I slumped down on the chair nearest the door, exhausted, mentally bruised and battered. “I just want my son.”
“And you will have him. He will come here as soon as possible,” Gabriel said.
Hope flared within the dullness of pain inside. “He’s only nine,” I said.
“May and I will fetch him ourselves,” he answered smoothly. May smiled and twined her fingers through his. “We will let no harm come to him, of that I swear.”
I watched him for a minute, not sure whether I should trust him or not. A worried little voice warned that I knew little about these people, but they had taken very good care of me for the last five weeks, and I felt an odd bond with May, almost as if I had known her for a very long time. She seemed comfortable to me, trustworthy, and after giving it some thought, reluctantly I agreed. “All right. If you bring Brom to me today, I will stay. For a little bit. Just until you help me discover my memories, so I can prove to you that I’m not a dragon.”
Two dimples showed deep on either cheek as he smiled at me. I was unmoved by them. I didn’t actually distrust Gabriel, but he didn’t seem as familiar and comfortable to me as May, and the sense of power around him made me wary and left me feeling vaguely unsettled.
Brom, unfortunately, could not be whisked to me at a moment’s notice. After a lengthy conversation with Penny, the American friend who had taken Brom and me to her heart, she promised to hand him over to Gabriel and May when they arrived in Spain later that afternoon.
“I’ve never been to England,” Brom said when I told him he was to join me. “Not that I remember. Have I, Sullivan?”
I panicked. “Brom, you remember last Christmas, don’t you?”
“Last Christmas? When you got upset because I asked for a dissection kit and you wanted to give me a Game Boy, you mean?”
I relaxed, the sudden fear that my memory issues were hereditary—or that someone had been abusing his mind—fading into nothing. “Er . . . yes. That’s right.”
“What about it?”
“Just remember that sometimes, you may not understand why things are happening, but they turn out for the best,” I said in my “vague but wise” mom manner. “I want you to behave yourself with May and Gabriel when they get there, but if anything happens to them, you call me, all right?”
“Yeah, OK. Penny says I have to go pack now. Bye.”
I hung up the phone feeling relieved, but at the same time I was worried. Could I trust Gabriel and May? Where was Gareth, and why had he left Brom for so long? And what was going on with my brain? Was I insane, or just the victim of some horrible plot?
“I need some serious therapy,” I said aloud, thinking of the small garden plot that I shared with the other residents of our apartment house. It was my haven against daily trials and tribulations, providing me with boundless peace.
“All silver dragons like plants,” Kaawa said from behind me. “May hasn’t had time yet to take the garden in hand, but I’m sure she’d be happy if you wanted to tidy things up out there.”
I whirled around to pin her back with a look. “How did you know I was talking about a garden?”
She just smiled and gestured toward the French windows. Gabriel’s house, although in the middle of London, had a minuscule garden guarded by a tall redbrick wall. My heart lightened at the sight of tangled and overrun flower beds, and before I knew it, I was on my knees, my eyes shut as I sank my hands into the sun-warmed earth.
“I’ll leave you here. It will be four hours before Gabriel will reach your son,” she said, watching with amusement as I flexed my fingers in the soil, plucking out the weeds that choked a chrysanthemum.
“I know. The garden is as good a place as any to wait,” I said, looking about to see how bad it was. There were only three beds. One appeared to have suffered some calamity, since the wild lilac bush in it was crumpled to the ground, and wild grass filled the rest of the bed. The second contained miniature rhododendrons run amok, tangled up with irises and what looked to be phlox. The bed I knelt before contained autumn plants, all of which were threatened by the rampant weeds and wild grass.
Kaawa left, and I spent a pleasant hour clearing out the chrysanthemum, amaryllis, and saffron sprouts, worrying all the while about what had become of my life.
Chapter Three
“Where is she?”
The roar reached me, even hidden from view as I was in the farthest corner of the stable, behind the broken wagon that Dew, the smith, was supposed to have mended months ago.
