Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (21 page)

I shivered at that thought and promised to send Baltic down in a few hours to relieve him. “I hope you won’t be bored sitting here all by yourself.”

He sat with his back to the wall at the end of the hallway, his feet propped up on the banister as he toasted me with a glass of dragon’s blood. “I will entertain myself with thoughts of those toys you said you bought me.”

I laughed and wished him a good night before returning to my own room.

Right into a scene of madness.

At first I thought it was a bonfire that lit up the area, sparks of amber and gold wafting upward like fireflies into the velvety indigo of the night sky. But as I stepped forward into the pool of light cast by the fire, I realized what it really was.

A funeral pyre.

“Oh, my love,” I said, tears pricking behind my eyes as I found Baltic in the crowd of silent dragons paying homage to the dead. “This is for your mother, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer me, of course—the Baltic who stood with such a stoic expression was the past Baltic, but I knew by the way his jaw was tensed that he was beset by grief. I moved next to him, watching the firelight play over the hard planes of his face, gilding the soft linen of his tunic scarlet and gold. I wanted to touch him, to hold him against the pain that I knew he was experiencing, but I was as insubstantial to him as the sparks that flew upward into the heavens.

“It is done,” a deep, somber voice said from behind me.

Baltic didn’t respond, his gaze locked on the fire.

The dragons around us filed past the pyre, each stopping next to a page who held a small wooden casket. As each person passed the fire, he or she reached first into the box, then cast something into the fire before joining a solemn procession that snaked up the hill to the keep.

“What is it you’re throwing on the fire?” I asked no one, moving closer to the page so I could see. Inside the box appeared to be sand…until the page shifted, and the firelight caught the contents, making it glitter with a warmth I felt down to the tips of my toes.

“Gold dust,” I said, wanting to run my fingers through it. “You put gold dust on the fire? Why?”

One by one the dragons paid their respects to Baltic’s mother, until only three men were left.

Baltic continued to stare at the fire, his eyes filled with pain, but his expression an unemotional mask. Constantine stood next to him.

“It is as Alexei says, Baltic—it is done. You did everything you could for her. Now you must let her go.”

“I did not save her,” Baltic said in a monotone. “I let them kill her.”

“You couldn’t have known that Chuan Ren would strike her down in order to hurt you.” He gestured toward the third man. “Alexei didn’t know they would go
that far. I didn’t dream they would do such a heinous thing.
No one
could know.”

“Baltic knew,” a man’s voice said as a fourth person emerged from the shadows.

“I might have known you’d show up,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the human form of the First Dragon. He turned to look at me, giving me a massive case of the heebie-jeebies until I realized he was staring beyond me, at the fire.

Alexei made a low bow to the First Dragon. “You honor my Maerwyn’s memory with your presence, dragonsire.”

Constantine looked more than a little awestruck, bowing and stammering some inanity or other before glancing nervously at Baltic, but the latter continued to stare at the fire, too bound in his grief to acknowledge even the appearance of his father.

The First Dragon stood before the fire, staring deep into its depths. I wondered if I had mistaken what he had said in the sex shop. What did he feel at seeing the body of the woman he had taken as a mate? Was he sad at her loss? Did he miss her? They had a child together—surely he must feel something at her passing.

And yet his face was as unreadable as Baltic’s.

“Your Maerwyn should be alive,” the First Dragon finally said, switching his gaze to Baltic. Even in human form, as he was now, the First Dragon had an “other” sort of aura to him, some intangible quality about him that warned he wasn’t what he appeared. His expression, though, was usually neutral, sometimes benign. But now? I shivered, rubbing the goose bumps on my arms. His face was as austere and frigid as the cold winter air. “And she would be, had it not been for you.”

Baltic at last turned his head, bowing it to acknowledge his father, but silent as a tomb.

“Will you honor my request?” the First Dragon asked of him.

“No.”

The word was curt, but filled with conviction.

“You are aware of the price of such defiance?”

Baltic nodded.

Constantine moved closer to him, saying under his breath, “God’s thumbs, Baltic, do not be so foolish. Take Chuan Ren as mate, and be done with this.”

