Light My Fire (12 page)

“What exactly is going on here today?” I asked quietly
as I took a seat at the end of one of the tables. Istvan, Pal,
and a couple of other dragons filled the other spaces.
Drake stood between me and the podium, his arms
crossed as he watched the audience. A potent silence fell.
The last couple of people who had been standing in the aisles greeting one another and chatting hurriedly took
their seats.

“I call to order this meeting of the sept of the green
dragons on this fourteenth day of August in the year one
thousand eight hundred and twenty-two.”

“1822?” I asked, leaning to the right slightly, to where
Pal sat next to me.

“The dragon year begins with the formation of the first weyr. Eighteen hundred years ago the black and red drag
ons formed a weyr.”

I wanted to ask Pal about this mysterious black dragon
sept, but Drake began speaking again, so I sat looking attentive, professional, and thoroughly supportive of what
ever it was he had to say.

“We will conduct this meeting in English for the
convenience of certain people present,” he said, turning to
look at me. I smiled a bit hesitantly, not sure whether I
was supposed to thank everyone for that courtesy or not.
“The first order of business is the formal recognition of
the wyvern’s mate, Aisling Grey.”

Drake’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. I rose,
smoothing down the pretty green dress, grateful I didn’t have to do this all bloody and torn. “Do I say anything?”
I whispered to him.

He shook his head, pulling me so that I stood smashed
up against him. My brain went into Drake-deprived over
drive, filling me with all sorts of new pain, longing, and
a sad, hopeless feeling that I’d never be able to work
things out with him, or entirely let him go.

The dragons rose as one giant group, looked at me for the count of three; then all of them, men, women, and
children, knelt down and bowed their heads. It was totally
unexpected and, for some reason, touched me greatly. I
knew that to many of them, I was an unknown, a stranger
to their sept, but that they’d accept me so easily made me
feel incredibly warm and fuzzy. I sniffled back a couple
of happy tears.

“You know, frequent bouts of crying are another sign of early pregnancy,” Jim’s voice whispered from where it
sat on the other side of Pal.

I glared Jim into silence, but judging by the shocked
look on Pal’s face, followed by his quick inspection of
my midsection, he had heard what the demon had said,
dammit.

“Dmitri Askov, you do not recognize my mate?”

Drake’s voice rumbling next to me brought me out of a
lovely daydream in which I was sending Jim back to its
former demon lord. One man, one lone man, stood in the
theater of people all kneeling to honor Drake and, by exten
sion, me. The man had the same ageless quality of all the other dragons, appearing to be in his mid- to late thirties,
but was probably several hundred years older than that. I
hadn’t yet met a dragon under eighty.

“I do not,” the dragon named Dmitri said in a noticeable English accent. Like Drake, he stood with his arms crossed, his dark hair swept back from his forehead in a
similar fashion. He was probably a few inches shorter
than Drake but was built a bit heavier. I squinted slightly,
noticing a faint resemblance in the man’s jawline. All in
all, he was a pretty handsome man but not nearly as drop-
dead gorgeous as Drake. Could this be a relative? I was shocked for a moment at that thought. I’d never considered Drake having any relatives, despite the fact that he
must have had parents at the very least. What happened
to his family? “I do not recognize this human as your
mate. You have violated the rules for the last time, Drake
Fekete. This time you must pay. As will this human you
think to inflict upon us!”

I sucked in my breath at the anger in Dmitri’s voice,
peeking at Drake from the corner of my eye. I needn’t
have wondered whether he was going to explode. Drake’s
anger was always controlled, unlike my lamentably ex
plosive temper. His was slow burning and long to become
fully inflamed.

“There are no rules regarding the species of a wyvern’s
mate,” Drake answered evenly. “If that is your only
objection—”

Dmitri laughed and stalked down the stairs to the stage. “It is but the beginning,
cousin.”

Well,
that
explained a lot. The way he spat out the
word explained even more.

“Like the rest of the sept, I grow weary of your misman
agement, your bad decisions, your inability to keep the
peace as you swore to do. You are more human than
dragon now! Your ineptness, abuses of the sept in general, and clear acts intended to inflame relations between septs
exhibit your unsuitability for the position of wyvern. All
that we could excuse, but it is your parentage that demands
your removal.” Dmitri sauntered onto the stage and
stopped in front of Drake, waving a hand at the audience.

Parentage? What was all that about? I kept my mouth
shut, knowing that Drake would not welcome my defense
of his character and actions, no matter how well meant it was. I had an inkling of what was coming next, though.
Drake did, as well, because he didn’t move a muscle as
the familiar words were spoken.

“By the laws that govern the sept, I, Dmitri Alexander
Mikhail Askov, sergeant in the green dragon militia, do
hereby issue a formal challenge of transcendence to
Drake Fekete, the one who falsely claims the position as
wyvern of the green dragons.”

“Oh, you do not want to be doing that,” I said in a low voice, quiet enough that just the people nearest me could hear it, but not so loud that the microphones picked it up.
Dmitri’s head snapped around to look at me, his dark eyes
narrowing in scorn as I spoke. “Look, I’ve been in your
shoes, and I can tell you from experience that Drake takes
challenges very seriously. Obviously you have some is
sues with him, but take it from someone who knows—
you don’t want to do the challenge thing. The payback on
that is a real bitch.”

