Me and My Shadow

by Katie MacAlister

  “It is possible, but you know I will always keep you safe. Do not fear, Mayling—you are my mate, and my heart. Nothing and no one can change that,” Gabriel said, kissing me as the door opened up and István bowed us into the room.

  Drake hurried over to us as we entered. He gave Gabriel a suspicious look before eyeing us quickly to make sure we met with his standards. “Do not mention the appointment cards or the security measures,” he said quickly in a low voice. “I will not have Aisling upset by trivialities.”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing, noting that Gabriel’s dimples were fighting to come out.

  “May! Gabriel! I thought you’d never come to see my babies. What on earth are you wearing? Drake! I told you to stop making people dress in those silly outfits.” Aisling was propped up on a huge bed, her color high, her face a bit drawn, but radiating pride and happiness. Two beautifully carved wooden cradles stood next to her, draped in pristine lace.

  “Until we know the children’s immunities are strong, I will not allow germs near them,” Drake said sternly.

  Aisling rolled her eyes. “No one is going to endanger them. May, would you like to hold Ilona? Gabriel, what do you think of them? Aren’t they the most beautiful babies you’ve ever seen? I know all mothers say that, but you have to admit, these two really are outstandingly gorgeous.”

  I looked down at the blotchy-skinned, red-faced, pointy-headed babies, and said with absolute conviction, “They are completely and utterly adorable, Aisling. I’m sure they’re going to grow up to be just as beautiful as you and Drake.”

  Gabriel duly admired the babies, then gave Drake a long look before grinning and punching him in the shoulder. “You have fine children, my friend. They will grow up strong and wise.”

  Drake returned the compliment by socking Gabriel in the arm; then the two men embraced.

  “They are beyond fine. They are extraordinary,” Drake said, looking with obvious pride at his babies. “But I expected nothing less from Aisling.”

  “That’s not what you said when I threatened to pull your scrotum over your head so you could share the experience of natural childbirth with me,” she said with a grin.

  He cleared his throat, adjusted a blanket infinitesimally, then waved us to chairs. “You were in pain. Much can be forgiven when a woman is in the throes of childbirth.”

  We sat with them for a half hour before Aisling began looking tired, and left her with a promise to return the next day.

  Drake tucked her in, checked the babies, then accompanied us out of the room. “The mortals have a custom to celebrate with whisky and cigars. You will join me?” he asked.

  “Of course. May?”

  “I’ll pass on the cigars, but a little shot of whisky would go a long way right now,” I said.

  Dr. Kostich was waiting for us when we reached Drake’s study. He glowered at us for a moment before saying to Gabriel, “One of my apprentices, Tully, is unwell.”

  “I will see to her, naturally. And you? Tipene has tended to your arm?”

  “He has. The silver dragons well deserve their reputation for healing abilities,” Kostich said stiffly.

  Gabriel smiled at the grudging compliment, and went off to the sitting room to check on the apprentice.

  “I wish to speak with you,” Dr. Kostich told me.

  Drake murmured something about being in his study when I was free, and retreated to that room.

  Dr. Kostich considered me for a moment before saying, “I begin to regret my leniency with regards to you.”

  “I have done everything you asked of me,” I pointed out.

  “You misled me.”

  “Misled you how?”

  “You withheld information from me about the dragon lord Baltic, information that was vital for our success. And because you saw fit to withhold it, I have neither the light blade of Antonia von Endres nor the dragon himself, who I assure you will answer to the acts of violence he has perpetrated upon my person, and those of my apprentices.”

  “There’s also a little matter of more than sixty blue dragons who were brutally slaughtered, but I guess you don’t care about that,” I said, annoyed that he could make so light of that atrocity.

  Dr. Kostich’s expression did not change. “Crimes against dragonkin are beyond the authority of the L’au-delà.”

  I acknowledged that it was so. “I merely wish to point out that although we have all suffered at the hands of Baltic, there are those who have suffered far more.”

