Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

no way out but to jump to the ground.
    “Talk about your leap of faith,” I muttered as I sat on the windowsill and swung both legs over the edge. “I just hope to heaven that this works or I’m immortal, because if I’m not, I’m going to be in very bad shape.”
    I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and held out my hands as I whispered the light invocation, a spell used to temporarily guard mages from harm. A faint golden glow rippled up my body, skimming the surfaces, leaving me with a familiar tingly feeling that told me I was surrounded by arcane power. “So much for an interdiction, Dr. Kostich,” I said somewhat smugly, and jumped off the windowsill.
    “Ow.” I spat out the bit of dried lawn and dirt and a very startled beetle. “Ow. Dear god in heaven, ow.”
    The light spell didn’t work. That became apparent to me about half a second after I left the windowsill, and just before I hit the ground of the tiny garden spreadeagled and facedown.
    I touched my nose, wondering if I’d broken it. “Ow.” It wobbled back and forth just fine, so I gathered that it wasn’t shattered, as it felt. I sat up slowly, gingerly moving my arms and legs. Everything on me hurt, but nothing seemed to be more than bruised. Either the spell did work after all, or I was immortal.
    “Wish I . . . ow . . . knew which it was,” I muttered to myself as I got painfully to my feet and limped off around the side of the house. By the time I took a few steps, I was moving a bit easier.
    “Now to find Savian,” I said as I glanced up and down the street. There was little traffic at this time of night, just a few cars passing. As I started off toward a busy intersection where I hoped to find a taxi stand, a car passing me suddenly slammed on its brakes with a squeal of tires on wet pavement that was painful to the ears.
    To my amazement, the car backed up, and a door to the backseat was flung open.
    “Get in!” the man who emerged said.
    I stared at him in amazement. “How did you—”
    “Get in!” Baltic didn’t wait for me to comply; he simply picked me up and tossed me into the car, following me with a growl to the driver. Before I could pick myself off the floor, I was flung backwards when the car shot off like a rocket.
    “Hey!” I struggled to sit upright, allowing the man next to me to pull me upward onto the seat. “That was totally uncalled-for! I am not a sack of potatoes you can just toss around!”
    “Under no circumstances do I regard you as a sack of potatoes.”
    “Good.” I gave him the meanest look I had. “If you intend on blowing up Gabriel’s house, you can just think again!”
    To my surprise, a little smile flickered over his lips. “I see that the centuries have not diminished your desire to tell me what to do, mate.”
    “I’m not your mate,” I said primly, untwisting the sweatshirt that had been whipped around my torso when he’d thrown me into the car. “I may have been in the past, but now my name is Tully, and I would appreciate it if you would call me that.”
    “Your name is Ysolde de Bouchier, and you are my mate. Why have you sought refuge with the silver dragons?”
    I glanced at the driver.
    Baltic followed the path of my gaze, and said something in a language I didn’t understand.
    “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Russian.”
    “That was Zilant, not Russian,” he said.
    “Well, I don’t speak that, either.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “You do. I taught it to you myself.”
    “I’m happy to argue with you about this all night, but honestly, there are approximately a thousand questions I have for you, and we aren’t going to get to any of them if we spend all our time on whether or not I know a language.”
    “I have a solution to that—don’t argue with me.”
    “You are just as bossy as you used to be, do you know that?” I told him, poking him in the chest.
    He grabbed both my arms and pulled me over until his nose was a fraction of an inch from mine. “And you are just as argumentative and lacking in respect as you used to be.”
    We stared at each other for a minute. He narrowed his eyes. He sniffed the air. “Why do you not smell as you should?”
    I pushed myself out of his grip, straightening my sweatshirt a second time. “Well, I am sorry I offend you, but you have no one but yourself to blame for that, Mr. Disappear into the Beyond. Rather than take a bath, I opted to go find Savian in order to force him to find you so I