“How did you do that?” I asked, momentarily too intrigued to be incensed by his trick.
He shrugged and strolled toward me, all long- legged grace and power. “There are many things you will learn.” He stopped before me, reaching out to touch my face. I slapped his hand. He laughed. “You have fire. You will learn well.”
“And you are impertinent. What makes you think I’m who you think I am?”
“You need proof?” he asked, his eyebrows raised, but there was still amusement in his onyx eyes.
“That I’m a gigantic scaly beast who breathes fire? Yes, I think I’m going to need proof,” I said.
“There is a way,” he said, taking my arm, and with a quick jerk, he ripped the laces from the wrists of my tunic. He bent over my wrist as if he were going to bite it, paused, and looked up at me, an odd expression on his face. “How old are you,
chérie
?”
“My name is Ysolde,” I said, trying to pull my arm free. His fingers tightened around it. “Ysolde de Bouchier, and I am
not
your
chérie
.”
“How old are you?” he repeated, a stubborn glint in his eyes.
“I have seen seventeen summers, not that it is any concern of yours,” I said primly.
He grimaced, then shrugged, and instead of biting my hand, he pulled me up against his chest, his arms around me in an unbreakable vise. “This is the test,
chérie
.”
His mouth was on mine before I could do more than slap my hands on his chest. I was no stranger to being kissed—Mark, the brewer’s son, was always happy to hide behind the ale barrels with me and kiss me as long as I liked—but this was not a kiss as I knew it. Where Mark’s kisses had been interesting and vaguely pleasurable, this was a kiss of an entirely different variety. The warrior’s mouth was hot on mine, hotter than I had ever experienced, hot and sweet and spicy all at the same time, as if he’d been eating spiced plums. His hands moved down my back, holding my hips, pulling me closer to his body, his tongue teasing the seam of my lips even as his fingers dug into my hips.
With a frustrated snarl, he suddenly pushed me away. I stood shocked to my toes by the kiss, watching with astonishment as he doubled over, sliding his mail hauberk off over his head. He stood back up, pulling off the padding armor, then the leather jerkin beneath it, his eyes glittering like sunlight sparkling off rocks in a stream.
“Now,” he said.
“Now?” I asked, not understanding, taking a step back.
He made a noise in his chest that sounded like a growl, his arms around me again as he pressed me up against the tree trunk.
“Now I will prove to you what you are,” he said just before his mouth descended again, his body holding me against the tree. Gone was the mail that stood between us; now I was smashed up against his body, aware of the difference between his hard lines and my softer curves. But it was his mouth that captured and held my attention as his tongue swept along my lips again, urging me to open them. I did so, goose bumps prickling down my arms as his tongue swept inside, touching my own, tasting me even as his hands pulled my hips tighter against his, his fingers cupping my bottom in a way that was shockingly intimate and wildly thrilling at the same time.
His tongue twined around mine, and I gave up all thoughts of fighting, tasting him as he tasted me, reveling in the groan of pleasure he gave when I mimicked his action and let my tongue dance into his mouth.
Heat blasted me then, heat of such intensity I swore I was going to go up in flames, the fire of it pouring into me and setting my soul alight. Impossibly, the kiss deepened, the warrior pulling me upward along the tree trunk until my feet dangled a good foot off the ground, my mouth at the same height as his. I wrapped my arms around his back and gave myself up to the heat, to the pleasure he was stirring with just the touch of his mouth. The heat was in me and around me and through me, and with every second it filled me, my heart sang. I was consumed by it, burning just as bright as the biggest bonfire, my soul soaring with the sensation. I didn’t want it to stop, never wanted to stop kissing this strange, handsome man.
“That,
chérie
, is the test,” he said, his face tight with some emotion as he let me slide down his body.
I blinked at him a couple of times, trying to regain my wits. “Test?” I asked stupidly, my mind clearly too dazzled by that kiss to do anything but parrot what was said to me.
“Only a dragon or a mate can take dragon fire and live,” he said, his lips almost touching mine. His eyes were as deep and shiny as the bit of onyx hung in a pearl necklace that my mother sometimes wore.
“Who are you?” I asked, searching his face, memorizing it in order to tuck away the memory of that kiss.
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.”