The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons (16 page)

I thought for a moment, then shook my head, both at the driver in front of me who slammed on his brakes for no reason and at the thought of speaking my concerns in front of the demon. “Effrijim, I command you to not hear anything I say until I tell you it’s OK.”

Jim sighed again, and buried itself in the magazine.

“Oh, look, a hamburger place. Let’s go there and have food.”

It didn’t even look up at my bait.

“What is it that you don’t wish to say in front of the demon? Are you going to tell me some new way you wish for me to make love to you? Will it involve a phallic device such as Pavel has? I will warn you, mate, I do not approve of phallic devices for either of us. I do not care for such things to be used on me, and the only phallus I intend for you to entertain is—”

I lifted my hand to stop what showed every sign of being one of Baltic’s “the old Ysolde never was into the sorts of kinky things you are into” lectures. “I don’t want a vibrator, thank you. Although those little bullet jobbies look kind of . . . never mind. You’re phallic enough for me, thank you.”

An odd look crossed his face. “I’m not sure that is a compliment, but I assume you mean it as one.”

“Yes, I do. How about this: you more than amply take care of any and all sexual desires I have. Better?”

“Much.” He sat back with a smug look on his handsome face and waved a hand. “You may proceed telling me about the new fantasy you have.”

“It’s not a fantasy. What exactly were you doing in Dauva?”

His face went blank for a few minutes before he slid me a steamy look. “Do you have fantasies about making love in Dauva? Out in the open, perhaps? It is heavily forested now, and not visited by the locals because they believe it is haunted, so I would be willing to take you there if it would drive you to a new level of pleasure.”

“If that’s some sort of a crack about me having voyeuristic tendencies . . .”

He raised a hand and looked out the window. “I make no judgment, mate. I was simply offering to allow your strange new tastes some freedom; that is all. If you wish instead for me to make love to you in the lair, that is more reasonable, although we would need to bring in a blanket at the least, since the ground is quite rocky there after the centuries of disuse. Perhaps a mattress.” He paused for a few seconds and thought. “I suppose we could build a bedchamber in there if you really liked, although Kostya has stolen all of my treasures, so there would be no gold to rub all over your body.”

“An underground love nest doesn’t appeal to me in the leas—Rub gold all over me?” My eyes went a bit glazed as I considered that thought. Although the dragon that slumbered within me must have shown the same preference for gold over all other forms of treasure, heretofore it hadn’t triggered any response in me. Now, however, just the thought of draping Baltic’s naked form with chains of gold had me shivering with arousal. “Maybe that would be nice. How much gold do you have now?”

His smile was filled to the rim with smugness. “Not as much as I had, thanks to Kostya, but enough to satisfy your lustful demands. It is safe in my Paris lair.”

“Perhaps—” I shook myself, dissipating the erotic images that danced so tantalizingly in my head. “We got sidetracked somehow.” An abbreviated gesture had me shooting him quick little glances as all sorts of warning bells went off in my head. “You did that deliberately, didn’t you?”

“Brought up the subject of making love to you? I frequently discuss my desire to mate with you, Ysolde,” he said, but he couldn’t look me in the eye. He pretended to be interested in the passing scenery, which made a few more bells chime.

“Yes, you do, and I appreciate that fact, but I also know that you don’t like saying you won’t answer a question I asked you, which is why you try to distract me with thoughts of you all warm and naked with gold chains draped across your chest and belly and . . .” My voice trailed off into a little whimper as I swallowed back a sudden wave of desire and need. “What was I saying?”

He slid me another look, but sighed and slumped back into the seat, shaking his head. “You’d never let me hear the end of it,” he muttered. “It would be just like in Milan, when Antonia called me to her side, but I could not tell you because you would have instantly been jealous and likely lopped off my stones with the nearest sword. I had to tell you I was away on sept business just to keep you from following me.”

“I am not the sort of person who gelds other people without due cause,” I started, then realized what it was he hadn’t said. “Wait a minute—are you saying you went off to see your former girlfriend after we were together?”