“Whoa now,” I said, blinking in surprise a few times. “Chuan Ren is who everyone wanted you to hook up with? Nasty, backstabbing Chuan Ren?”

“I will take no dragon as a mate,” Baltic answered, surprising me yet again. He gestured at Alexei. “You heard the soothsayer yourself.”

“Soothsayer?” The First Dragon shifted to look at Alexei. “Explain.”

Alexei’s shoulders slumped. He looked weary beyond words, his grief, at least, etched into every line on his face. “Before she was killed, Maerwyn brought a soothsayer to the keep. She said it was to stop a terrible tragedy.” His eyes closed for a moment as a spasm of pain flashed over his face. “It is ironic, is it not, that her prediction has caused a tragedy beyond words?”

The First Dragon said nothing, clearly waiting to be told what prediction had been made. Alexei passed a hand over his face, turning away, his shoulders jerking as he gave in to his emotions. Tears spilled down my cheeks in sympathy for a man who so obviously loved his daughter.

“The soothsayer told Baltic he would die if he took a dragon for his mate.” Constantine licked his lips, his gaze skittering between Baltic and the First Dragon as he spoke. “She told him that he would find love only in the arms of a human, and that all others would bring death and destruction to him and the black dragons.”

I clutched the chain that hung around my neck, holding the love token for comfort, my heart sick at Constantine’s words. Baltic never should have come back for me—I was a dragon when he found me, even if I had thought I was human. It was my fault the silver dragons destroyed his sept. It was my fault all those dragons died in the Endless War. If only Baltic had found this woman he had been meant to be with, none of the tragedies of the past centuries would have happened.

I wanted to simultaneously vomit and scream my denial of such a thing. We
were
meant for each other. There could be no other woman who loved him as much as I did.

“And this is your final choice?” The First Dragon simply looked at Baltic, who met his gaze without wavering.

“Yes.”

“So be it. Alexei?”

Alexei turned around. “I do not wish to strip my grandson of everything he has, dragonsire. There must be something else—”

“There is nothing.”

Alexei’s face worked for a moment, but at a sharp gesture from the First Dragon, he faced Baltic, and said in a voice filled with more sadness than I thought possible, “Baltic, son of Maerwyn, I hereby cast you from the sept of the black dragons, naming you ouroboros before our eyes.” He slid a glance toward the First Dragon before adding, “May the gods have mercy upon your soul.”

Baltic jerked backward, as if he had been struck, but he said nothing to Alexei. He bowed, instead, a short, choppy bow that must have cost him much, turning on his heel and striding away. He paused as he passed the First Dragon, however. “This changes nothing,” he said.

The First Dragon’s gaze slid away from him and returned to the fire. “It changes everything.”

The fire swirled around me, making me suddenly
dizzy, which caused me to stumble forward, my hands outstretched as blindly I attempted to catch my balance.

I stubbed my toe on something hard, swearing under my breath as my vision cleared to show me a bed occupied by a sleeping body.

“Chuan Ren?” I said, grabbing the pillow and hitting the body smartly across its torso. “You didn’t tell me it was Chuan Ren!”

Baltic rolled over, glaring at me sleepily from under tousled hair. “You wish to engage in lovemaking now? You have never wished to do so in the past when it is your woman’s time. Is this some new fantasy?”

“Chuan … Ren …” I said with great deliberation, climbing onto the bed next to him, an abstracted part of my mind glad that I’d sent Pavel into town for fresh supplies, including bed linens. The room still smelled moldy and musty, and I shuddered to remember what state the bedding was in when we stripped it from all the rooms.

“She’s dead,” he said, just as if that mattered.

“She wasn’t six or seven hundred years ago.” I knelt next to him, hugging the pillow to my chest. “She wasn’t when everyone wanted you to take her as your mate.”

He rolled back onto his other side, grunting as he did so. “You’ve had another of those irritating visions.”

“Yes, I did.” I prodded his back with the edge of the pillow. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Chuan Ren that everyone was pressuring you to claim as a mate?”

He sighed and let me pull him over onto his back. “It doesn’t matter. I had no intention of taking her as anything, let alone a mate.”