  “You did not tell me that the dragon in question could access the beyond,” Dr. Kostich accused, his gaze once again pinning me down.

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t think it was pertinent, and to be honest, I’m not sure why you think it is.”

  He almost sighed, but caught himself in time. “Dragonkin cannot enter the beyond. It is a well-known fact that only by extraordinary means can one do so, and yet this one appeared to enter it with ease, and without any assistance from one who has routine access. This dragon is clearly something . . . unusual.”

  “But you knew that. You knew he had the ability to cast arcane spells, and to use the light sword.”

  “Yes, but I did not know he could also enter the beyond. A dragon who understands and harnesses arcane power is extraordinary, but it might possibly be explained. But one who can enter the beyond—that is truly miraculous, and I do not like miracles.” He bit off the last few words as if they left a nasty taste in his mouth.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He’s sought refuge in the beyond so many times, I didn’t think about just how unusual it was. What difference it could have made to today’s events is, pun aside, beyond me.”

  “He has escaped us!” Dr. Kostich said, his voice icy. “Had I know he could use the beyond as a way to avoid capture, I would have put precautions into place to ensure he could not simply vanish just as we were about to take him.”

  I wondered how he could arrange for that, but figured mages must have abilities in the shadow world that were far greater than mine. “I’m sorry, but I just didn’t think to tell you. But if you are worried that we have seen the last of Baltic, you can rest your mind. He isn’t the sort of dragon to let a little thing like defeat stop him for long. I have every expectation that he’ll be back raising hell soon. We might have stopped him from getting the dragon heart or shards, but I have no doubt he’ll continue to be a thorn in our side, and sooner or later, the weyr will have to do something about him.”

  “What the weyr does is none of my concern,” he said darkly. “I will have that sword. Where did you put the prisoner you took?”

  “Thala? Drake has her in a storage room, I believe.”

  “I will question her. Perhaps she can be of some use to us,” he said, turning on his heel and striding toward the back of the house.

  I followed him a few steps, debating whether I wanted to go with him, let Drake ply me with whisky, or see how the apprentice was doing. A strong, overwhelming need to be with Gabriel won out, sending me to the long sitting room. I found Gabriel kneeling next to the apprentice Tully, who sat hunched over in an armchair in the corner of the room. Savian was flaked out on the couch, covered with a blanket.

  I sat on my heels next to Gabriel as he asked Tully to continue.

  “I’m . . . it’s difficult,” she said slowly, her voice thick with some strong emotion. Pain? Loss? It was something she felt deeply. “There was something—something indescribable. It filled me with happiness and dread at the same time, as if I was being torn from paradise and flung into Abaddon. A light shone through me, a brilliant golden light, so pure it made me want to weep with joy, but then it was gone, and blackness filled its void.”

  “She is describing the re-forming of the heart,” Gabriel said softly, his hands on her knees. “She felt the dragon heart re-form and be shattered.”

  “I thought only dragons could feel that?” I asked.

  He nodded. “All dragonkin felt the re-forming of the heart. It connects
all of us. But this mage . . .” His gaze didn’t waver off her for a second.

  Tully, clearly uncomfortable with his regard, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  “What is wrong with her?” Savian asked from where he lay on the couch.

  I looked at Gabriel. “Dragons can’t be mages.”

  His gaze moved from Tully to me, his eyes troubled. “One has managed to do so.”

  “But . . . surely there is no connection?”

  “I have never done a better day’s work, and I have guided well over a hundred new souls into this world.” Kaawa entered the room, stretched, and looked around her with pleasure. “I am glad to see you returned from your visit to the Akasha, wintiki. Your journey was successful?”

  “Yes, it was. I’m officially free from Magoth.” I stood up to greet Kaawa, moving slightly away from Tully to do so. At the sound of another voice, Tully stopped sobbing into her hands, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue to wipe her eyes.

  Kaawa started toward us, caught sight of the woman on the chair, and faltered, her face suddenly frozen with shock. She lifted a hand and pointed at Tully, her mouth moving, but no sound coming out.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as Gabriel went forward to her side.

