Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (27 page)

“Quiet, demon, or I’ll dump you on her for a week and see if she can’t arrange for an attitude adjustment.”

Jim’s eyes grew large as it backed up a few steps, but it kept silent.

“Aww, Sullivan. I want to watch the challenge. Nico says it’s an important part of dragon stuff, and I should know about it even if I won’t ever be a wyvern.”

I looked around the hall. Everyone was there, Brom (with Nico standing protectively behind him) next to Savian, who leaned against the wall with a grin on his face. Beyond them, Pavel and Holland were at the head of the
hallway that led back toward the kitchen. Behind Constantine, Cyrene sat on the stairs, texting someone while chewing gum with blithe unconcern for anything that was happening. My gaze settled on Baltic as he stood to the rear of Kostya, his arms crossed, and a bored expression on his adorable face. Despite that, I could tell he was aching for a chance at Constantine. “I don’t think seeing two men beat each other up is particularly vital to your well-being, even if one of those men is incorporeal some of the time.”

“Please, Sullivan?” Brom came perilously close to a whine, which he knew annoyed me. I tipped my head in question to Baltic. He looked consideringly at Constantine for a few seconds, then nodded.

“All right, you can stay, but if you have nightmares about shades bleeding all over the place—not that I knew shades could do that in the first place—then I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“My corporeal form is exactly the same as yours,” Constantine pointed out haughtily.

Jim snickered again.

Constantine set it on fire.

Kostya apparently just noticed that his brother and Aisling were present. “What are you doing in Latvia?” he asked them.

“Housewarming,” Aisling said after a moment’s pregnant silence. She waved a hand at the hall. “Ysolde invited us to see the new place.”

Kostya snorted his disgust.

“Will you stop setting Aisling’s demon on fire,” I told Constantine. “It’s just rude, and besides, this house hasn’t been fireproofed yet. Jim, are you all right?”

Aisling had beaten out the fire by the time I was done speaking. “It’s fine, no thanks to Casper the Not-so-friendly Ghost over there.”

Brom covered his mouth to stifle a giggle.

“You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel the whole idea of a challenge is stupid.”

Around me, five dragons simultaneously sucked in outraged breaths. “Stupid?” Kostya asked with equal amounts of disbelief and indignation.

“Yes, it’s archaic and sexist, to boot. What if I were wyvern, and you challenged me to a physical fight? I wouldn’t stand a chance against a strong male.”

“Which is why females should not be wyverns,” Constantine said.

“Oh, you do not want to go there,” Aisling said at the same time I snapped, “Get over yourself, Constantine.”

Cyrene looked up from her phone and inquired, “Would you like me to fill the room with water, Ysolde? I’ve found nothing brings reason to pigheaded dragons like the act of nearly drowning.”

Kostya wanted to argue the statement, but I intervened. “No, I think we’ll forgo that, but Constantine won’t find himself invited to dinner if he keeps up that sort of crap.” I thought for a moment. “Do shades eat?”

“Yes, we eat! We’re just like non-shades, other than we sometimes lose power and fade into the beyond until we regain enough energy to join the mortal world again.”

“That’s fascinating, but it doesn’t negate the point that I think these challenges are idiotic. Even Baltic, who loves nothing more than a reason to fight, looks bored to tears by it.”

“That is only because I’m waiting for Kostya to fail, so that I can take over,” my love said, cracking his knuckles.

“I am not going to fail. You’re my second only because I must have one,” Kostya snarled at him, “and because the only other choice was that watery twit.”

“Oh!”

I held up a hand to stop Cyrene as she leaped to her feet. “My original statement stands, and to it, I add a new rule—no more dragon form. It’s too destructive.”

“Aw, man,” Jim started to complain.

I set its toes briefly on fire. Jim yelped.

“Oh, it’s all right if
you
set it on fire?” Constantine asked in an arch voice.

“Yes, it is,” I said, examining my fingertips. “I’m a mother. It’s part of our arsenal of behavior management.”

Aisling grinned.

“Baltic!” Constantine swaggered toward me (dragon form is very prone to swaggering), stopping in front of me with a peeved expression on his face. “Inform Ysolde that she cannot interfere in a challenge, and that by the terms of this challenge, we must fight body to body. That requires dragon form.”

