Love in the Time of Dragons ld-1

by Katie MacAlister

  “You are too late, Baltic,” the man who stood in front of me taunted. “Ysolde has spoken the words. She has sworn fealty to me. She is now my mate.” I stepped to the side to look around Constantine. Baltic and about ten men emerged from the trees that formed a gentle curve around the cliff top where we stood, Kostya and Pavel immediately to his rear.

  Instantly the silver dragons pulled their swords, surrounding Constantine and me.

  “Is that true?” Baltic asked me, his expression as stormy as the sea that raged behind us.

  I took a step forward, but Constantine put his hand out to stop me. “You will address me, and not my mate. Ysolde is mine. You will never have her.” “Why are you here?” I asked Baltic, shrugging off Constantine’s hand and pushing past his guards. They made a move to stop me, but fell back when I glared at them.

  “Why do you think I’m here? I came to claim my mate,” Baltic answered, his eyes glittering darkly.

  “Your mate? You said you didn’t want me. You said you would never have anything to do with a silver dragon,” I cried.

  “I said I would never bed a silver dragon,” he corrected. “I have since changed my mind. You are my mate. I sent a messenger telling you I would come to claim you as such.” “I know of no messenger!” I said, shocked and horrified.

  His expression darkened. “I should have known that Constantine would claim you for himself rather than let you be mine.” “Ysolde, my dove, let me deal with this,” Constantine said, his voice warm and rumbly and comfortable just as it had been for the three months while I had been with him in the south of France.

  I spun around to face him, suddenly filled with knowledge that left me furious. “You knew he was coming for me, didn’t you? You knew my heart was breaking, and still you kept his message from reaching me. By the rood! That’s why you pressed me to make the oath to you! You deceived me!” “You are my responsibility,” Constantine said, taking my hands in his.

  Baltic positively growled. Kostya, his eyes on the silver guards, held him back.

  “I promised to care for you that first day when you were given to me,” Constantine continued. “I could not help but love you, my precious dove. Can you blame me for wanting you as my mate?” How stupid I’d been. How stupid and naïve, falling for the honeyed words and the promise of a lifetime of being loved, when in reality, I was being used as an instrument in a war that had raged for two hundred years. I pulled my hands from his and backed up, sickened by the way he’d fooled me. The guards looked to Constantine, but he lifted his hand to stop them. “You told me I was the one meant to be your mate, but all the while you knew Baltic was coming for me. You watched as I pined for him, pined for the love I would give my soul to have, and yet you bound me to you? Why?” “I love you,” he said, his eyes glowing with a strange golden light. “How could I let the one thing I love more than life itself go to a madman, a monster who would destroy our sept rather than let us live in peace?” I couldn’t look at him any longer. “You say you love me, and yet you ensured that I would spend the remainder of my days a shadow of what I could have been.” Constantine reached out for me, but let his hand drop before he could touch me. “You are merely confused, Ysolde, not truly in love.” “How do you know?” I lifted my head to glare at him. “How do you presume to know what’s in my heart? You won’t even listen to me! I told you that I loved him, Constantine, and you just told me he would rather see me dead than alive.” “You—” he started to say.

  “No,” I said, cutting him off with a sharp gesture. “I know my own mind and heart. I love Baltic. If he had asked me to be his mate, I would have accepted.” Baltic smiled, a slow, smug smile.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not furious with your high-handed dealings,” I told him over my shoulder.

  His smile slipped a notch.

  “Even knowing what he is, knowing what he’s done to our people, to your own family, you would bind yourself to him?” Constantine asked, his voice reflecting the anger now in his eyes. “You would let him use your body, taint your soul?” I met his gaze, my own steady. “I would do what I could to bring calm to this troubled time.” “You swore fealty to me,” he answered.

  “What choice did I have?” I countered. “You deceived me!” He was silent for a moment, pain flickering across his face.

