Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

he’d never seen me. “You would use the dragon heart against me?”
    I marched over to him and slapped him, not hard, but shocking him enough that he leaped to his feet. “That is for even thinking that I would do such a thing.”
    Fury roared through him in the form of his dragon fire, a fury that spilled out onto me, twining around my legs, climbing higher and higher until I was alight with a spiral blaze. I welcomed the heat from it, merging it with my own, taking it into me and burying it deep into my soul.
    For a moment, I thought Baltic was going to explode with anger, but amazingly, his fire banked and his lips quirked. “Ah, my love, what would I do without you?”
    “Be wholly and utterly miserable,” I said, pleased to see the life come back into his eyes. “And probably rut with every woman with two legs.”
    His hands slid around my waist. “You are the only woman I know who would dare greet her wyvern with the news that she now bears a piece of the dragon heart. We shall have to give you a name, now.”
    “I have a name,” I protested.
    “Phylacteries are always given names. If you are now the phylactery for the Choate shard, then it shall have to take a different name.”
    “We’ll worry about that another time. What I need to know is how to get it out of me.”
    He shrugged, watching as the maids made another trip in with more water. “That I do not know. No dragon has ever been a phylactery before.”
    “Wonderful.” I wondered if there was some learned person I could speak with, someone familiar with the dragon shards and heart.
    “You did not say where Kostya is. He came back with you, did he not?” Baltic asked as he pulled off his thin linen shirt.
    I knelt again and helped him with the crossties on his leggings. “Actually, he didn’t.”
    “He left you to travel from Paris to Dauva alone?” he asked, frowning down at me.
    I gestured toward the bath and went to a chest for the soap. “I wasn’t alone. My personal guard went with me.”
    “So I should hope.” Water splashed as he got into the tub. “Where is he if he is not here?”
    I took a deep breath, watching as the maids poured in the last of the hot water. When they were done and we were alone again, I dampened a sea sponge and swirled it around on the soap I made especially for Baltic. It was scented with frankincense and myrrh, his favorite. He watched me closely as I knelt next to the tub and began washing him.
    “My mother would never let me wash anyone,” I said, wishing to avoid the pain I knew was coming. “I see now why she did so. It’s very sensual, this spreading of soap on a man’s body.”
    Baltic, distracted by the feeling of my fingers stroking across his skin, slippery little trails following each of my fingers as I lathered up the soft hair of his chest, glanced downward. “I am filthy, and riddled with fleas and lice, chérie . If you continue to stroke me that way, you will end up sharing the bath, and will not thank me for allowing my vermin to visit you.”
    I smiled, enjoying the hard muscles that lay in smooth ropes beneath his satiny flesh. Reluctantly, admitting the truth to his statement, I soaped up the sponge again and handed it to him, rising to fetch clean clothing as he briskly washed himself.
    “Now you will tell me what you have wished to avoid,” he said, washing the long ebony lengths of his hair, leaning forward so I could rinse the soap off with one of the remaining leathers of water.
    “Kostya has forsaken you,” I said simply, grabbing a linen cloth when he leaped to his feet, wincing as soapy water streamed down into his eyes. I mopped off his face, toweling his hair, and saying quickly, “He believes what all black dragons believe—that you seek to control the weyr. He refuses to be a part of it any longer. It was he who summoned me to Paris. I told him of my plan to use the dragon heart to stop the war, and he arranged for the other septs to loan me the shards so that it could be done.”
    “I wondered how you had arranged that,” he said in a deceptively mild voice. I wasn’t fooled—he was beyond angry, beyond furious, his fire barely contained.
    “Sit back down and finish bathing. I do not wish to share my bed with your friends any more than I would a bath,” I said wearily, pouring him a cup of wine.
    “So he has acted at last,” Baltic said, slowly sitting down, absently washing his body as I retrieved a fine comb and a paste made from white