“Marriage is a mortal convention.” He tried for a light tone, but regretted the words when she slid off him and got to her feet, taking a towel with her when she returned to the bedroom. He watched her walk away—admiring her legs and ass as she did so—frowning to himself over the unpleasant emotion that was filling him.
Regret. It burned with a dull ache. He disliked it intensely. He also didn’t care for this sense of insecurity that gripped him when he watched Bee climb into his bed. Had she been serious about him binding himself to her via mortal conventions? Was she simply testing him? Or was she teasing? Dammit, he didn’t know the answer to any of those questions, and that annoyed him most of all.
“What are you doing?” he asked after he toweled off and went to stand next to the bed.
She was on her side, the sheets tucked around her, watching him. “I’m going to sleep. Unless you’re going to kick me out of your room, but I assume you won’t do that because you enjoyed yourself a lot a few minutes ago, and also because you’re a gentleman. And you don’t strike me as someone who gets into a wham, bam, thank you ma’am mindset. Do you want me to stay, Constantine?”
He hesitated, unsure of whether she meant permanently or just for the night. Wyverns, he decided as he strode to the other side of the bed, did not do unsure any better than they did insecure and regret. “Forever, or for tonight?” he asked.
She gave him a long, unreadable look before answering, “Either I’m more tired than I thought I was, or you’re being deliberately enigmatic. No, that’s not the word I mean. Inscrutable? My brain is too frazzled right now—let’s leave the talk for the future of our relationship aside for the rest of the night. Or morning, rather, since it’s almost dawn now.”
He thought about that for a few minutes, decided that she had a point, and slid into bed beside her. “Very well. You’d tell me if you hurt.” It was a statement, not a question, and Bee took it as such without animosity.
“Yes, I’d tell you. And yes, I’m human and vulnerable to things like buildings being blown apart around us, but not many of us have magic rings that protect us, so you don’t have to worry that I’m about to collapse. To be honest, the scene in the shower did more to wear me out than any of the other activities of the night, including Charming the curse.” She smiled, rolling over so that she was tucked against his side, one arm draped across his belly. “Be honest, now—you enjoyed the water, didn’t you?”
“I enjoyed you,” he qualified. “The water was a necessary evil.”
“Hrmph. Obstinate dragon.” She snuggled in even closer, and he gave a heartfelt sigh of contentment as he wrapped an arm over her and breathed in her clean, sunshine scent.
Fifteen
“I don’t know why you think we need to meet with everyone. I mean, we know Bael is in Paris, or at least he was last night, and I can’t think why he’d leave unless something called him away. So why aren’t we tracking him down instead of talking with your dragon friends?”
“A sarkany has been called by Drake. I am a wyvern, thus I must attend.”
I got out of the cab that stopped at Aisling and Drake’s house, and gave Constantine a side-eye as he paid off the driver before he hefted the box that had sat next to us on the seat. “If I pointed out the obvious, would you find it obnoxious?”
“What obviousness do you mean?” he asked, throwing grammar to the wind.
I followed him to the front door. “That you’re not a wyvern anymore, and therefore, you don’t have to be a part of this dragon meeting thing. Why don’t you just admit you want to be a part of the meeting? I can go make a few contacts and see if anyone knows exactly where Bael went after he blew up G&T.”
“You will not face Bael alone.”
The look he turned on me was stark and filled with pain so deep, I instinctively took a step forward and wrapped both arms around him, kissing along his jaw.
The door opened, the demon dog eyeing us critically. “Heya, Connie. Heya, Bee. ’Sup, Gare.”
“So many exciting things!” came the answer from the cardboard box, now sitting at Constantine’s feet while I kissed him. “I spent the night with a poltergeist, and Connie bought me a new remote-control truck, and Bee insisted I get a helmet because I kept falling out of the truck, and oh, so much more.”
“Dude,” Jim said in a general acknowledgment. He eyed us, then turned and yelled over his shoulder. “Connie and Bee and Gary are here. They’re snogging in the doorway. Not Gary—for some reason he’s been put in a box.”
