Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

any pictures in her room.”
    “In a box in the locked drawer in her bureau,” he said, looking around the room with casual curiosity.
    “How do you know what’s in a locked drawer?” I asked, then realized just how stupid a question that was. “I don’t care if your father gave you a lock-picking kit for Christmas—you are not going to be a cat burglar when you grow up, and you are not to hone your skills on your aunt’s locked bureau.”
    “She has pictures of you, too,” he said with blithe disregard to my chastisement.
    “I highly doubt that. Ruth and I aren’t the very best of friends.”
    “Yeah, I know, but she has pictures of you and Gareth and her, and you’re all wearing clothes like out of that movie you made me watch.”
    I racked my brain, or what was left of it. “What movie?”
    “The one you like to watch so much. You know, the one with the girls in long dresses and they walk around and talk a lot.”
    “Pride and Prejudice?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, you were wearing stuff like that.”
    “They didn’t have cameras during the Regency period,” I told him, distracted by the thought of pictures. Brom wouldn’t lie, but he might have misinterpreted what he had seen.
    “Whatever. I think I’ll go move my stuff down to the room in the basement Gabriel said I could have.”
    I eyed him, his round face as dear to me as life itself. Thank god whatever was happening to me hadn’t stripped me of memory of him altogether. “You will go to bed. It’s well past your bedtime.”
    “I’m nine, Sullivan, not a baby,” he said with exaggerated forbearance.
    “Go to bed,” I repeated.
    He sighed and got to his feet, pausing at the door to send me a martyred look before saying, “Gabriel says he won’t kick us out because we’re not silver dragons anymore. He said you were born into the silver sept, and that they’d honor that, even though you were married to a black dragon. Did you know Gareth when you were married to the dragon?”
    I closed my eyes and bowed my head, wanting to cry, wanting to scream, wanting to tell Brom that I had only been married once in my life, to his father. “Time for bed,” was all I said, however, before escorting him to his room. I made sure that he was settled before disgusting him with not one, but three hugs, and two smooches to the head, which he tolerated, but only just barely. Clearly Brom was moving into that stage of life where motherly affection was a thing to be borne with much martyrdom.
    “Sleep well. If you need anything, come and get me,” I told him as I left the room.
    “I’m glad you’re OK,” he said before the door closed. “Penny said you would be, but I was kind of worried. I didn’t know you had May and Gabriel to look after you. You know what I think? I think you’re lucky they found you.”
    My heart swelled at the fact that he had been concerned. “Lucky?”
    “Yeah. What if it had been one of the other dragons who found you? Someone not from your own group? What would have happened then?”
    What indeed. “Go to sleep,” I said, blowing him a kiss.
    Silence filled my little room when I returned to it, but all it did was heighten the desperate confusion of my mind.

Chapter Four
    “I don’t want to go.”
    The lid of my traveling basket closed with solid finality, punctuated by the muted sounds of weeping.
    “I don’t like him. He’s arrogant,” I added, watching as my mother’s tirewoman tightened the straps on the basket so it wouldn’t come open during travel. “Although he’s a much better kisser than Mark, the brewer’s son.”
    “He kissed you?” My mother moved into view, her face pinched and white as she glanced around my bedchamber. Margaret sat on the bed, weeping into her sleeve.
    Sorrow at leaving her filled me, but anger at the sudden upheaval in my life was the emotion that rode me. “Yes. I don’t see why I have to go with him.”
    “Mama, can’t she stay?” Margaret begged, looking up with red-rimmed eyes.
    I sat next to her on the bed and hugged her. Margaret and I had sometimes had a turbulent relationship, but she was the only sister I had, and I would miss her. Especially since I was being taken from my home against my will.
    “I promised your mother—” Mama choked on the word before continuing. “I promised the one who was your mother that I would raise you as my own to ensure your safety. I have done so, but I know she would not have wanted me to keep you from your true