“That may be, but you’re acting like twits dancing around each other with your hackles up.”
“Twit!” Baltic repeated, outraged.
“Hackles! We do not have hackles!” Kostya said, just as outraged. “Dogs have hackles. Dragons do not!”
“Then stop acting like you do,” I told him with a look that I reserve for Brom at his most fractious. I turned to Baltic, giving his arm another squeeze. “And you can cease muttering rude things under your breath. We can all hear them, and even though they’re in Zilant, I can tell what it is you’re saying.”
He shot me another outraged look, but stopped swearing to himself.
Kostya’s expression turned martyred. “You are far too outspoken for your own good, Ysolde, but it does not surprise me. It will be a cold day in Abaddon before I ever meet a mate who displays the respect proper to wyverns.”
I looked at Baltic, expecting him to take offense at Kostya’s speaking to me that way, but he said nothing, just glared. I threw my own good intentions to the wind. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”
“With speaking the truth?” He shrugged. “I have not seen the red wyvern’s mate in centuries, but from what I remember of him, he was the only mate who knew how to behave.”
“And speaking of errant mates, where’s Cyrene?” May cut in as I was about to argue the point with Baltic.
Kostya, who had been matching Baltic’s glare with one of his own, transferred it to May. “That is a very good question. You would have to ask her that for an answer, however, since she has apparently left.”
“Left? Left for where?” May asked, not looking at all surprised.
“I am evidently not to be privy to such information. She simply hurled all sorts of insults at me, packed up her things—and several that weren’t hers—and stormed out of here promising all sorts of watery vengeance if I tried, and these are her words, to follow her, woo her back to my arms in order to have my lustful way with her pristine body, or notify you that she had abandoned me for a god who evidently knows how to treat a naiad. Despite that, consider yourself duly notified.”
“Oh, no, she hasn’t . . . not Neptune?” May asked, groaning. “A god who knows how to treat her? He took her stream away from her until she made me help get it back. She’s absolutely . . . I’m sorry, Kostya, I really am. There’s no excuse for what she’s done to you.”
“She said she loved me! She made me name her as mate in front of the weyr!”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” May put an arm around Kostya and gave him a little hug. “She swore that this time it was different, and I believed her. I thought she really was going to stay in love with you.”
His martyred look returned. “I should have known she was trouble. She was always demanding I let her meddle in sept business. I told her no, that was not the bailiwick of a mate, but she would not listen. My mother said it would come to a bad end, but I didn’t listen to her.”
“Yes, well, Catalina isn’t who I’d really go to for relationship advice,” May said with a little smile as she returned to Gabriel’s side. “Is she still dating Magoth?”
“No, thank god.” Kostya’s shoulders slumped in a manner that indicated a morose sort of pleasure. “Your former demon lord dumped her for some Hollywood starlet. Mother is currently living with a trio of bodybuilders in Rio, and only comes to plague us when she remembers that Drake has children.”
“She sounds like a delightful person,” I said dryly. Baltic looked bored, glancing at his watch. I estimated I had about ten minutes before he would demand we either get to business or leave. “Perhaps we could get started without Drake and Aisling?”
“I would prefer that we wait, but since your mate appears to be anxious to leave, I’m agreeable to begin the discussion. Kostya?”
“We might as well. No good will come of it whether we do it now or later,” he said with dark foreboding, gesturing toward a door.
I looked at the door, glanced at Baltic, and spun on my heel to march in the opposite direction, throwing open the double doors that led to a room filled with tall, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling bookcases, warmed by amber pools of sunlight that poured in through the mullioned windows. “Our library.” I sighed with happiness. The furniture wasn’t, of course, the same as I remembered, but the way the light streamed in through the windows, the peculiar quality of it as it filled the room, swamped me with the sweetest of memories.
“My library now, I believe,” Kostya said with unnecessary emphasis on the pronoun. “I will allow the meeting to be held here, since you seem to desire it.” His gaze shifted to Baltic. “It is a courtesy I am happy to extend to you, Ysolde, despite the fact that you and your murderous mate are at war with the weyr.”
“Oh, for the love of the virgin . . . will you please stop trying to bait Baltic?” I snapped, tired of all the posturing the wyverns felt it necessary to adopt. “He’s not so uncontrolled that he’s going to fall for that.”
Baltic lunged forward so fast he was just a blur. The resounding thud of the two men going down in the middle of the hardwood floor, accompanied by the tinkle of a couple of glass knickknacks sent flying as they crashed into two occasional tables, left me with the intense desire to do a little smiting, but I managed to hold on to my temper.
“You make it very difficult to convince everyone that you’re not the barbarian they call you,” I told Baltic as he punched Kostya in the face while trying to throttle him with his other hand.
Kostya shifted into dragon form, Baltic following suit.
Another occasional table, this one a pretty octagonal inlaid with rosewood, slammed into the wall. “No dragon form!” I yelled, looking with dismay at the remains of the table. “Human form only, and if you break anything nice, I’ll have more than a few things to say to both of you.”
“You’re going to let them fight?” May asked, jumping aside when both men, now back in human form, rolled around beating the tar out of each other. “Is that wise? Mightn’t things get out of hand?”
“I don’t think so. I figure it’ll clear the air a bit.”
May looked like she was going to say something, but to my surprise, Gabriel spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mayling. I would like to say I’m above such things, but the opportunity is one I really don’t wish to miss.”
After a moment of surprise, she gave him a lopsided smile and gestured toward the combatants. “If you really must.”
“I must,” he said, giving her a swift kiss before flinging himself into the fray. May and I moved over to the door, out of the way of the whirlwind of three men who were accompanied by oaths, snarls, grunts of pain, and language that would make a sailor blush.
“I’ve never seen the dragons come to physical blows so much as when Baltic is around,” May commented, wincing in sympathy when Baltic, overjoyed that Gabriel was now on his list of people to beat up, landed a solid right to Gabriel’s jaw.
“He’s a very primal sort of dragon,” I said, watching dispassionately but cheering to myself when Kostya crashed to the floor with a fine spray of blood. “No ganging up on Baltic, now, boys,” I told them sharply when it looked like Kostya and Gabriel, who had a history of animosity, had decided to forge a truce in order to tromp Baltic.
“What on earth . . . are they fighting again?”
May and I turned as the doors behind us were opened. Aisling and Drake stood staring in amazement.
“They seem to like it,” I told her. “I suppose it releases pent-up emotions. Now that you’re here, I’ll stop them.”
“Not yet,” Drake said, peeling off his jacket and handing it to Aisling, his green eyes glinting like a cat’s.
We all watched with utter astonishment as Drake, with a battle cry that would have done a warrior proud, leaped over the couch and launched himself onto Baltic’s back.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake . . . have you ever met such pigheaded men?” Aisling asked, her hands on her hips. “Ouch. That’s got to sting. Oh, now there’s blood on Drake’s pretty shirt. Our housekeeper will have my head for that.”