Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

“I can’t let you go, my love.”
    “Do not!” I snarled, whirling around and slapping his hand off me, fury causing my dragon fire to spill over and form a ring around him. “Do not use that word! You do not love me, Constantine! You cannot love someone whom you systematically destroy!”
    He reeled back a step. Baltic tried to shove him, but there was nothing there for him to touch. Instead he fought his way through the snow to where I stood. “I always knew he was mad. Look at his eyes, mate. Look at his face.”
    I had to admit, Constantine’s eyes glinted with a strange light, even in the middle of a snowstorm.
    “He has turned you from me,” Constantine said sadly, bowing his head. “I must do what I must do, Ysolde. I have sworn to protect you, and I will do that the only way I know how.”
    “Protect her?” Baltic yelled at the figure of Constantine. “It’s me you want to destroy—you always have, ever since I challenged you for the right to be heir.”
    “I am tired of protesting against your folly,” I said, suddenly exhausted from the weight of all those dragons who had died, and would die, for no real purpose. Baltic’s words sank in and I glanced at him. “You challenged Constantine?”
    “That is the true reason this war has continued. He was named by Alexei as his heir, but I knew he held only his own interests close to his heart, not those of the sept. I challenged him for the right to be heir, and won. He never forgave me for that, and soon after I was named wyvern, he rallied a handful of dragons, lying to them, bribing them, convincing them that they could never be happy under my rule.”
    It made sense. It made all too much sense. Constantine was a man of great pride; all wyverns were. And for him to lose both the sept and me to Baltic . . . I wasn’t surprised it would generate a deep, seething hatred that would spread to everything Constantine perceived as belonging to Baltic.
    “There is no hope if you remain with him,” Constantine told me, passing a hand over his face as if he, too, was weary.
    “Only because you are too foolish to see it,” I answered. “I must return before Baltic notices I am gone.”
    “At this moment I’m probably in the caves, fending off Kostya’s attempt to sneak into the castle through the lower passages,” Baltic said, then whirled around to face Constantine, swearing in Zilant as he did so. “This is when he killed you! Flee, mate! I will keep him from striking you down.”
    I turned on my heel and started down the steep incline toward the exit of the bolt-hole I’d used to escape the keep unnoticed. I wanted to stop, to grab Baltic and make him leave with me, but my body had to follow its actions of the past. “You can’t,” I called to him as I slid down a small slope toward a clutch of trees that loomed up grey in the whipping snow. “You can’t touch him, remember?”
    He swore long and profanely, starting after me.
    A sudden blast of icy wind sent me sprawling forward. Behind me, Constantine called out my name. “Ysolde!”
    I looked over my shoulder, but could see nothing, no sign of Constantine or Baltic.
    “Mate! Where are you?” Baltic cried, his voice faint as most of it was whipped away on the wind. “I can’t see you. Run from him! Don’t let him find you!”
    “I can’t,” I answered, getting to my feet. As I did so, the wind lifted my cloak and swirled it around me, blinding me as a sudden blow struck my back.
    I screamed, struggling both with the snow I’d fallen into and with the cloak, heavy and wet, effectively capturing my legs. I fell back into the snow and the whiteness consumed me, leaching into my being until I was as pure as it was, suddenly adrift.
    The white swirled around with a beauty that brought tears to my eyes . . . until I noticed the red in it.
    “What . . .” I gasped as I rose higher, and I realized I was looking at myself, at the past Ysolde lying facedown, a fan of crimson staining the snow and the cloak. “Baltic! Oh my god, Baltic!”
    “I’m here.” He stumbled into view, stopping when he saw the figure holding a long, curved sword.
    “Noooo!” Baltic howled, falling to his knees, his head thrown back in agony.
    Constantine stood at my feet, looking at my body with eyes that were flat and devoid of all expression.
    A drop of blood sluggishly gathered at the tip of the sword he held, trembling with the force of the wind, finally releasing to fall with infinite slowness