  “Mother? Are you unwell?”

  “She,” Kaawa said, still staring in absolute astonishment at Tully. Her finger wavered a little as she pointed. “It’s her.”

  “The mage apprentice?” I asked, glancing at Tully. She looked up in complete befuddlement at Gabriel’s mother, clearly not understanding why the other woman was so stunned to see her.

  “No.” Kaawa shook her head, then said the last thing in the world I expected her to say. “That is no apprentice. That is no mage.”

  Gabriel and I exchanged confused glances before looking back at his mother.

  She stared at Tully with an intensity that raised the hairs on the backs of my arms.

  Savian propped himself up on the couch, watching with interest as Tully rose from the chair, one hand at her throat. “I’m sorry. I don’t . . . do I know you?”

  “That is a not a mage. That is a black dragon,” Kaawa announced, her voice ringing pure and clear in the silence of the room. “That is a wyvern’s mate.”

  Goose bumps crawled up my spine as I looked at Tully.

  “That is his mate. That is Ysolde de Bouchier. She is alive. Baltic’s mate is alive.”

  Read on for a peek at

  Love in the Time of Dragons

  A Novel of the Light Dragons

  by Katie MacAlister

  Coming from Signet in May 2010

  I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as a group of four men rode into the bailey, all armed for battle.

  “Ysolde! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you up in the solar tending to Lady Susan? Mother was looking for you!” Margaret, my older sister, emerged from the depths of the kitchen to scold me.

  “Did they get her out of the privy, then?” I asked with all innocence. Or what I hoped passed for it.

  “Aye.” Her eyes narrowed on me. “It was odd, the door being stuck shut that way. Almost as if someone had done something to it.”

  I made my eyes as round as they would go, and threw in a few blinks for good measure. “Poor, poor Lady Susan. Trapped in the privy with her bowels running amok. Think you she’s been cursed?”

  “Aye, and I know by what. Or, rather, whom.” She was clearly about to shift into a lecture when movement in the bailey caught her eye. She glanced outside the doorway and pulled me backwards, into the dimness of the kitchen. “You know better than to stand about when Father has visitors.”

  “Who are they?” I asked, looking around her as she peered out at them.

  “An important mage,” she answered, holding a plucked goose to her chest as she watched the men. “That must be him, in the black.”

  All of the men were armed, their swords and mail glinting brightly in the sun, but only one did not wear a helm. He dismounted, lifting his hand in greeting as my father hurried down the steps of the keep.

  “He doesn’t look like any mage I’ve ever seen,” I told her, taking in the man’s easy movements under what must be at least fifty pounds of armor. “He looks more like a warlord. Look, he’s got braids in his hair, just like that Scot who came to see Father a few years ago. What do you think he wants?”

  “Who knows? Father is renowned for his powers; no doubt this mage wants to consult him on arcane matters.”

  “Hrmph. Arcane matters,” I said, aware I sounded grumpy.

  Her mouth quirked on one side. “I thought you weren’t going to let it bother you anymore?”

  “I’m not. It doesn’t,” I said defensively, watching as my father and the warlord greeted each other. “I don’t care in the least that I didn’t inherit any of Father’s abilities. You can have them all.”

  “Whereas you, little changeling, would rather muck about in the garden than learn how to summon a ball of blue fire,” Margaret laughed, pulling a bit of grass from where it had been caught in the laces on my sleeve.

  “I’m not a changeling. Mother says I was a gift from God, and that’s why my hair is blond when you and she and Papa are redheads. Why would a mage ride with three men?”

  Margaret pulled back from the door, nudging me aside. “Why shouldn’t he have guards?”

  “If he’s as powerful a mage as Father, he shouldn’t need anyone to protect him.” I watched as my mother curtsied to the stranger. “He just looks . . . wrong. For a mage.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he looks like—you are to stay out of the way. If you’re not going to tend your duties, you can help me. I’ve got a million things to do, what with three of the cooks down with some sort of a pox, and Mother busy with the guest. Ysolde? Ysolde!”

