Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

us, but you know that Baltic and I will never let anything bad happen to you.”
    “I know that,” he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. “Baltic told me he’d kill the dragons, though. The bad ones, I mean. Not Maura, because she’s nice, but the others, and then he said he’d draw and quarter Gareth for what he put you through.”
    A horrible suspicion struck me. What if the ouroboros dragons who had been in the keep hadn’t run away, as I assumed they had done once Baltic had bested them. What if ... I eyed the dragon of my dreams suspiciously, moving over to where he stood, quickly assessing his hurts, and deciding after a few seconds that he was, as he had claimed, not in any danger of expiring on the spot. That didn’t mean others hadn’t done so, however. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, nudging Baltic’s arm when he ended his call and began to dial another number.
    “About what?”
    “About killing people?”
    He looked up from his phone, frowning. “Negrets aren’t people, mate.”
    “Not them. The others.” I waited, but his gaze dropped, and he refused to meet my eyes. “Baltic?”
    “No, there is nothing I wish to tell you.” The fact that he didn’t even look at me spoke volumes.
    I sighed and moved around to stand in front of him. “Tell me you didn’t kill any of those ouroboros dragons.”
    “I didn’t kill any of the ouroboros dragons.”
    I looked into his fathomless eyes and did not like what I saw there. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”
    “You just told me to do so.” Irritation flared in those beautiful eyes.
    “No, I said-oh, never mind. How many dragons did you kill?”
    “Why?” One of his eyebrows rose. “Are you going to locate a priest and pay for indulgences for the deaths of ouroboros dragons, just as you did in the past?”
    The second the words left his lips, I felt as if I were caught up in a whirlpool, spun around, and sucked down into dizzying depths ... that just as suddenly disappeared, leaving a man’s voice echoing in my ears. “ ... are responsible for the deaths of dragons you claimed were ouroboros, are you not, Baltic?”
    “Whoa,” said a thin voice, and I blinked away the confusion to see Brom standing next to me, watching with wide eyes the scene in front of us. “We’re in another of your visions, aren’t we? This one doesn’t have Gareth and Ruth. I like it better.”
    “Why on earth am I having this? My dragon woke up, didn’t it?” I wrapped one arm around Brom and moved over to where Baltic stood with a martyred expression on his face. Pavel, Savian, and Maura stood behind him, all three of them blinking in surprise. Holland appeared to be asleep on the couch.
    “We’re in a vision? I’ve never seen anything like this,” Maura said, glancing around. “It’s a vision of the past, I assume. Interesting. Who are those people?”
    I leaned into Baltic and watched the two men before us. “The one standing with his arms crossed, and his back to the fireplace is Baltic. I know it doesn’t look like him, but that was his original human form. The other man is ... Who is that?”
    My Baltic sighed. “It matters not. I grow weary of your insistence that I relive episodes from the past that are of no interest to anyone, mate. And now you have brought others in, when we have little time to indulge in such matters. End the vision so that we might take that blasted portal out of Spain.”
    “Pavel?” I asked, ignoring Baltic’s demands.
    “That’s Alexei, the wyvern of the black dragons,” he answered with a little smile.
    Baltic shot him an annoyed look.
    “Alexei? The wyvern before you?”
    “You refuse to answer me?” the man in question demanded of the old Baltic as he stormed past, pacing a path between the long trestle table and a massive fireplace big enough to roast two oxen side by side. Alexei, almost as tall as Baltic, bore a resemblance to the latter, with a similar shape to his jaw and chin, as well as the same dark hair and eyes. Although many black dragons had such coloring, it was obvious even in the dim light that Baltic and Alexei were related.
    “Why should I bother to do so?” Baltic asked with a shrug as Alexei paced past him again. “I told you that I would avenge my mother’s death, and I have done so.”
    “At the risk of alienating the red dragons, who are already at the verge of war against us because of you!” Alexei said, his hands gesturing wildly in