The doors to the stable slammed shut with a force that I felt in the timbers behind my back. The horses inside with me protested with startled snorts and whinnies. Hastily, I set down the two kittens I had been nuzzling for comfort, returning them to their anxious mother before dusting off my knees and picking my way through the gloom of the stable. The man’s voice was deep, and he spoke in French, not the English of the serfs, but there was an accent to his voice that I had never heard.
“Where are you hiding her?”
Anger was rich in that voice, anger and something else, something I couldn’t define. I patted Abelard, my mother’s gelding, and slipped beside him to peek out through a rotten bit of wood next to his manger, watching as the warrior-mage stomped across the bailey, my father and mother trailing behind him.
“We are not hiding anyone, my lord,” Papa said, his tone apologetic.
My mouth dropped open in surprise. Papa never apologized to anyone! He was a famous mage, one of so much renown that other mages travelled for months just to consult with him. And yet here he was, following the warrior around, bleating like a sheep that had lost its dam.
“Kostya saw her,” the warrior snarled, spinning around to glare at Papa, the tall guards moving in a semicircle behind him. “Do you call us liars?”
“No, my lord, never that!” Papa wrung his hands, my mother next him looking pale and frightened. “If you will just come back inside the hall, I will explain to you—”
“Explain what? That you are holding a dragon prisoner, a female dragon of tender years?”
“She is not a prisoner—” Papa started to say, but I stopped listening for a moment. A dragon? Here? I had heard tales of such beings, but had never seen one. Margaret told me they did not really exist, that it was just a bit of foolishness spoken by men who had too much wine, but once I had overheard my mother talking to her maid about a female dragon she had befriended in her youth. Perhaps Mama had hidden her here all these years. Who could it be? Leah, the nurse who tended both Margaret and me? One of my mother’s serving women? The flatulent Lady Susan?
“I just wager you it’s her,” I told Abelard. “She is very dragonlike.”
“Bring her forth!” the warrior demanded, and I pushed Abelard’s head aside in order to get a better view of the bailey, watching with bated breath to see the dragon.
“My lord, there are circumstances that you are not aware of. Ysolde has no knowledge of her ancestry. We have sheltered her as best we could, indeed, raised her as our own daughter—”
My skin crawled. My blood curdled. My brain exploded inside my head. I stared at Papa, my papa, the papa I had known for my entire life, unable to believe my ears.
“—she has been protected from those who would ill use her, as sworn by my lady wife to the dragon who bore her here.”
“Me?” I said, touching my throat when my voice came out no more than a feeble squeak. “I’m a dragon?”
“That is none of my concern,” the warrior said now, his voice thick with menace. “She is a dragon, and evidently of age. She belongs with her own kind, not with humans.”
My own kind? Scaly, long-tailed, fire-breathing monsters? A sob of denial caught in my throat, the noise almost inaudible, and yet as I stood there reeling from the verbal blows my father—the man I thought of as my father—dealt me, the warrior spun around, the gaze of his black eyes so piercing, I could swear he could see straight through the wood of the stable.
Run, my
mind told me as the man started forward toward the stable doors, and I knew at that moment that he was one of them. He was a monster the like of which I’d never seen. My brain didn’t wait for me to absorb that knowledge. Flee, it urged. Flee!
I didn’t stop to question the wisdom of that command. I spun on my heels, racing down the narrow aisle of the stable to the far corner, where a small window had been cut in order to pass hay through from the fields. I wasn’t fast enough, however, not if the roar of fury that followed me was anything to go by.
“Stop!” the warrior bellowed as I leaped through the window, not even pausing as I hit the ground hard before I was off again, racing around the pens holding the animals to be slaughtered, dashing between the small huts housing craftsmen and their families, dodging chickens, dogs, and occasionally serfs as I raced for the postern gate along the west curtain.
“Lady Ysolde,” John, the man on guard at the gate, called in surprise as I rounded a cart loaded with wool destined for the market, not even slowing down as I flung myself past him and through the postern gate. “Are you off to the village—hey, now! Who are you, and what right do you have to be chasing Lady Ysol—oof!”
