Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

promised to hand him over to Gabriel and May when they arrived in Spain later that afternoon.
    “I’ve never been to England,” Brom said when I told him he was to join me. “Not that I remember. Have I, Sullivan?”
    I panicked. “Brom, you remember last Christmas, don’t you?”
    “Last Christmas? When you got upset because I asked for a dissection kit and you wanted to give me a Game Boy, you mean?”
    I relaxed, the sudden fear that my memory issues were hereditary—or that someone had been abusing his mind—fading into nothing. “Er . . . yes. That’s right.”
    “What about it?”
    “Just remember that sometimes, you may not understand why things are happening, but they turn out for the best,” I said in my “vague but wise” mom manner. “I want you to behave yourself with May and Gabriel when they get there, but if anything happens to them, you call me, all right?”
    “Yeah, OK. Penny says I have to go pack now. Bye.”
    I hung up the phone feeling relieved, but at the same time I was worried. Could I trust Gabriel and May? Where was Gareth, and why had he left Brom for so long? And what was going on with my brain? Was I insane, or just the victim of some horrible plot?
    “I need some serious therapy,” I said aloud, thinking of the small garden plot that I shared with the other residents of our apartment house. It was my haven against daily trials and tribulations, providing me with boundless peace.
    “All silver dragons like plants,” Kaawa said from behind me. “May hasn’t had time yet to take the garden in hand, but I’m sure she’d be happy if you wanted to tidy things up out there.”
    I whirled around to pin her back with a look. “How did you know I was talking about a garden?”
    She just smiled and gestured toward the French windows. Gabriel’s house, although in the middle of London, had a minuscule garden guarded by a tall redbrick wall. My heart lightened at the sight of tangled and overrun flower beds, and before I knew it, I was on my knees, my eyes shut as I sank my hands into the sun-warmed earth.
    “I’ll leave you here. It will be four hours before Gabriel will reach your son,” she said, watching with amusement as I flexed my fingers in the soil, plucking out the weeds that choked a chrysanthemum.
    “I know. The garden is as good a place as any to wait,” I said, looking about to see how bad it was. There were only three beds. One appeared to have suffered some calamity, since the wild lilac bush in it was crumpled to the ground, and wild grass filled the rest of the bed. The second contained miniature rhododendrons run amok, tangled up with irises and what looked to be phlox. The bed I knelt before contained autumn plants, all of which were threatened by the rampant weeds and wild grass.
    Kaawa left, and I spent a pleasant hour clearing out the chrysanthemum, amaryllis, and saffron sprouts, worrying all the while about what had become of my life.

Chapter Three
    “W here is she?”
    The roar reached me, even hidden from view as I was in the farthest corner of the stable, behind the broken wagon that Dew, the smith, was supposed to have mended months ago.
    The doors to the stable slammed shut with a force that I felt in the timbers behind my back. The horses inside with me protested with startled snorts and whinnies. Hastily, I set down the two kittens I had been nuzzling for comfort, returning them to their anxious mother before dusting off my knees and picking my way through the gloom of the stable. The man’s voice was deep, and he spoke in French, not the English of the serfs, but there was an accent to his voice that I had never heard.
    “Where are you hiding her?”
    Anger was rich in that voice, anger and something else, something I couldn’t define. I patted Abelard, my mother’s gelding, and slipped beside him to peek out through a rotten bit of wood next to his manger, watching as the warrior-mage stomped across the bailey, my father and mother trailing behind him.
    “We are not hiding anyone, my lord,” Papa said, his tone apologetic.
    My mouth dropped open in surprise. Papa never apologized to anyone! He was a famous mage, one of so much renown that other mages travelled for months just to consult with him. And yet here he was, following the warrior around, bleating like a sheep that had lost its dam.
    “Kostya saw her,” the warrior snarled, spinning around to glare at Papa, the tall guards moving in a semicircle behind him. “Do