Love in the Time of Dragons Page 5

  A slow smile curled his lips. “I am the wyvern of the black dragons, Ysolde de Bouchier. I am Baltic.”

  Baltic. The name resonated within my head like a bell, repeating and echoing until I thought it would deafen me.

  Baltic. The word spun around in my brain as I was swept up in a hurricane of thoughts, confused and tangled beyond hope.

  Baltic . . .

  “Sullivan?”

  My eyes shot open at the voice. I was disoriented, my brain feeling muzzy again, but as my eyes focused on the worried face peering down at me, joy leaped within me.

  “How come you’re out here in the dark by yourself? Are you OK?” Brom asked as I pushed myself up from the ground, where I’d evidently fallen asleep. Immediately I wrapped him in my arms in a bear hug to beat all bear hugs. “Geez, Sullivan, there are people watching.”

  I finished kissing his adorable face, giving him another hug just to reassure myself that he was really there. “I’m fine. Did you have any trouble at the airport?”

  “Nope. Gabriel said there might be some problems, but he bribed a few people, and it ended up being OK after all.”

  I looked over Brom’s head to where Gabriel and May stood, leaning against each other with that ease of longtime lovers. “Trouble with his passport?”

  “Not that,” Brom said before Gabriel could answer, squirming out of my hold. “With my mummies!”

  “Your . . . you didn’t bring those horrible things, did you?”

  He shot me a look that was oddly adult in its scorn. “It’s my work, Sullivan. You didn’t think I was going to leave it behind so Gareth or Ruth could take it when I wasn’t there? The customs dudes didn’t want to let me bring them, but Gabriel gave them some money to look the other way. He says I can use a room in the basement as my lab. It’s got a table and sink already, and he said he’ll get me a big tub to soak the bodies in.”

  “How very generous of Gabriel,” I said, trying not to grimace at the thought of Brom’s current scholarly pursuits.

  May laughed. “It actually sounds very interesting, if a little gruesome. Brom says he only works on animals that have died naturally, because he feels too much empathy to kill one for research purposes.”

  “For which I am truly grateful,” I said, ruffling his mousey brown hair.

  “That’s not all. Gabriel says you get to give me some sort of a tattoo of the silver-dragon sept. He says most members of the sept have them on their backs, but I thought it would be cool to have it on my arm, so I can show it off.”

  “No tattoo!” I said firmly. “You’re far too young for that. And I wouldn’t know how to give you one even if you weren’t.”

  “It’s not really a tattoo,” May said quickly. “It’s more of a brand. It’s done with dragon fire.”

  I stared at her for a few seconds. “Is that supposed to make it better?”

  Gabriel laughed and pulled his shirt off, turning around. “All members of the silver sept bear the emblem marking them as such on their backs.”

  High on his shoulder blade was a mark that looked like a hand with a crescent moon on the palm.

  “May has one too, although she wouldn’t show me hers,” Brom said, giving her a disgusted look.

  “I don’t take my shirt off in public quite as easily as Gabriel does,” she told him.

  “I don’t care what it is,” I said. “You’re not having it. You’re not a member of the silver dragons.”

  “Gabriel says I am because you’re one of them.”

  “Well, I’m not.” A thought occurred to me. “And I can prove it. You said all the silver dragons have that mark—well, I don’t.”

  They all looked at me as if they wanted me to take my shirt off.

  “She’s right,” Brom said after a moment of silence. “I’ve never seen anything like that on her back.”

  “You see?” I tried to keep the triumph in my voice to a minimum. “I wish you’d mentioned this emblem or tattoo or whatever it is before—it could have cleared things up instantly. I don’t have any such marks on me.”

  “Well . . . except for that one on your hip,” Brom said.

  “That is a scar, not a tribal marking,” I told him.

  “Scar?” Gabriel asked, his gaze dropping to my midsection. “What sort of a scar?”

  “Just the remnants of an old injury, nothing more,” I said quickly.