“It’s so the mortals don’t see me.” Gary’s voice was muffled, but the box bulged in a way that indicated he was getting restless.
“Uh huh. That’s how it starts, man, and then the next thing you know, they have you locked into a closet with the vacuum cleaner.”
“Bee—” Constantine said, his eyes shiny and hard.
“I won’t go without you, okay?” I don’t know why I felt so compelled to reassure him other than perhaps witnessing the depths of Bael’s depravity frightened me. “If you want to talk to the dragons before we tackle Bael, then we can do that.”
The look of fear faded from his eyes, replaced with an emotion that left me feeling hot and extremely pleased. “Do not believe that I have lost my interest in dealing with Bael now that you have broken the curse.”
“Ash is coming,” Jim announced, and nudged Gary’s box inside. “Istvan, the box has Gary in it. Don’t know why they couldn’t use a head carrier like a normal person. Gary’s a head. No, just a head. Don’t ask me, he never said. I mean, there’s all sorts of reasons why someone could lose their body, but I’m not the sort to pry. ”
Jim, pushing Gary’s box in front of him, entered the house at the same time a red-haired man appeared to block the door, giving us each an exaggerated examination. “Constantine Norka,” the redhead finally said. He had a Slavic accent, pronounced but not unintelligible.
“Istvan…” Constantine said, then stopped and made an irritated face. “I do not know your surname. I cannot call you by your full name.”
Istvan smiled. It was a smug sort of smile, the kind that makes your palm itch. “That is so.”
“You will tell me your surname so that I might use it, and then we will be even.”
Istvan glanced upward in thought for a few seconds. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“I will remember this,” Constantine warned, his eyes narrowing. I could feel by how high his fire was that he was irritated, but had to admit I found the posturing more than a little amusing.
“As will I.”
“I find it rather ironic,” I interjected, unable to keep quiet any longer, “that for two and a half years, you guys have been unable to talk to each other, and when you finally can, you start a verbal pissing contest. Honestly, what happened to saying hi, how are you, nice to be able to chat again?”
Both men stared at me in disbelief.
I sighed and made a conciliatory gesture. “Right. Silly me, expecting dragons to act reasonable. Proceed with your posturing.”
Constantine’s lips thinned, while Istvan, with a pinched look about the nostrils, said, “You wish to enter the domicile of the green wyvern?”
“A sarkany has been called, has it not?” Constantine took my arm and hustled me inside, pushing Istvan aside as we passed through the door. I thought for a moment the latter wasn’t going to give way, but evidently he thought better of antagonizing Constantine any further.
We entered the same sitting room that we’d been in the day before, only to discover the room had been rearranged. Where before there were couches and loveseats and chairs, now a large circular table dominated the room, around which sat three chairs. Against the walls sat more dining chairs, arranged in a row clearly intended for an audience to the meeting.
Kostya was there with my sister. Aoife shot a quick glance at us, her gaze skittering away as soon as I tried to catch her eye. My heart grew heavy at that, and I wondered if there would come a day when Aoife
would forgive me for the extreme lengths I’d gone to in order to keep her safe two years ago.
I set aside that worry, and went to help Jim unpack Gary from the box, setting the head up on his shiny yellow motorized dump truck, and making sure that the new pink-and-purple bicycle helmet—the only one we could find at a moment’s notice—was strapped on securely.
“The truck is fully charged and has backup batteries installed,” I told Gary, who was trying out the new remote with its tiny joystick. “Don’t run into anyone, and don’t damage any of the furniture here. It looks like it’s all antique.”
“Thanks, Bee, I’ll be extra careful. Jim, do you want to see me do a wheelie? I was practicing this morning, but kept rolling off the back of the truck bed and smashing myself into the wall, which is why Bee insists I wear a helmet, but really, I think I have the hang of the joystick now. The truck is quite quick, too.”
“Cool story, bro,” Jim said, a slight look of envy crossing his furry face. “I wonder if I could get Aisling to get me a car?”
