“Yes.” He held the car door open for me, and it was a sign of just how bemused I was that I stuffed Larry into the backseat and didn’t notice that Baltic took the driver’s seat until we were already jetting down the road, coming close to plowing into a stone fence.
“Is it true that the First Dragon’s children founded the four original septs?”
“My three brothers and sister, yes. You are going to ask me why I was not given a sept, aren’t you?”
“Well, that and why you’re driving on the wrong side of the road,” I said, pointing to an oncoming car.
Baltic swore and jerked the car over to the proper side. “Mortals should standardize which side of the road they wish to drive on. I am the youngest son, Ysolde. You know when I was born—it was several centuries after my siblings.”
“So you were kind of an afterthought?” I grinned at him.
He looked outraged. “Hardly. My mother was the First Dragon’s descendant, a black dragon. He seduced her, and I was born. I was not given a sept because I was born into the black sept.”
I gawked at him. “Your father seduced his own descendant? That’s incest!”
“Every dragon is descended from him. Technically, you and I are related.”
“Yes, but at a distance! Several generations and whatnot! By the rood, Baltic! That’s beyond creepy. Your mom wasn’t your sister, was she?”
“No.” He swore as several car horns blasted him. I refused to look, deciding it was just better that I not know what he was doing. “She was the daughter of his great-granddaughter.”
“Wait a minute—” I shook my head, trying to untangle his family tree. “You’re a wyvern. That means you have to have a human parent, and if your mother was also your . . . I don’t know, your great-grandniece? Whatever the relationship, how can she be human?”
“She wasn’t. She was a black dragon.”
“But wyverns have to have a human parent,” I argued.
“Other wyverns, yes. But not those who are sired by the First Dragon,” he pointed out with complacency.
I thought about that as he parked illegally and hustled me out of the car and into the train station, growling when I insisted that he go back to retrieve the rock.
“But how—” I started to say when he slammed it down next to me, causing a little piece of it to chip off. I winced, hoping it was nothing Larry would mind losing. Assuming, that is, that I could turn him back into a dragon.
“I am done answering questions, mate. Do not glare at me—we have more important things to do than discuss ancient history.”
“What important things? Track down that sneaky Maura and the two remaining Stooges?”
“More questions! My old Ysolde would have known when it was time to stop questioning me.”
“Did your old Ysolde ever pop you on the nose? Because the new one is sure thinking about it. . . .”
It took us three hours to get to England, and that was only after we used a portaling service to zap us to a dirty fish-and-chips shop located on the fringes of London, the local airline not wanting to give in to Baltic’s demands that it reroute airplanes to accommodate us.
“All right,” I told him as I breathed in the air of London and immediately choked on the grease fumes. “I haven’t asked you a single question for several hours, so you can answer a couple more without spontaneously combusting. Why do you think Thala has gone off in a huff after raiding your lair?”
He hailed a taxi, grumbling when I insisted that he put Larry into the car as well. “You saw the signs as well as I did.”
“Yes, but I don’t know why you’re suddenly suspicious of her. I agree that it’s odd that she disappeared like she did, but perhaps those ouroboros dragons made her break into the lair and then took her away with them.”
One chocolate brown eyebrow rose. “Do you seriously believe that she would suffer any such thing?”
“I suppose not,” I said after a moment’s thought. “Anyone who calls herself a dirgesinger isn’t someone who would let herself be kidnapped. You think she’s betrayed you?”
“It’s possible. We have never seen eye to eye on certain subjects, and it could be that she’s decided to put into motion plans that she desired.”
“What sort of plans?” I asked softly, so the taxi driver wouldn’t overhear us.
“She wishes to restore her mother to a place of power.”
I don’t know what I expected him to say—perhaps something to do with Thala at Baltic’s side and me long gone—but certainly not anything to do with her mother. “She wants to resurrect her, too? The famed Antonia von Endres? The archimage who was so powerful, she once bested the ruling prince of Abaddon? The one you slept with?”
He made a face. “I knew you would not forget that.”
“Of course not. I also haven’t forgotten that you slept with Thala.”
“That was a good century before I met you, mate.”
“Which is why I’m not belaboring the point, although how she has the nerve to tell me she’s not in love with you . . . well, that’s another subject. Surely Antonia von Endres is in the beyond?”
Baltic looked unconcerned, his fingers idly tracing patterns on my leg. “She went wherever mages go when they diminish.”
“That’s the beyond.” I frowned, remembering something May had told me. “But you can go there, too. Have you been there to see her?”
“We are light dragons, Ysolde. We both are able to access the beyond in a limited fashion.”
“Did you go to see her?”
He sighed yet another of his put-upon sighs that didn’t garner any sympathy from me. “It is hard for me to compare, but I believe you are even more jealous now than you used to be, which was then of a level that made it uncomfortable to have any female around me who wasn’t human or ugly enough to make you retch, and even then there were a few instances when you insisted that I lusted after leprous hags.”
“Nice attempt to change the subject. Answer the question, dragon.”
“I have not seen Antonia von Endres since she diminished some six hundred years ago. You may now kiss me and beg my pardon for suspecting me of an interest in any female other than you.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his demand, and did, in fact, kiss him, giving him just a little taste of his own dragon fire before apologizing for my dark suspicions.
He left me off at Dr. Kostich’s hotel with a word of warning. “Do not do anything that will result in you dying again. I have reached the limit of the number of times I can survive your death, no matter how short that period lasts.”
“I promise I won’t do any magic that threatens my life,” I said solemnly as he walked me to the elevators, fighting hard to keep my lips from twitching. “Did Pavel say he had any leads on Thala?”
“No, but she had an interest in a building here in London. Pavel is waiting for me there.”
“All right. Baltic . . .” I bit my lip, unsure if my uneasy feeling was justified or not. “I’m grateful that you had Pavel remove Brom from the house just in case Thala went there and was out of control, but do we really need to hide out at a hotel? She seemed very reasonable the last time we talked, not at all like she used to be. I’m not saying she doesn’t have something up her sleeve, because I can well believe she does, but if she’s not jealous of me because she’s in love with you, then she really doesn’t pose a threat to Brom or me.”
“I will not risk either of your lives until I speak with her,” he said firmly. “It goes against my desire to have my son placed with the green dragons, but at least I know he will be safe there.”
“It was nice of Nico to ask Aisling to take them in for a few hours,” I said absently. “I’ll pick up Brom once I’m done here. But do you really think—”
“Yes.” Ignoring the stream of people entering and exiting the elevators, he pulled me to his chest. I melted against him, as I always do, the sensation of the hard lines of his body against mine never failing to send a little zing of pleasure down my spine. “Be cautious, Ysolde. You are everything to me.”