  “If only you had told me the truth,” I said softly, putting my hand on his arm. “I have great respect and affection for you, Constantine. You are a wonderful wyvern, and a generous, loving man. But much as I honor you as such, I would never have pledged myself to you if I had known the truth. You tricked me into becoming your mate simply to spite the man who holds my heart. How can I find happiness with you knowing that?” Baltic stepped forward. “Constantine Norka, by the laws governing the weyr, I challenge you by lusus naturalae for your mate, Ysolde de Bouchier.” Constantine and I both stared at him.

  “Lusus what?” I asked.

  “Naturalae. It has many meanings, but to dragonkin, it applies only to one thing — the ability to steal a mate,” Constantine answered, eyeing Baltic with palpable hostility.

  “It is not stealing if I win the challenge,” Baltic said, striding forward. At a gesture, all of his men but Kostya remained standing where they were. Likewise, Constantine nodded at his guard, who gestured the others back. The dragons spread out until they formed a loose circle, in the center of which the five of us stood. “Do you accept the challenge?” “I do,” Constantine said, his stance aggressive. “Ysolde is young and confused. She has not yet had time to adjust to our ways. I am convinced that with time, she will realize what a tragedy her life would have been if she spent it with you.” “I dislike being spoken of as if I weren’t standing an arm’s length from you,” I told him somewhat acidly. “I am not invisible, nor am I witless. This is my life you’re talking about, and I demand the right to have a say in it.” “You are female,” Constantine said abruptly. “You are young and inexperienced with the ways of dragons. You will allow me to decide what is best for you.” “I am the one who found her,” Baltic said arrogantly, swaggering forward until he stood a foot away from us. “I will decide what is best for her, and that is to become my mate.” “Does no one think it is a good idea for me to decide what’s best for me?” I asked.

  “No!” both wyverns said.

  I crossed my arms and looked daggers at both of them. “I think you’re both obnoxious. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want either of you. I’ll take Kostya instead.” Kostya’s eyes widened in surprise and something that looked very much like dismay. “Er…” “Are you trying to make me jealous?” Baltic asked, irritation pulling at his lips.

  “No. If I were, I would do this.” I walked toward Kostya, but he evidently read the intention in my eyes because he backed away from me. I stopped, stomped my foot in irritation, and demanded, “Stop running away from me and let me kiss you!” “I’d really rather you didn’t,” he said with a wary glance at his wyvern.

  “Ysolde,” Baltic said in an even, almost disinterested tone of voice.

  I marched over to him, narrowing my glare until it could have sharpened the edge of his sword. “What?” “You don’t have to attack Kostya to make me jealous, chérie,” he said, the irritation in his face replaced with wry amusement. He gestured toward Constantine. “I’m ready to fight him to the death for his audacity in claiming you. I don’t think I could get much more jealous than that.” “Oh.” I thought about that for a moment, then took a step closer to him, not quite touching, but close enough I could feel the heat of his body. I looked deep into his eyes, searching there for the answers I so desperately sought. “You really want me for your mate even though I’m a silver dragon?” “Yes.” A muscle in his neck twitched.

  “Why?”

  His eyes took on the same wary look Kostya’s had just borne. “Why?” I prodded his arm. “Yes, why? Why do you want me for your mate?” “Eh…” He looked from me to Constantine, who was standing watching us with a black scowl. Baltic s
quared his shoulders and leveled a haughty look at me. “That is unimportant. Only the fact that I have claimed you should matter.” “It matters to me,” I said, and put my hand on his chest, over his heart.

  Behind me, Constantine took a step toward us.

  “You are female. You do not know what you’re saying.” “By the rood, I don’t. Tell me, Baltic. Why me?” “Because,” he said, his eyes glittering darkly. “Just… because.” “Do you love me?” I asked.

  His jaw tightened. “That is none of your business.” I laughed; I couldn’t help but laugh at him. Love in marriage was only a dream, my mother had once told me, and yet I knew she loved my father. She had also said that some men have difficulty admitting to such tender emotions, and clearly Baltic was one of them.