  “It’s shaped kind of like this,” my son said, holding his hands up, fingers spread, thumbs touching.

  “Oh, it is not. It’s just a simple scar!”

  “Is it a figure resembling a bird?” Gabriel asked him.

  “Of course it’s not! And no, before you ask, I’m not going to—Brom!”

  The child I had labored to bring into the world—even if I couldn’t remember the event—grabbed the bottom of my broomstick skirt and lifted it, squinting at my exposed hip. “I suppose it looks kind of like a bird.”

  “You are in serious trouble, buster,” I told him, trying to wrestle my skirt out of his grasp.

  Gabriel started around the back of me, but stopped at a pointed look from May, who gave me a little smile, and said, “I’m sorry, Yso—Tully,” as she bent her head to look at the mark that rode high on my hip. I’d never thought much of it, assuming that I must have had a painful fall sometime in my past.

  I realized now that Kaawa had been right—something had made me not worry about the fact that I couldn’t remember my past.

  “I have to say, the part that I can see looks like a . . . well, like a phoenix,” May said, examining the scar. “It disappears into your underwear, but it looks like those are outstretched wings.”

  “I think everyone has seen enough,” I said, giving Brom one of my scariest mom looks.

  He didn’t even flinch, the rat.

  “We could see this better if you took your underwear off,” he pointed out.

  “You did not just say that,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Confusion flashed across his face. “Yeah, I did. See, that part of it is underneath your underwear—”

  I slapped his hand where he was about to yank down the side of my undies. “That is quite enough!”

  “I’m sorry, Tully,” May said, straightening up. “This isn’t a scar. It’s not a brand, though, either. I don’t quite know what it is—it’s like it’s an anti-tattoo.”

  “Mayling,” Gabriel said, clearly asking her permission to look at the silly scar.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You do not need to be looking at strange women’s hips.”

  “I’m a healer! I’ve seen women’s bodies,” he protested.

  “Ysolde isn’t injured!”

  “You wouldn’t recognize a sept emblem as I would.”

  “I think I would. I’ve seen enough of them now.”

  “You are far from an expert—” he started to say, but I had finally had enough.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous.” I jerked the material of my skirt out of Brom’s hand and spun around, pulling the top side of my underwear down a few inches. “You want to see? Fine, you can see. Why don’t we get Kaawa and your big friend in to see as well? Perhaps announce it on the street and bring in a few strangers!”

  Gabriel ignored my little hissy fit as he stared at my hip for a few moments before his gaze rose to mine. His grey eyes were somber and considering. “I believe I have been mistaken.”

  “A voice of sanity at last!” I said, readjusting my underwear and letting the skirt fall back into place. “Thank you! It’s nice to know there’s someone who recognizes a scar when he sees one.”

  He shook his head. “That is no scar, Ysolde.”

  “Tully. My name is Tully.”

  “Your name is Ysolde,” he said firmly, his eyes glittering strangely in the night. I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued. “I was wrong about you being a silver dragon. You do not bear our emblem. You do, however, bear that of the black dragons.”

  I closed my mouth and, taking Brom’s
hand, turned on my heel, walking back into the house and up the stairs to the room where I’d woken up.

  Brom watched me for a few minutes before saying, “May says I can sleep in the room next to this one ’cause she figures you’ll want me close by. I told her you didn’t think I was such a baby.”

  “That was very thoughtful of May. I do indeed want you close by. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  He grimaced. “I hope you’re not going to go all mom on me in front of everyone. I like them. I like Gabriel and May. They’re nice, huh? Did you know May can go invisible?”

  I shook my head, my brain numbed by the events of the day. What was happening to me? Was I losing my grip on reality, or was something more profound, infinitely more frightening, controlling my life?

  “She said she’s made up of shadows, but I think she was just teasing me, because she feels just like a normal person. But she showed me in the car coming here how she can disappear. She said you have to be born that way to do it, that she’s something with a long name, and that’s why she can become invisible.”