I slumped down next to him, leaning against the headboard and stared down at my feet, remembering my sadness. “All those dragons, Baltic.”

“All what dragons? Why are you dressed and outside of the blankets? Is your woman’s time bothering you? Do you wish for me to fetch pain tablets?”

I twined my fingers through his, drawing strength and comfort from his touch. “All those dragons who died because you met me instead of the woman you were supposed to spend your life with.”

“A woman? What woman?” He sighed again. “You will remove your clothing and climb into bed so that I may comfort you. I would prefer to make love to you, but I know how you are at this time, so I will simply hold you as you said you enjoy.”

I slid from the bed, slowly unbuttoning my shirt, not with the intention of teasing him, but with a sense of regret so strong, it made me want to weep. “The woman you were supposed to mate with. The human woman that some soothsayer told you would bring you untold happiness, or something like that. And instead, you met me, and we fell in love, and I brought death and destruction to the sept and the weyr. Oh, Baltic, what have we done?”

I wanted to curl up into a little ball, so heavy was the guilt that weighed me down.

Baltic marched around the bed, his hands on my shoulders as he gently shook me. “You insist on having these visions, and now you see what comes of it. I demand that they stop, Ysolde. They distress you, and I do not like to see you unhappy.”

“I can’t help it,” I said, sobbing now. “If only you hadn’t met me. If only you hadn’t come to my father’s castle—”

“
You
are the woman I was supposed to meet.
Chérie
, do not weep for such a foolish reason.” He tipped my head back, brushing off my tears with his thumb. “And do not look at me with such accusation in your eyes. I have never lied to you, and I do not do so now.”

“But…” I swallowed back the ache in my throat. “But in the vision, Constantine said the soothsayer foretold that your mate was a human.”

“You are human. You retain a dragon consciousness, but until that has fully claimed you, you appear human.”

I thought about that for a moment, letting him kiss along my jaw, my fingers digging into the warm, satin-covered muscles of his arms. Despite having attained dragon form in Spain, the dragon being within me was still, I knew now, slumbering. It had woken once, and I had hope I could bring it to full awareness again, but for now…well, he was right. I
was
human.

But I hadn’t always been so.

“I wasn’t human when we met.”

“You thought you were. You had been raised as one. To everyone but the mortals who gave you sanctuary, you were human.” He pulled back enough to look down at me, his eyes glowing with mingled passion, love, and annoyance. “You heard Constantine talk about the soothsayer? That happened the night of my mother’s sepulture.”

“Sepulture? You mean her funeral?”

“Dragons do not have funerals. We burn our dead in a ceremony called sepulture.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that the vision you had?”

“Yes.” I slanted him a look. “We have a lot to talk about. I’ve got oodles of questions.”

He sighed a third time, quickly divesting me of my clothing before picking me up in his arms and carrying me to bed. “You always have questions.”

I giggled at the martyred tone in his voice. “At least you can’t say your old Ysolde never asked you questions, because I know full well I did. Why did the First Dragon force your grandfather to kick you out of the sept just because you didn’t want to hook up with Chuan Ren? Why did he say your mother’s death could have been avoided, and that you were responsible for it? And why—”

“Enough!”

“I want answers!”

“And I do not wish to give you anything but extreme pleasure.” He paused, his mouth a hairbreadth from my breast as he glanced down my torso. “Is your woman’s time over?”

“Oh, for the love of the saints. You are the most irritating, annoying, arrogant man I’ve ever met.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, not batting so much as one single eyelash. “Is it over, or must I wait to make love to you?”

“Baltic, I’m tired of your never answering my questions. And I have a lot of them.”

“Your woman’s time is not here?” he prodded.

“By the rood, Baltic! Do we have to discuss this right now?”

“Is it here, yes or no?”

“No!”

He looked down at my breasts with a speculative glint to his eyes.

“Wait! I’ll make a deal with you.” I held him back as he was about to dive for my chest, my fingers taking the opportunity to gently massage the tendons in his shoulders and neck.

“What sort of a deal?”

I smiled to myself. There was nothing dragons loved more than negotiating. “For every question you answer, I will bring you untold, immense sexual gratification.”