I didn’t stop to see how John fared, although I sent up a small prayer that he hadn’t been hurt by the warrior. I ran along the rocky outcropping that led down into the village, the moat not coming around to this face of the castle since it would be impossible for anyone to scale the cliffs that hugged the west and south sides. Behind me I heard the noise of pursuit, but I had always been fast on my feet, and I dug deep for speed as I leaped down the last of the rocks and headed for the trees beyond the village. They marked the edge of the thick forest where I had spent many an hour, wandering pathways known to only a few. If I could just make it there, then I could hide from the warrior . . . and then what?
I didn’t stop to answer that question. I just knew that I needed to be by myself, to absorb the strangeness that had suddenly gripped me. And I couldn’t do that with the intense, black-haired dragon storming around me.
He was still behind me as I skirted a newly plowed field, ignoring the calls of greeting from the serfs as I raced by, intent on my goal, greeting the dappled shade of the outer fringes of the forest with relief. I’d made it, no doubt due to the extra weight the warrior wore in the form of his armor. I risked a quick look behind me as I sped around an ancient birch tree. The warrior was about thirty feet behind me, but just beyond him, his guards approached on horseback, leading his horse.
“By the rood!” I swore to myself as I leaped over a downed tree trunk, heading for the densest part of the forest.
The sounds of pursuit were muted in the calm of the forest. Birdsong rose high above me as the swallows dipped and spun in the sunlight, making elegant arcs in the air. Patches of sunlight shone here, and I slowed down, trying to control my breathing, picking through the muffled noises of the animals of the forest as they went about their business. Somewhere near, a badger was snuffling along the ground, disturbing earth and fallen leaves. A woodpecker drilled a few yards away, while farther afield, foliage rustled and snapped as a large animal, probably a stag or hind, grazed. In the distance, the jangling of horses’ harnesses was audible. I smiled to myself at that, pleased that the growth was too thick for the warrior’s men to ride through.
I was just looking around for a suitable tree that I could climb and hide myself in when a man’s voice sounded, uncomfortably near. “Where are you, chérie ? You do not need to be afraid of me. I will not hurt you.”
I snorted to myself, trying to pinpoint the origin of the voice. Usually I had very good hearing, but the denseness of the trees and sounds of the forest combined to muffle the warrior’s voice, making it hard to judge where he was.
“We want only to help you,” he continued. I moved around the tree, clutching the rough trunk as I peered into the depths in the direction I thought the voice came from. A branch moved, but before I had time to react, a wren popped out and gave me a curious look.
“Are you frightened, chérie?”
I strained my ears, but it was impossible to pinpoint a direction. Which is the only reason I called out, “No.”
Laughter edged his voice. “Then why do you run from me?”
“Why are you chasing me?” I asked boldly, moving to the cover of another tree, peering intently around it for any signs of the man.
“We only just learned of your existence from the mortals.”
The scorn he put in the last words irritated me. “Those mortals are my family!” I yelled.
“No, chérie. We are your family. We want to bring you home, where you will be taken care of and taught.”
I didn’t think much of that statement.
“I know you have no knowledge of us,” the man continued. Was his voice fainter? Had he been misled into moving away from me? “But we will correct that. We will teach you what it is to be a dragon.”
His voice was softer. I smiled to myself as I hugged the tree. “I don’t wish to be a dragon, warrior. I wish simply to be myself.”
Another man’s voice called in the distance. I smiled again and turned around, intent on making my way out of the forest while the intense dragon and his guard stumbled around it searching for me.
The warrior was leaning on the tree behind me, watching me with a half smile that made my blood freeze. “That is all we wish for you, too—that you be yourself.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, momentarily too intrigued to be incensed by his trick.
He shrugged and strolled toward me, all long- legged grace and power. “There are many things you will learn.” He stopped before me, reaching out to touch my face. I slapped his hand. He laughed. “You have fire. You will learn well.”