  “I think it is my business. It’s important to me, Baltic. I would like to know — do you love me?” He stepped closer until his chest was pressed against my arms. “This is hardly the place to discuss such a thing.” “I think it’s the perfect place,” I said, gesturing at all the dragons, hesitating a moment when I noticed that every single one of them wore expressions of pain identical to the one on Baltic’s face. “I must know. I will not bind myself to a man if he doesn’t love me.” “That’s foolishness,” Baltic scoffed, and the dragons scoffed with him, murmurs of agreement rippling around us.

  “Nevertheless, I must know. So I ask you a third time — do you love me?” He looked around wildly before leaning in. “There are others here, woman!” “I know.”

  “You expect me to say it right out in front of them?” “Constantine did,” I said, nodding toward him. Constantine straightened up and looked noble. “He didn’t have any problem saying it.” Baltic growled deep in his chest, rolling his eyes heavenward for a moment before he said in a low and ugly voice, “Fine! I love you. Now get the hell out of my way so I can kill your mate.” I don’t know what I would have done had Constantine not attacked Baltic at that moment — probably tried to reason with them, although hindsight tells me they wouldn’t have listened. It is moot speculation, regardless, because the second the words left Baltic’s lips, Constantine’s body shifted, stretching and growing and elongating into the form of a silver-scaled dragon with scarlet claws. He flung himself at Baltic with a snarl that left my blood cold.

  Baltic shifted as well, but his form, slightly smaller and less bulky, was ebony colored, with curving translucent white claws that flashed in the air as he lunged at Constantine.

  Teodore, one of Constantine’s guards, tried to restrain me, but I shook him off and stalked forward to where the two dragons were rolling around on the ground, blood arcing in the air as one of them struck true.

  “Stop it!” I yelled, my hands fisted in impotence. I wanted to strike both of them back into their senses. “I will not have th—” Constantine’s tail lashed out as he threw himself forward onto Baltic, who just barely rolled out of the way in time. I screamed as I was knocked backwards several yards. Instantly Constantine was there, in human form, leaning over me and cradling my head. “Ysolde! My dove, my cherished one — have I harmed you?” Baltic shifted back into human form as well, jerking Constantine off me and onto his back, the glittering silver point of a sword digging into his neck.

  “You have lost your mate, your sept,” Baltic said, panting, “and now your life.” “No!” I yelled, leaping up as he raised his sword overhead, clearly about to cleave Constantine’s head from his body. I threw myself forward over him, looking up at Baltic. “Do not kill him.” Baltic’s eyes narrowed on me. “You have a change of heart?” “No. I will be your mate. My life is bound to yours from this moment forward. But only if you spare Constantine.” His jaw worked, and for a moment, I thought he would refuse. But slowly he lowered his sword, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet. “By the grace of my mate, I will let you live,” he told Constantine. “But only because she desires it.” The sight of Constantine’s face haunted me as Baltic led me away.

  Chapter Eight

  “After it’s dehydrated, I take out the natron that is in the inside, and put cloth soaked in resin and more natron inside the body. Then I get to paint the whole thing with resin. That takes, like, three weeks to dry, so I want to get started right away. I think I have enough resin to do the whole fox.” “Whether or not you do is moot. I think you’ve spent enough time with your unnatural hobby. I’d like you to make yourself sociable today so May and Gabriel don’t think you’re a ghoulish little boy who is obsessed with dead things.” “Dead things are interesting,” he protested.

  “Regardless, I think you can leave your experiments alone for one day and socialize instead. How much?” I paid off the taxi driver when he stopped in front of Gabriel’s house. A strange man was at the front door, about to ring the buzzer as Brom and I got out.

  “Hullo,” the man said.

  “Hello.” I gathered up the bags of shopping from the floor of the taxi, eyeing the man as I did so. He had a long face that I thought of as typically English — not too long, but sort of ruggedly handsome — with dark blond hair and bluish grey eyes.

  He examined me just as obviously. “You wouldn’t happen to be Ysolde de Bouchier, would you?” I took a deep breath. “My name is Tully Sullivan.” “That was going to be my other guess,” he said, laughing. It was a nice laugh. He looked like a nice man, with a bit of a roguish twinkle to his eye, but still, nice.

