuries before.

  “Mate!” Baltic gasped, getting to his feet. The pain in his face was almost more than I could bear. I reached out for him, but it was Constantine who took my hand.

  “My love, I knew you would come to me one day.”

  “No!” Baltic snarled.

  “No,” I repeated, pulling my hand from Constantine’s grip, and shaking my head, the hood of my cloak sliding back, leaving me exposed. “My heart belongs to Baltic, and it always will.”

  Baltic stood up to his knees in the snow, his dark eyes watchful and wary.

  “I came here not to give myself to you, but to plead with you to leave. Leave now, before anyone else dies. This battle between you and Baltic is for nothing, a senseless slaughter, and I will not have the blood of any more innocent dragons staining my soul.”

  “You are my mate.” Despite the roar of the wind, Constantine’s voice was low and rough. “He took you from me. It is my right to reclaim you.”

  “She is mine!” Baltic growled.

  “You know that Baltic holds my heart—I’ve told you that often enough. You must believe me when I say nothing will change that. Please respect my decision, and leave us in peace.”