  I slipped out of the kitchen, wanting a better look at the warlord as he strode after my parents into the tower that held our living quarters. There was something about the way the man moved, a sense of coiled power, like a boar before it charges. He walked with grace despite the heavy mail, and although I couldn’t see his face, long, ebony hair shone glossy and bright as a raven’s wing.

  The other men followed after him, and although they, too, moved with the ease that bespoke power, they didn’t have the same air of leadership.

  I trailed behind them, careful to stay well back, lest my father see me, curious to know what this strange warrior-mage wanted. I had just reached the bottom step as all but the last of the mage’s party entered into the tower, when that guard suddenly spun around.

  His nostrils flared, as if he’d smelled something, but it wasn’t that which sent a ripple of goose bumps down my arms. His eyes were dark, and as I watched them, the pupils narrowed, like a cat’s when brought from the dark stable out into the sun. I gasped and spun around, running in the other direction, the sound of the strange man’s laughter following me, mocking me, echoing in my head until I thought I would scream.

  “Ah, you’re awake.”

  My eyelids, leaden weights that they were, finally managed to hoist themselves open. I stared directly into the dark brown eyes of a woman located less than an inch from my own, and screamed in surprise. “Aaagh!”

  She leaped backwards as I sat up, my heart beating madly, a faint, lingering pain leaving me with the sensation that my brain itself was bruised.

  “Who are you? Are you part of the dream? You are, aren’t you? You’re just a dream,” I said, my voice a croak. I touched my lips. They were dry and cracked. “Except those people were in some sort of medieval clothing, and you’re wearing a pair of jeans. Still, it’s incredibly vivid, this dream. It’s not as interesting as the last one, but still interesting and vivid. Very vivid. Enough that I’m lying here, babbling to myself.”

  “I’m not a dream, actually,” the in-my-face dream woman said. “And you’re not alone, so if you’re babbling, it’s to me.”

  I knew better than to leap off the bed to escape the clearly de
ranged person, not with the sort of headache I had. Slowly, I slid my legs off the edge of the bed, and wondered if I stood up, if I’d stop dreaming and wake up to normal life.

  As I tried to stand, the dream lady seized my arm, holding on to me as I wobbled on my unsteady feet. Her grip was anything but dreamlike.

  “You’re real.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a real person, not part of the dream?”

  “I think we’ve established that fact.”

  I felt an irritated expression crawl across my face—crawl because my brain hadn’t yet woken up with the rest of me. “If you’re real, would you mind me asking why you were bent over me, nose to nose, in the worst Japanese horror movie sort of way, one that guaranteed I’d just about wet myself the minute I woke up?”

  “I was checking your breathing. You were moaning and making noises like you were going to wake up.”

  “I was dreaming,” I said, as if that explained everything.

  “So you’ve said. Repeatedly.” The woman, her skin the color of oiled mahogany, nodded. “It’s good. You are beginning to remember. I wondered if the dragon shard would not speak to you in such a manner.”

  Dim little warning bells went off in my mind—the sort that are set off when you’re trapped in a small room with someone who is obviously a few weenies short of a cookout. “Well, isn’t this just lovely? I feel like something a cat crapped, and I’m trapped in a room with a crazy lady.” I clapped a hand over my mouth, appalled that I’d spoken the words rather than just thought them. “Did you hear that?” I asked around my fingers.

  She nodded.

  I let my hand fall. “Sorry. I meant no offense. It’s just that . . . well . . . you know. Dragons? That’s kind of out there.”

  A slight frown settled between her brows. “You look a bit confused.”

  “You get the understatement-of-the-year tiara.Would it be rude to ask who you are?” I gently rubbed my forehead, letting my gaze wander around the room.

  “My name is Kaawa. My son is Gabriel Tauhou, the silver wyvern.”