  A word nudged its way to the front of my mind. “Doppelganger.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” He plopped himself down on the bed next to me. “Gabriel says if Gareth had been a mortal human, I could have been a wyvern, and one day challenged him for the job.”

  “Gareth is human,” I said, feeling as if a thousand ants were marching up and down my body.

  “Sullivan,” he said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Have you seen those pictures of him and Ruth and you in old-time clothes? He’s got to be at least a hundred years old. Maybe more.”

  “Pictures? What pictures?” I roused from my stupor in order to look at him.

  “The ones in Ruth’s room.”

  I dug through what remained of my memory. “I don’t remember seeing any pictures in her room.”

  “In a box in the locked drawer in her bureau,” he said, looking around the room with casual curiosity.

  “How do you know what’s in a locked drawer?” I asked, then realized just how stupid a question that was. “I don’t care if your father gave you a lock-picking kit for Christmas—you are not going to be a cat burglar when you grow up, and you are not to hone your skills on your aunt’s locked bureau.”

  “She has pictures of you, too,” he said with blithe disregard to my chastisement.

  “I highly doubt that. Ruth and I aren’t the very best of friends.”

  “Yeah, I know, but she has pictures of you and Gareth and her, and you’re all wearing clothes like out of that movie you made me watch.”

  I racked my brain, or what was left of it. “What movie?”

  “The one you like to watch so much. You know, the one with the girls in long dresses and they walk around and talk a lot.”

  “Pride and Prejudice?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, you were wearing stuff like that.”

  “They didn’t have cameras during the Regency period,” I told him, distracted by the thought of pictures. Brom wouldn’t lie, but he might have misinterpreted what he had seen.

  “Whatever. I think I’ll go move my stuff down to the room in the basement Gabriel said I could have.”

  I eyed him, his round face as dear to me as life itself. Thank god whatever was happening to me hadn’t stripped me of memory of him altogether. “You will go to bed. It’s well past your bedtime.”

  “I’m nine, Sullivan, not a baby,” he said with exaggerated forbearance.

  “Go to bed,” I repeated.

  He sighed and got to his feet, pausing at the door to send me a martyred look before saying, “Gabriel says he won’t kick us out because we’re not silver dragons anymore. He said you were born into the silver sept, and that they’d honor that, even though you were married to a black dragon. Did you know Gareth when you were married to the dragon?”

  I closed my eyes and bowed my head, wanting to cry, wanting to scream, wanting to tell Brom that I had only been married once in my life, to his father. “Time for bed,” was all I said, however, before escorting him to his room. I made sure that he was settled before disgusting him with not one, but three hugs, and two smooches to the head, which he tolerated, but only just barely. Clearly Brom was moving into that stage of life where motherly affection was a thing to be borne with much martyrdom.

  “Sleep well. If you need anything, come and get me,” I told him as I left the room.

  “I’m glad you’re OK,” he said before the door closed. “Penny said you would be, but I was kind of worried. I didn’t know you had May and Gabriel to look after you. You know what I think? I think you’re lucky they found you.”

  My heart swelled at the fact that he had been concerned. “Lucky?”

  “Yeah. What if it had been one of the other dragons who found you? Someone not from your own group? What would have happened then?”

  What indeed. “Go to sleep,” I said, blowing him a kiss.

  Silence filled my little room when I returned to it, but all it did was heighten the desperate confusion of my mind.

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t want to go.”

  The lid of my traveling basket closed with solid finality, punctuated by the muted sounds of weeping.

  “I don’t like him. He’s arrogant,” I added, watching as my mother’s tirewoman tightened the straps on the basket so it wouldn’t come open during travel. “Although he’s a much better kisser than Mark, the brewer’s son.”

  “He kissed you?” My mother moved into view, her face pinched and white as she glanced around my bedchamber. Margaret sat on the bed, weeping into her sleeve.

  Sorrow at leaving her filled me, but anger at the sudden upheaval in my life was the emotion that rode me. “Yes. I don’t see why I have to go with him.”