“She might if you asked her.”
“Yeah, but Drake wouldn’t like it. He thinks I’m a bad influence on the spawn. Which, of course, I am, because hello! Demon sixth class here. But still, a car would be cool.”
“Connie got me this truck without me even having to ask,” Gary boasted.
“You have better parents than me,” Jim said, nodding.
“We’re a good team, that’s for sure. Hey, if you got a car, we could have races!” Gary’s voice was filled with enthusiasm.
I left them discussing the various routes such a race would take if Jim was able to possess himself of a vehicle.
“Bee! How nice to see you again.” Aisling, with the other dragons at the far end of the room, bustled toward us, Drake on her heels. “You must excuse me for being so slow to welcome you, but it’s been forever since we’ve been able to speak to anyone outside of the sept, and there’s a lot to catch up on. Have we thanked you for breaking the curse? If not, consider us profoundly grateful. We’re thrilled that the curse is finally gone, all of us. Ysolde and Baltic were telling us what horrible events happened last night. Everyone is talking about what Bael did, and how he tried to kill you four, and the fact that he has claimed the role of the Venediger.”
“You’re kidding.” I glanced at Constantine, who was making a stiff bow to his godson. “Why would he do that?”
“Power.” Aisling’s expression turned dark. “The bastard tried to take the job of Venediger once before, but I ended up with it. I didn’t want it, naturally, and gave the job to Jovana—poor woman—but clearly he hasn’t forgotten.”
“Nor will he,” Constantine said, glaring for a moment at the table with its three chairs. He turned on his heel, marched over to the line of chairs against the wall, and hauled one over to the table, giving the other three wyverns a hard look as if he was daring them to make a comment.
“What’s all that about?” I asked Aisling. Ysolde joined us just as she answered. I couldn’t help but notice that Aoife stayed next to Kostya.
“Only wyverns are supposed to sit at the sarkany table.”
I thought about that for a few seconds. “But Constantine was a wyvern.”
“You know it, and I know it, but the other men don’t consider him one anymore. I mean, he did give up his life for Ysolde, but still, I gather once you’re dead, you’re no longer considered a wyvern.”
I may have gawked at Ysolde for a few seconds before I realized that I was doing far too much gawking of late for my peace of mind. “He died to save you? When was this? He never said anything about that to me—” I stopped before I gave away too many of the emotions that even now I didn’t want to examine.
“He didn’t really. Well, he might have. I’m still a bit unclear about that, because all the First Dragon said was that someone had given up his life for mine, but he never said it was Constantine. And now that we know Constantine was his grandson, well, that makes it seem so much more unlikely, doesn’t it?”
I opened my mouth to say something, decided it was incoherent, and contented myself with saying simply, “I’m confused.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” Aisling said, putting an arm around me. “It happens to all of us, dragons being what they are. Present company excluded, Ysolde.”
“I’m still more human than dragon,” Ysolde said with a little shrug, although she managed to give me a fairly shrewd look at the same time. “Would you mind if I asked you something, Bee?”
“That depends on the question. You can ask anything you like, but I won’t answer unless I want to.”
“Smart girl,” Aisling said.
Ysolde nodded. “Rightly so. I wanted to know what you think of Constantine.”
“That’s not what you want to know,” Aisling told her, whapping her gently on the arm.
“It is, too.”
“You said they were an item, so it’s pretty clear what she thinks of Constantine. What you want to know—what we both want to know—is whether she’s Constantine’s mate.”
“You don’t just blurt something like that out!” Ysolde said with a frown at Aisling. “You work up to it, gently, cautiously.”
“Pfft,” Aisling said, waving away that idea. She turned back to me. “We don’t have time for that. What we want to know is if you’re just shacking up with Constantine or if you’re his mate. Have you taken his fire?”
“Taken it where?” I asked.
Both women wore identical expressions.
I sighed. “Look, I’m a Charmer. I like Constantine. A lot, as it happens, and yes, we’re an item, or at least I think we are, but beyond that, I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care.”