“Not in the sense you are thinking,” he said blithely.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

He pointed to the steering wheel. “Your fingernails have dug into the leather a good half an inch.”

I loosened my death grip on the wheel, spun it when I was about to plow us into a guard rail, and got a grip on my emotions. “What did Antonia want to see you about?”

He was silent.

I glanced at him. His expression was stony.

“I see.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t had a vision about that episode,” he said after a few more minutes of silence, during which I lovingly reviewed various forms of torture dug out from the shattered remains of my memory. “You came as close to killing an archimage as anyone ever has. It would be a worthy vision to experience.”

An echo of a voice shouting in my head had me signaling and pulling over to a shoulder. Jim looked up inquiringly, but sighed and returned to its skin magazine when I turned to face Baltic.

“Mate?” Baltic asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Shush. It’s there, right on the edge of my mind. I can hear an echo of it. I want to know what happened. I want to see it. I want to be able to remember things again. I want . . .”

It danced with tantalizing nearness, just beyond the range of my consciousness, where I could see it, but not grasp it. I closed my eyes in order to draw it into focus, but the echoes stayed fragmented and incoherent.

“. . . shall not be! I will not . . .”

“You have no right, dragon . . .”

“Mate, you cannot . . .”

I shook my head as I tried to coax the memories forward. “I’ve lost them, Baltic. I can’t even remember my own past.”

I heard him sigh, and suddenly I was in his arms, his body warm and solid, holding me with infinite care, the scent of him seeping deep into my being. I opened my eyes to look into his, the dark, endless depths of them drawing me in and capturing me in his soul.

“Do not do this, Ysolde. You are my love, my life. You are the very breath in my lungs, and the beat of my heart. I could not exist without you.”

“She tried to steal you from me,” I heard myself say, and realized that he had done what I couldn’t do by myself—he’d pulled the vision from my hidden memories.

“No,” the past Baltic said, his face different, yet familiar nonetheless. “No one could do that. You do not need to kill her. Do not risk that which you cannot afford, my love. She isn’t worth it.”

I turned to look at the woman who was trapped against a stone wall, my fire surrounding her. On the edges of the shadows stood several forms, dragons and others, keeping a wary distance from the three of us. It was nighttime, the air warm and heavy with the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms, soft distant noises of the city telling me we stood some leagues from it.

The fire was silent the way dragon fire is, burning with a brightness that lit up the immediate area despite the thick darkness around us. But it was more than mere dragon fire surrounding her; a sense of power rushed through me, pouring outward to encircle Antonia. I wanted more than anything to just let the stream of power wash over her, for I knew it would end her existence, but Baltic’s love wrapped me in a web that prohibited me from doing so. I could snap it with just a thought, but to do that would be to break our love, as well, and there was nothing on this earth that would compel me to such a sacrifice.

“It pleases me that I have made no error in you,” a ponderous voice said from the side.

A man strolled forward through the crowd, which parted as if he were a plow on loamy soil. Soft, startled murmurs rippled around us, trailing in his wake as he stopped in front of me. His face and eyes were ageless, all-seeing, all-knowing, as if he saw all too clearly that I was on the verge of committing an act that would forever change the path of my life.

“Who are you?” I asked the man. He was a dragon, of that I was sure, but I didn’t recognize him or what sept he was from.

His dark eyes were amused—at least they were until his gaze slid past me to where Baltic stood. Then they narrowed, his lips tightening. Whoever he was, he wasn’t pleased.

“Baltic,” he said, his gaze returning to me, “your mate is the source of much trouble, it seems.”

Baltic’s arm went around me, pulling me tight to his side. “She is no trouble to
me
.”

The dragon’s lips twitched, but he merely turned his head to consider Antonia von Endres as she was plastered to the stone wall of the villa’s tower. His eyebrows rose. “You seek to destroy the mage, daughter of night?”