  “Mama, can’t she stay?” Margaret begged, looking up with red-rimmed eyes.

  I sat next to her on the bed and hugged her. Margaret and I had sometimes had a turbulent relationship, but she was the only sister I had, and I would miss her. Especially since I was being taken from my home against my will.

  “I promised your mother—” Mama choked on the word before continuing. “I promised the one who was your mother that I would raise you as my own to ensure your safety. I have done so, but I know she would not have wanted me to keep you from your true family. I would not let you go, but indeed, I have no choice in the matter. And Lord Baltic said that no ill would come to you, not that I told him anything about your past. Still, he swore that you would not be harmed, and that is what we must hold to.”

  “I don’t care what that Baltic says,” I murmured, holding tight to Margaret. “I’m not an animal.”

  “I’ve explained to you, dear—dragons do not take their bestial form very often. They prefer to be in human form, and live amongst us as a mortal would.” She gestured to the maids to carry down my traveling baskets. “Come, Ysolde. It is time. Lord Baltic is waiting, and I do not wish for his anger at a delay to fall upon your father.”

  “Lord Baltic can go stick his head in the pig’s wallow for all I care,” I said, stalking out the door after the maids.

  Mama made noises of distress, but followed after me, speaking to herself as she ran over the things I was taking with me. “I asked him if he wanted the bed, but he said no, he wanted to travel fast. I have done my best by her, I hope he knows that.”

  Margaret hurried after me, wiping her face. “Ysolde will be able to visit us, won’t she, Mama?”

  “Of course I will,” I said as our little procession marched down the stairs to the great hall below. “No one can stop me from seeing you whenever I want.”

  “Is that so?” a deep male voice asked.

  I turned my head as I stepped off the last step, meeting Baltic’s ebony gaze with a level look. “Yes, that’s so.”

  He watched me for a moment, then gave a jerky nod of his head. “We will do our best to make you happy, chérie.”

  “Stop calling me that,” I hissed through
my teeth as I passed him.

  His laughter rolled out across the hall in response.

  The leave-taking that followed was not something I ever wish to live through again. I clung first to my mother, then my father, unable to keep tears from spreading tracks down my cheeks, their wetness blending with that of Margaret’s when she hugged me, her face pressed to mine as she whispered her desire that I not be long in returning.

  By the time the imperious Baltic lifted me onto my horse, I wasn’t in much better shape than Margaret, although I had enough presence of mind to glare at him when he gripped my leg as he adjusted the stirrups.

  “I am not a strumpet to be handled such,” I snapped, my emotions frayed and irritated, placing my boot in the middle of his chest and pushing him backwards.

  One of his guards, the one he called Kostya, a black-eyed devil if ever there was one, laughed and said something in a language I did not know.

  Baltic shot me a look filled with ire, but said nothing. Before I knew it, we were riding across the bridge over the moat, the only home I’d ever known slowly slipping away behind me.

  I didn’t speak to any of the dragon men for three days.

  On the fourth, I was sick of my own thoughts, tired of grieving for my lost family, and bored almost to the point of insensibility.

  “Where are we going?” I asked that evening, when we passed through the gates of a small town.

  Baltic, who was riding next to me, shot me an amused glance. “You’re speaking to us?”

  “Since I have no other alternative,” I said in my most haughty manner. “I would like to know where these other parents of mine are.”

  We stopped in front of a small inn. The three guards dismounted; one of the men, a short, stocky man named Pavel, disappeared into the low opening of the inn. Baltic tossed the reins of his horse to a stableboy before helping me off my mount. “I am not taking you to your parents.”

  I stared at him in surprise. “Why not?”

  He put his hand on my back and gave me a little shove toward the inn. Since it looked like it was about to rain, I went inside, ducking at the low beam at the doorway. The inn was of modest size, smoky and dark inside, but there were no foul odors as you will sometimes find in such places. To the right was a rough staircase leading to a floor above, while to the left was a common room filled with benches and rough-hewn plank tables.