Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

your name! It wasn’t because of you being kicked out of your sept. It was because you were his son! His youngest son!” I put my hands to my head, wanting to scream and shout and shake Baltic, all at the same time. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I thought you would eventually remember,” he said with a shrug. “The old Ysolde—”
    “Was a twit, evidently!” I interrupted. “For the love of the saints, Baltic! You could have told me! You knew I was trying to do what the First Dragon—oh, dear god, he’s my father-in-law!—what he wanted me to do.”
    “You told me you had to do something with Constantine, not with one of his sons.”
    I ground my teeth. He had a point, dammit. “Are there any other family members I should know about? Your mother? Brothers?”
    “They are all dead,” he said, examining the wood carefully. “Look at this—it is recent. Thala must have shut down this tunnel behind her as she escaped. The lair!”
    He whirled and ran back the way he had come. I followed, my mind still reeling with all that I had just found out. “What exactly happened to get you kicked out of the sept?”
    Baltic swore as he touched the silver-bound door that marked his lair. It swung open with a teeth-grating noise that left me clutching the wall. He plunged into the room; I followed more slowly, trying desperately to get my brain to function. The air inside was close and dusty, as if it had been closed for centuries, which until recently it had. His light flickered around the lair, catching first a broken iron trunk, then a heap of wood that had once been a chest. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dirt and dust, disuse and abandonment just as thick in the air.
    A few cracked jars remained stacked in the corner, but the rest of the lair was picked clean, no doubt by Kostya. Baltic didn’t spare much of a glance for any of the remains, however; he went straight for the back corner of the room, kicking aside an elaborately carved chair that had been broken by a falling beam. He bent, pulling up a trapdoor, and jumping into the hole without a word.
    “What’s that? Another lair?” As blackness surrounded me in a claustrophobic grip, I hurried forward, kneeling at the edge of what seemed to be a chasm to oblivion. The air seeping out of the hole was even more dusty and mildewed, making my nose wrinkle.
    The light bobbled, then returned as Baltic heaved himself up, out of the sub-lair. “It’s gone.”
    “What’s gone?” I brushed spiderwebs and dirt from his hair as he sat on the edge, his legs dangling into the hole. “What was in there?”
    “My things.” His eyes caught and held mine. “Our things. Our private things. Not even Kostya knew about this vault. It’s where you put your love token before Dauva was destroyed.”
    I touched the chain that hung around my neck, the oval silver pendant that Baltic had carved for me some four hundred years before nestled safely between my breasts. “What’s missing?”
    “My talisman.”
    “Is that something I gave to you?”
    “No.” His expression was one of worry. I didn’t often see Baltic look worried, so I took heed, and followed him as he exited the lair.
    “It’s important, this talisman?” I asked a few minutes later as we climbed out of the lair.
    “Very.”
    I grabbed at his belt as he started to stride off, making him turn around and raise an eyebrow.
    “I know you don’t like to answer questions, but I’m going to keep at you until you tell me, so why don’t you save us both some verbal dancing and just spill now?”
    He sighed heavily.
    “And if you dare say the old Ysolde would never have pestered you this way, I’ll deck you,” I threatened.
    He laughed and took the fist I was waving at him in his hand, pulling me forward to kiss me. “The old Ysolde would have done just as you are doing now, questioning me endlessly until she got what she wanted. The talisman was a gift from the First Dragon. It marks me as his child. My brothers and sister all had one when they formed their septs.”
    “You have a sister, too?” I couldn’t help but ask, pausing long enough to grab the Larry rock before allowing him to escort me down the game trail, through the still-smoking scorched area, and out to where I had left the car.
    “Had. She was killed a few years after she founded the black sept.”
    “That must have been a long time ago.” I did some mental calculating. “Over a thousand years?”
    “Yes.” He