“She’s taken his fire,” Aisling told Ysolde, who was studying me with intensity.
“Fire does not a mate make,” the latter said, and possibly would have grilled me more but at that moment Istvan and another redheaded man entered the room, along with a dark-haired fellow who moved over to Baltic.
“That’s Pavel,” Aisling told me, pointing to the last man to enter the room. “He’s Baltic’s friend who just got into town. The other man is Pal, who with Istvan is Drake’s elite guard. Kostya doesn’t really have any guards. They were mostly killed by the red dragons, but I assume he’ll appoint some out of the handful of black dragons who are left.”
The dragons did something odd then. All three of the wyverns fetched chairs and set them next to each of the chairs at the table. Aisling and Ysolde, with knowing looks at me, took the additional seats next to their wyverns. Aoife evidently knew what was going on as well, because she sat next to Kostya without a word.
Constantine watched them all, then cocked an eyebrow at me.
I raised mine back at him.
He gave me a little nod, went to the wall, and grabbed a chair which he set down next to his, and proceeded to stand beside it, obviously waiting for me.
I didn’t know what the others would think about me taking a place at their dragons-only discussion, but after a moment’s thought, I decided I didn’t care. If Constantine wanted me there, then I’d sit there and be supportive. It was the least I could do for a man who was as thoughtful as he was.
The other men present took up spots behind their respective wyverns, and Baltic aside, all the male dragons reacted with surprise when I took the seat Constantine held for me.
“Is there something you wish to announce?” Drake asked Constantine, nodding toward me.
“Yes.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed.
Constantine looked at each person there before speaking again. “Bael is my father. He is also the son of the First Dragon. I have sworn to destroy him, and will do so with or without the help of the weyr. Also, I wish to know the surnames of all your guards. I dislike not knowing them. That is all.” He sat back with the air of a job well done.
All hell broke out around us, verbally speaking. I ignored th
e outbursts of surprise from the dragons who hadn’t known the truth about Bael, giving Constantine a little smile.
“You’re a troublemaker at heart, aren’t you?” I said softly, taking his hand.
His fingers were warm and strong, and they sent little shivers of delight skittering down my back. “I do what I can to keep things interesting. I have a system awarding points for how much I can irritate Baltic on any given day.”
“I like that you don’t say what I expect you to say. Will me being here create a problem for you?”
Two lines appeared between his brows. “I don’t understand why you would think that. I’ve told you that I welcome your help with Bael—”
“I meant with the dragons.” I nodded toward the other end of the table, where Kostya was arguing with Baltic. “I can see that they’re letting you join in the fun because you used to be a wyvern, and you have a tie to Bael, but I’m just a simple mortal Charmer. I’m not your mate.”
“Do you wish to be? I could name you so in front of the weyr, although Kostya did that with a naiad—before he met your sister—and it did not end well.” He looked thoughtful, ignoring the chaotic conversation around us. “Still, if it would make you happy, I would tell the others you were my mate.”
A little pain zinged through me at his words, and I realized that what bothered me most about that statement was not the offer to be considered a dragon’s mate… it was that it would be pretense and not real.
Since when had I wanted to become part of the dragonkin? I shook my head at my foolish thoughts, but Constantine interpreted it as a negative answer. His eyes lost a bit of their brightness when he turned away with a murmured, “I would never force you to do anything you did not wish.”
“That’s good, because I wouldn’t do something I didn’t want to do,” I managed to tell him before Kostya, with a loud exclamation, leaped to his feet.
“I don’t care if he helped the Charmer lift the curse; he is no longer a wyvern, so he should not have a place at the table. Especially with the mortal at his side.” Kostya shot an angry glare our way. “The curse is lifted, yes, but we have much work to do. We must discover if there are any red dragons left who have been untainted by Asmodeus. We must rid the world of the demon-dragon hybrids, or at least confine them so they can do no more harm. We must form the weyr again, and for that, we need the First Dragon.”