“And you are impertinent. What makes you think I’m who you think I am?”
“You need proof?” he asked, his eyebrows raised, but there was still amusement in his onyx eyes.
“That I’m a gigantic scaly beast who breathes fire? Yes, I think I’m going to need proof,” I said.
“There is a way,” he said, taking my arm, and with a quick jerk, he ripped the laces from the wrists of my tunic. He bent over my wrist as if he were going to bite it, paused, and looked up at me, an odd expression on his face. “How old are you, chérie?”
“My name is Ysolde,” I said, trying to pull my arm free. His fingers tightened around it. “Ysolde de Bouchier, and I am not your chérie.”
“How old are you?” he repeated, a stubborn glint in his eyes.
“I have seen seventeen summers, not that it is any concern of yours,” I said primly.
He grimaced, then shrugged, and instead of biting my hand, he pulled me up against his chest, his arms around me in an unbreakable vise. “This is the test, chérie.”
His mouth was on mine before I could do more than slap my hands on his chest. I was no stranger to being kissed—Mark, the brewer’s son, was always happy to hide behind the ale barrels with me and kiss me as long as I liked—but this was not a kiss as I knew it. Where Mark’s kisses had been interesting and vaguely pleasurable, this was a kiss of an entirely different variety. The warrior’s mouth was hot on mine, hotter than I had ever experienced, hot and sweet and spicy all at the same time, as if he’d been eating spiced plums. His hands moved down my back, holding my hips, pulling me closer to his body, his tongue teasing the seam of my lips even as his fingers dug into my hips.
With a frustrated snarl, he suddenly pushed me away. I stood shocked to my toes by the kiss, watching with astonishment as he doubled over, sliding his mail hauberk off over his head. He stood back up, pulling off the padding armor, then the leather jerkin beneath it, his eyes glittering like sunlight sparkling off rocks in a stream.
“Now,” he said.
“Now?” I asked, not understanding, taking a step back.
He made a noise in his chest that sounded like a growl, his arms around me again as he pressed me up against the tree trunk.
?
??Now I will prove to you what you are,” he said just before his mouth descended again, his body holding me against the tree. Gone was the mail that stood between us; now I was smashed up against his body, aware of the difference between his hard lines and my softer curves. But it was his mouth that captured and held my attention as his tongue swept along my lips again, urging me to open them. I did so, goose bumps prickling down my arms as his tongue swept inside, touching my own, tasting me even as his hands pulled my hips tighter against his, his fingers cupping my bottom in a way that was shockingly intimate and wildly thrilling at the same time.
His tongue twined around mine, and I gave up all thoughts of fighting, tasting him as he tasted me, reveling in the groan of pleasure he gave when I mimicked his action and let my tongue dance into his mouth.
Heat blasted me then, heat of such intensity I swore I was going to go up in flames, the fire of it pouring into me and setting my soul alight. Impossibly, the kiss deepened, the warrior pulling me upward along the tree trunk until my feet dangled a good foot off the ground, my mouth at the same height as his. I wrapped my arms around his back and gave myself up to the heat, to the pleasure he was stirring with just the touch of his mouth. The heat was in me and around me and through me, and with every second it filled me, my heart sang. I was consumed by it, burning just as bright as the biggest bonfire, my soul soaring with the sensation. I didn’t want it to stop, never wanted to stop kissing this strange, handsome man.
“That, chérie, is the test,” he said, his face tight with some emotion as he let me slide down his body.
I blinked at him a couple of times, trying to regain my wits. “Test?” I asked stupidly, my mind clearly too dazzled by that kiss to do anything but parrot what was said to me.
“Only a dragon or a mate can take dragon fire and live,” he said, his lips almost touching mine. His eyes were as deep and shiny as the bit of onyx hung in a pearl necklace that my mother sometimes wore.
“Who are you?” I asked, searching his face, memorizing it in order to tuck away the memory of that kiss.