“Oh, man, I can’t believe I almost missed this,” Jim said, running down the stairs with Aisling right behind it.
“I’ll put a binding ward on him,” she called as she started to sketch a shape in the air.
“No!” I yelled, catching her hand to stop her. “Why are you people doing this? Stop, all of you! This has to stop!” Baltic screamed an oath in a Slavic language, shaking off both Kostya and Gabriel. For a moment, for the time it took to pass from one second to another, his gaze met mine. Anger and hope and pain were in it, but before I could blink, he was gone.
“Holy cow,” Brom said, his eyes huge as he waved his hands around the spot where Baltic had stood. “I need to learn how to do that!” “He’s gone,” I said, inexplicably feeling as if a part of me had just died.
“He’s run back into the beyond,” Kostya snarled as he wiped blood from his nose. “He is nothing but a base coward. He has escaped us by that means before because he knows only May can follow him.” “Aargh!” I screamed, suddenly filled with the same fury that I knew must have possessed Baltic. I grabbed Kostya by the shirt and shoved him backwards, slamming him up against the car.
“Sullivan?” Brom asked, his voice full of wonder.
“Why did you do it?” I yelled at Kostya, grabbing his hair and banging his head into the car. “You were his friend! He trusted you! And you betrayed him just as all the others did!” A wildcat landed on my back, biting and clawing and pulling at my own hair.
“Make her stop, make her stop!” Brom yelled, dancing around us as all three of us — Kostya and Cyrene and I — fell to the ground.
It took a moment for them to separate us — Cyrene refused to let go of me until May pried her hands out of my hair — but by the time they did, the strange sense of anger had passed, leaving me shaking and panting with the aftereffects.
Aisling handed me a tissue to mop up the blood from the scratches that Cyrene had left on my face. Brom leaned into me, wordlessly needing reassurance. I hugged him, resting my cheek on the top of his head, fighting the sobs that threatened to shake me apart.
“Well, we wanted some proof that she was Ysolde,” Aisling said as Cyrene cooed over Kostya while he gently felt the back of his head. “I guess you could say that was pretty definitive, huh?”
Chapter Nine
“Do I have to call you de Bouchier now?” Brom asked as I tucked the journal in which he kept his science experiment notes into his backpack.
“No, of course not.” I stood up, wanting to hug him again, but I’d already done that, and he had placed a firm “one hug per leave-taking” moratorium on me twenty minutes earlier.
“But that’s your name now, right? That guy who appeared used to be your husband before you married Gareth?” I sighed. There wasn’t any way I could deny what life insisted on beating me over the head with. “Yes, I think he was.” Brom leaned in close, his eyes on May and Gabriel as they held a brief confab with Maata and Tipene. “So why is everyone trying to hurt him?” “It’s kind of a complicated story,” I whispered back. “But I’m going to do my best to stop them so that we can talk to Baltic.” “Is he my stepdad now?”
“I… we’ll talk about that later.” “What’s Gareth going to say when he finds out your first husband is still alive?” I sighed again. “We’ll talk about that later, too.” I looked up to where Maata and Tipene approached. “I’m not really happy about this.” “We won’t let anything happen to him,” Maata said, giving Brom a little punch in the arm. He grinned and punched her back. She pretended to flinch, which made him grin all that much harder.
“We were just reunited. I don’t like being separated again.” “It is just a precaution, and will not be but for a day or two. Aisling and Drake will take very good care of Brom,” Gabriel said in a soothing voice that did nothing but make my jangled nerves more jumpy. “Drake takes his security very seriously now that his children have been born, and I would not be honest if I didn’t admit that your son will be safer with them than he would be here should Baltic attack.” I waited until Brom and the two silver bodyguards left, waving with as cheerful a smile on my face as I could put there, but the second the car drove off, I turned on Gabriel. “Why do you persist in the belief that Baltic is going to attack your house?” He took my arm and escorted me back inside, making sure the elaborate security system that monitored the doors was set. “He’s done it before. He blew up our previous house, and destroyed much of the entryway of Drake’s. You were there that day — that is how your head was injured.” I touched a little scar in my hairline. I’d wondered how I’d come to get that.
“Now that he knows you are alive, he will put two and two together and arrive at the conclusion that we have taken you in for protection, and he will do everything in his power to steal you from us.” “But that’s just the point,” I said tiredly, rubbing the headache that throbbed in my temples. “There’s no need for him to steal me, as you put it. I want to speak with him. No, I need to — I need to talk to him in order to clear up all the things I don’t understand.” “I don’t think that would be terribly smart right now,” May said softly. “Baltic is… I hate the use the word ‘insane, ’ but he’s not mentally balanced, Ysolde. You don’t remember the things he’s done to the silver dragons, to his own people, but Gabriel was there two months ago when they discovered the corpses that Baltic had left when he cut a deadly swath through the blue dragon population.” “No sane being, dragon or otherwise, could have done the things that were done to them,” Gabriel said grimly.
His normally bright gaze was dark with remembered pain.
I looked down at my fingers, unable to justify that I was bound to a man who was homicidal.
“You said he looked surprised to see you,” May said. “That means he didn’t know you were alive, so he’s probably frantic to find you now. And you can take it from us that an emotionally upset Baltic does not make for a pleasant companion.” “All I know is that I must have some time to talk to him. I realize you want to capture him so he can face the charges that are now hanging over my head, but isn’t there some neutral ground where we can meet him and talk to him, find out if he really is deranged?” They were silent for a minute before Gabriel finally said, “I will present that suggestion to the weyr.” What he didn’t say was that it would do no good.
I nodded, still rubbing my temples.
“You are fatigued,” Gabriel said. “You should rest now. You may have a disturbed night if Baltic chooses to attack tonight.” “Would you like me to send some supper up to you?” May asked.
“Actually, I’m famished. I’d love some food.” “You go upstairs and get into bed, and I’ll have Renata whip something up for you.” An hour later I was full of ginger chicken, fresh snow peas, and an intention that I prayed Gabriel and May would never find out. Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, I slung my bag over my back, pressed a red button that blinked slowly in a tiny little panel set into the corner of the windowsill, and cautiously opened the window, bracing myself for a siren.
Silence greeted me. I sighed in relief that the switch deactivated the alarm on the window, and peered out. I was three stories up, with no convenient drainpipe, balcony, ivy stuck to the building, or ladder casually leaning against the side of the house. There was literally no way out but to jump to the ground.