I raised an eyebrow at Baltic. He was silent for a moment, then made a short, annoyed gesture. “It pains me greatly to say the words, but about this, Constantine is correct. You may not interfere in the challenge, mate.”

“I will
not
have this house destroyed because you boys don’t want to play nice!” I said loudly, turning back to glare at Constantine.

“I really hate it when she refers to us as boys,” Kostya said in an aside to Baltic. “We’re older than she is, after all.”

Baltic nodded. “She was always that way, though.” He smiled suddenly. “Do you remember the time when she dragged you out of Dauva by your ear for swiving that milkmaid in the main hall?”

Kostya rubbed his ear and shot me a surly look. “I haven’t forgotten. My ear has never been the same since.”

Aisling laughed openly. I ignored them to address Constantine. “Either you beat the crap out of each other while you’re in human form—and without breaking anything but each other—or you can just take it outside.”

“Ysolde—” Constantine started to say, but I interrupted him with brutal disregard.

“Out!” I flung open the two front doors and made a grand gesture. “You go outside with your challenge, or you call it off.”

“Are you going to allow her to speak this way to us?” Constantine asked Baltic, clearly expecting him to do something.

Baltic looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then shrugged. “She is my mate. If she does not wish for the challenge to take place in our home, then it will not. I do not desire her to be unhappy. You will conduct the challenge outside.”

Constantine was obviously about to explode, but in the end, he stomped his way out the door, down the verandah, and out into the yard, grumbling the entire way. “I have never been so treated, and I have been abused by the very best! To speak that way to
me
, the wyvern of her own sept, is unthinkable. Were she
my
mate—”

“If I had been your mate, I would have been insane a long time ago,” I called out after him as Kostya, with a martyred sigh, trundled after him. The others followed, Baltic bringing up the rear with a slight twitch to his lips that told me he found the situation as amusing as I did.

As I walked down the steps to the yard, faint sounds caught my attention. I paused for a moment, trying to pinpoint where the yelling was coming from, but it was too distant, almost on the edge of my awareness.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Baltic as I approached him, counting on his exceptional hearing to locate what I couldn’t.

Baltic stood with the others in a loose circle around Constantine and Kostya as they pounced, tails whipping through the air, claws flashing, grunts and oaths rising upward on a reddish cloud of dust from the disturbed ground.

“Hear what?” he asked without turning toward me.

“That noise. It sounds like…” I paused and closed
my eyes in order to focus my attention. “It sounds like someone is doing bodywork on a car. I can hear metallic pounding and yelling.”

“I hear nothing.” Baltic stepped backward as Constantine and Kostya, now fully engaged in battle, rolled toward us. He grabbed my arm to pull me back, but the second he did so, a familiar feeling washed over me.

“Oh no, not now,” I said as the afternoon light shimmered, dimming into that of predawn.

“Ysolde—”

I held up my hand to stop the complaint I was sure was to follow. “Don’t tell me to stop the vision, Baltic. I’ve told you repeatedly I can’t. And besides, I don’t want to. They are the only way I ever find out anything, since you refuse to tell me things I evidently need to know.”

“Ooh, another vision,” Cyrene said, looking around us with bright, interested eyes.

“I’m beginning to enjoy them, I have to admit,” Savian told her.

“They do bring back some fun memories of times long past,” she agreed. “Although Ysolde never has visions about anyone I knew.”

“You’re not going to get hurt, are you?” Brom asked, moving over to stand next to me. “Pavel told Nico you had dreams of when someone killed you a long time ago.”

I pulled him between Baltic and me, smiling at him when Baltic put his arm around us both. “No, I’m not going to be hurt, and you don’t have to worry, lovey—I would never let you see that vision. This one looks like…” I looked around us at the images of the past. “I—I don’t know where this is. Baltic?”

“It’s Latoka, isn’t it?” Drake asked, sidestepping when his brother, still fully engaged in fighting with Constantine, was thrown backward. “Baltic, is this Staraya Latoka?”

“What’s Latoka?” I asked Baltic, nudging him when he was obviously reluctant to answer.