I hadn’t intended on answering him, since my temper was riled by Antonia, but something about him compelled me to say simply, “She tried to steal my mate. I tolerate that from no one, not even an archimage.”

“She is not worth your ire.” His gaze rested on me a third time, the amusement back in it as he leaned toward me and said softly, “Do not fail me, little one. All my hopes rest with you.”

“Hopes?” I asked stupidly, not understanding what he was saying. “What hopes?”

He said nothing, just turned and walked back the way he had come, into the deepest part of the shadows. It was at that moment that I realized that the crowd of dragons making a half circle around us had been completely and utterly silent, as if they were collectively holding their breath.

“Who was that?” I asked Baltic, touching his arm as he looked after the man, a strange expression on his face. “Why did he call me daughter? He’s not my father.”

“That, my love, was the father of us all,” Baltic said before turning to face Antonia. “Quench your fire, and let her go. She has news that I seek regarding Constantine. That is
all
I desire from her.”

Absently, I tamped down on the fire, allowing the strange stream of power that flowed around her to dissipate, just like water seeping into parched earth. “The father of us all? Not . . . by the rood, that was the First Dragon?”

The words echoed in my head as I watched Baltic confront a furious Antonia, my mind dazzled by the fact that the ancestor of all dragons who ever were and ever would be had spoken to me. Not just spoken to me . . .

“Told me his hopes rested with me,” I said, blinking as the velvet night brightened into a cloudy day. I looked up at my Baltic, who gently stroked my back, his breath ruffling my hair as cars whizzed past us. “Did you see that, too?”

“Your vision? No. But I remember it.” His lips twisted. “Antonia threatened to destroy you for almost a century. Only the fact that she would have had to deal with the First Dragon if she had done so stopped her. And now you will question me for weeks as to what the First Dragon meant, and I will tell you repeatedly that I do not know. It is the truth, mate; I did not know then, and I do not know now. Nor do I particularly care.”

I pulled back and gave him a long look. “You don’t like the First Dragon, do you?”

He made a face. “My feelings toward him do not matter.”

“Uh-huh. What about Antonia? What was all that business with her?”

“As you said, it was business. She had an interest in Constantine, and I sought to find out where he was.”

“Hmm. And that water?”

He looked surprised. “I do not remember water. You attempted to burn Antonia alive, not drown her—not that you could have done either, but you came close to succeeding with your dragon fire.”

“There was some other form of power I was tapping into. It felt like I was standing in a stream of it, flowing around and through me.”

He shrugged, and looked pointedly at his watch. “We will be late picking up Brom if you do not continue. Would you prefer for me to drive?”

“No,” I said, resuming my seat and snapping the seat belt over my chest. I gave him one last look before I pulled out into the stream of traffic. “But I do want you to tell me one thing.”

“What is that?”

I gripped the steering wheel with grim determination. “If you weren’t at Dauva overseeing the reconstruction for the last couple of days, just where the devil were you?”

“
W
e’d almost given up on you,” May said, smiling as she greeted us at the door of Gabriel’s house. “Brom was ready to go, but then a bird hit one of the back windows, and he went outside to see if it was stunned or dead. I’m sure this is completely against the agreement Baltic made with Gabriel, but would you like to come in for a few minutes? I can promise you that no one will hold you prisoner or otherwise harm either of you.”

“I do not wish to enter the silver wyvern’s house, no,” Baltic said somewhat stiffly. He looked at me. “Are you speaking to me yet?”

“No.”

He sighed. “My mate is making a futile attempt to punish me, but she will follow my desires in this as in everything and not enter—Ysolde!”

I pushed past him into the house, glancing around the cool hallway. “I’d love to chat for a bit, May. Hello, Gabriel. We’ve come for a visit.”

“No, we have not! For the love of the saints, woman, I just finished telling the silver mate that we did not wish to enter!” Baltic stormed in after me. “Why do I speak if you will not heed my words?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“No,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “I am a wyvern! I do not need to explain to you, my mate, the one who says she loves me beyond all else, the one who has promised to obey me, my every move.”