  “Your husband sent me,” he said, taking me completely by surprise. “Name’s Savian Bartholomew.” Nice? He was the devil incarnate!

  “Gareth sent you?” Brom asked. “How come?” “You must be Brom. It seems he wants you and your mother kept safe from some very bad dragons until he can come and get you,” Savian said.

  “Eek! Go away!” I said, shoving him toward the taxi.

  “Eh?” he asked, looking confused as he clutched the side of the taxi in order to keep from being pushed inside.

  “The gent want to go somewhere?” the taxi driver asked.

  “Yes! He wants to go far, far away,” I said.

  “I do not! Stop shoving me, or I will be forced to subdue you!” Savian said, struggling when I tried to force his head down so I could push him into the cab.

  “Sullivan, I don’t think that man wants to go anywhere,” Brom commented from his location on the sidewalk.

  “Yes, yes, what the lad said!” Savian squawked as I grabbed his ear and managed to get his head inside. “Help! I’m being kidnapped!” “Just the opposite, actually,” I grumbled, grunting as I gave a mighty heave that forced his shoulders in. “Just go already!” “Never! Why are you doing this?” he yelled, somewhat muffled since I blocked most of the door with my body in an attempt to get rid of him.

  “Can’t you take a hint, you annoying man? Shoo! I don’t want you!” “But your husband—”

  “Is a complete idiot! Now go away before I lose my temper and turn your eyebrows into warts!” “The lady is crazy,” I heard him tell the cabdriver in response to his inquiry about what was going on. “I think she fancies me.” “I’m a great and… urgh… powerful mage… unph!… and I will… dammit, let go of the door!… I will smite you with all sorts of unpleasant spells.” “Help!” Savian said to the taxi driver.

  The man watched him impassively. “I would, mate, but I don’t like the sound of that smiting.” “She’s not a mage!” Savian said, yelping when, desperate to release his hold on the car door, I bit his arm. “Where’s your male empathy? Go pull her off me! I’d do it for you!” “Stop inciting innocent people to help you, or I’ll turn your testicles into turnips!” I yelled, head butting Savian’s back. “Now get the hell into the cab!” “I will die before I submit to your brutal ways!” “Argh!” I bellowed, and was just mentally thumbing through the list of spells I knew that might possibly help me, when the front door opened.

  “I thought I heard voices — Ysolde! Who is that you’re trying to bend in half… agathos daimon! Savian? What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve come to work f
or Gabriel again. I thought that, after the last time, you swore you’d never take another job from a dragon.” “Er…” I paused, suddenly wary as May rushed out onto the sidewalk.

  “Save me, May! This madwoman is trying to bend me into all sorts of unnatural positions! I think she’s already broken my liver and quite possibly one or both intestines,” Savian called from the cab.

  “You big baby,” I said, releasing him as I gave May a feeble smile. “I barely laid a finger on him, honest.” “She didn’t even turn his testicles to turnips, like she said she might,” Brom offered helpfully. “I would have liked to have seen that.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned back.

  “Turnips?” May asked, looking from me to Savian as he unfolded himself from the car, clutching his sides.

  “It was all just a little bit of fun,” I said, putting my arm around Savian. “Wasn’t it, old friend?” He whimpered and clutched his sides. “My liver! Don’t hurt my liver again!” “You know Savian, too?” May asked.

  “Ow! My neck!”

  “Too? You… uh… know him?” I countered, releasing the pincer hold I had on the back of his neck.

  “May and I are old friends. She’s never tried to hurt me,” he said, shooting me a belligerent glare as he shuffled away from me and over to her.

  “Oh. Uh…” I coughed and tried to think of an excuse to get the man alone for a few minutes. “Isn’t that a coincidence. We’ve known each other for… oh, forever.” “I’ve never seen her before in my life,” Savian told May. “Don’t leave me alone with her. She’s vicious. I think she was trying the Vulcan neck pinch on me.” “Hmm,” May said. “Why don’t we all go into the house?” I trailed behind them as they entered the house, thinking furiously.

  “So what are you doing here?” May asked Savian as I closed the door behind me.