“It was the holding of Alexei.” He glared around him at the vision people as they fought in an oddly ironic mimicry of Constantine and Kostya. Only the dragons in the vision all belonged to the black sept, and they were armed with swords. “It was destroyed.”

I looked at the two squat round towers that towered over us, noting the men running along the ramparts of the stone wall. It wasn’t a very big fortress, nor did it look to my unknowledgeable eyes as being nearly as protective as Dauva was, but clearly this stronghold was built centuries before the latter.

“It looks fine to me now. When was it destroyed? And why are all the dragons fighting one another?”

Baltic’s expression grew grim, and, much to my surprise, he took my hand and led me toward the nearest tower. I grabbed Brom with my other hand, pulling him after us. “For once, you have chosen a fitting vision. No, do not bring my son. He may stay out here with his tutor.”

I caught his eye and read a warning in it. I turned back, expecting to see everyone still watching Constantine and Kostya despite the vision, but they had all fallen into place behind us. “Nico, would you mind?”

“Not at all,” he said, obviously lying, but his dedication to Brom won out over his interest to see whatever event Baltic wanted to keep Brom from seeing. He held out his hand for Brom.

“Why can’t I stay with you?” Brom asked.

“Because there are some things that even I, a mother who allows you to help firebomb negrets, have issues with your seeing, and this is obviously one of those things.”

“But you don’t know what it is,” he pointed out.

“Go!” I said firmly, pinning him back with my best
annoyed-mom look. He walked slowly over to Nico, muttering under his breath about no one letting him have any fun.

“Jim will stay with you, won’t you, Jim?” Aisling said, nudging her demon.

Its eyes grew big with an obvious plea in them.

“You can talk, but only because I want you to keep Brom and Nico entertained.”

“Seriously, Ash, you’ve got to stop taking mean lessons from Soldy.” Jim walked just as slowly as Nico, casting plaintive looks over its shoulder as we all moved toward the tower. “We never get to see any of the really good stuff.”

“What about them?” Cyrene asked, pointing to where Constantine was in the process of head butting Kostya, while the latter was trying desperately to pull Constantine’s legs out from under him.

“They can stay where they are. I’d much rather have them keep each other busy than have to cope with more attitude from either of them,” I said, squeezing Baltic’s hand.

“It’s too bad Maura isn’t here,” Savian said as we entered the tower. “She really enjoyed the last vision.”

I expected there would be more dragons fighting inside the tower, but it was empty. Or so I thought at first. Across the vast space was another door, obviously leading to an antechamber. Before it, two men stood, both in human form, with one bearing chain mail armor, and a huge sword.

“You cannot do this,” the armor-bearing Constantine said, the anger in his voice audible even across the centuries. “Allowing him to return to the sept will be the last straw. Chuan Ren will not tolerate that insult to pass. She will bring war to the black dragons, and the blame for that will lie directly at your feet.”

“The First Dragon was wrong to force me to remove
Baltic from the sept,” Alexei said, waving a weary hand at Constantine. “I am making peace with my own conscience.”

“Who’s that with Constantine?” I heard Aisling whisper to Drake. He murmured an explanation. Aisling sounded astonished when she asked, “Baltic’s
grandfather
kicked him out of his own sept?”

“Does Alexei know that all the black dragons are fighting one another outside?” I asked Baltic, my fingers tightening around his in acknowledgment of how hard I knew it was for him to watch this.

“I don’t think he did. Constantine never expected that Alexei would go against the First Dragon’s command, and he struck out in fear and anger.”

“Those guys fighting are with Constantine?” Aisling asked. “The black dragons, I mean—wait, they’re all black dragons at this point, aren’t they? This is so confusing. But some of those fighting are the same dragons who followed Constantine to the silver sept?”

“I think so,” I answered, watching Baltic’s face. His eyes were filled with anger, his dragon fire running very hot within him as he watched the scene in front of us.

“You can’t do that!” Constantine yelled, his voice filled with frustration as he slammed his fist into the wall. “I am your heir! You named
me
as heir.”

“Baltic is heir now. You lost the challenge to him before he was removed from the sept,” Alexei said, holding up a hand in an obviously placatory gesture. “Do not lash me with your ire, Constantine. I am aware of your feelings, but I must think about what’s best for the sept, and the future of the black dragons lies with Baltic.”