“I do not recognize you as a member of this sept,”
Dmitri said, then spat on me. I was so stunned by his ac
tion, I just stood there with a glob of spittle splattered on
my collarbone.

Drake’s reaction was instantaneous. He was a blur, one
moment standing between me and the podium, the next
ten feet away, the theater ringing with the sound of the
backhanded slap he delivered to Dmitri.

Slowly, Dmitri turned his head to look at Drake, his
eyes bright with fire. “So be it,” he snarled, turning on his
heel to march off the stage.

“That’s just about at the top of the gross-o-meter, and
you know, I’ve seen a lot of gross things in my time,” Jim said, nudging aside a pitcher of ice water and bringing me
the folded linen napkin that was underneath it.

I took it, wiping the spit off my chest. For some rea
son, my hands were shaking, as if I had been the sole
focus of Dmitri’s obvious animosity.

Drake returned to the podium, raising an eyebrow at me. I gawked at his control for a moment, then took a cue from
his apparently calm demeanor and hurriedly resumed my
place on the chair between him and Pal.

“The second order of business I have to announce concerns the red dragons. This morning I received a statement from Chuan Ren that as of this date, the red dragons have withdrawn their acceptance of the current peace treaty and have declared war against members of
this sept.”

“Holy cow,” I said on a nearly silent breath, leaning
over to Pal to ask, “What happened? I know things were dicey when I left Budapest, but I didn’t know it was bor
dering on war.”

“Things suffered much when you left,” he said, his
eyes filled with sadness. A band tightened around my
heart.

“I’m so sorry. I never thought things would go down
hill without me. I was sure Drake had things in control,
or I wouldn’t have walked out. I had no idea Chuan Ren
was serious about declaring war,” I whispered, miserable
and bowed by guilt.

“The wyvern of the red dragons is serious about every
thing. Particularly so where it concerns Drake,” Pal whis
pered back. I wanted badly to ask why, but Drake had
been shooting quick little annoyed looks at me while he
read the formal declaration of war. It was, like others of
its ilk, couched in all sorts of grandiose language, but
what it boiled down to was the red dragons were pissed and wanted the green dragons to be their servants.

I snorted and said under my breath, “Ha. In her dreams.”

“As most of you have been through this before,” Drake
said, lifting an eyebrow slightly at me, “you will know how
to safeguard your family and property. The militia will be in contact with each family to ensure the full resources of
this sept are available to those who need them. Due to the stranglehold the red dragons have in the Far East, travel to Asia should be undertaken only in the direst of situations,
and with ample protection.”

I leaned over to Pal. “When was the last time you guys
were at war?”

His brow furrowed in thought. “One hundred years.”

“Is that all?”

Drake shot me another, more prolonged, annoyed look.

“Yes,” Pal answered after a few moments, leaning so
his mouth was close to my ear. “Drake defeated Chuan
Ren in trial by combat in order to gain peace.”

Hmm. That explained why the red wyvern seemed to
have it in for Drake. I bet losing to him didn’t sit well
with someone with her warrior pride.

The rest of the meeting was pretty much a summation
of the last year’s major events, septwise. There were three births to announce, one death by accident when a dragon
was caught in a car bombing in Egypt, and a list of aca
demic and professional achievements that had me squirm
ing in my seat with inferiority.

I was a Guardian, dammit. And a demon lord. Fancy
degrees or economic honors and respect of the sept were
not important to me. I was trying to convince myself of
just that when there was a brief spattering of applause and
everyone stood up, the front row filing onto the stage.
One by one the members of the sept stopped in front of me, shook my hand, told me their names, and moved on
to be greeted by their wyvern. It took almost three hours,
and by the time it was done my hand ached, my brain
swam with names and conversational inanities, and my
stomach rumbled almost as loud as Jim’s grousing.

“Are you going to feed us?” I asked Drake when the last sept member left. “Or do I have to apply an emer
gency hamburger to Jim so we can make it home without
it expiring of starvation?”

“Feeeeeeeeed me,” Jim moaned, flopping on its side in
apparent exhaustion.

Drake’s eyes glittered dangerously. I knew he must be
as tired as I was, more so since he had talked to everyone
twice as long as I had. I just administered conversational
cocktails while they waited for the main course. “I would
be happy to feed you. I was not aware you were
welcoming my presence in anything but a purely formal
situation.”

“Yes, well, I need to talk to you about that, amongst
other things, but right now, we need food. Is there some
where nearby we can go?”

There was. A short half hour later, I squeezed a slice
of lemon into a tall glass of iced tea and sighed with dry-
throated relief. Drake lounged across the table from me,
consulting a menu. He’d managed to get us a private
room, going so far as to bribe the restaurant manager to
allow Jim in.

“Are Istvan and Pal not joining us?”

He turned the menu over and scanned the back of it.
“They are eating in the other room. They wished to give
us privacy.”