“If you can stand a visitor, I know of someone who’s anxious to see you. Jim, stop touching Ysolde with your nose. It’s unhygienic,” Aisling scolded, shooing him toward the door.
“Sheesh, you yell at me for not wanting to see her when she’s all bloody and gooey, and now you’re yelling because I’m just checking that she’s OK. Inconsistent much, Ash?”
“Sullivan?” Brom appeared in the door, his face anxious. I slipped out of the bed and met him halfway, hugging him as tightly as I could without cutting off his oxygen. “Nico said you’d be OK, but you didn’t look like it when they carried you in.”
“I’m absolutely OK,” I said, giving him one last squeeze before he started casting glances at the others in the room. “So is Baltic. I’m sorry if we frightened you.”
“I wasn’t scared,” he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. He glanced again at Baltic, then gave a little twitch of his shoulders. “Not much. I’m glad you’re back, though. Jim says Thala went postal and exploded the house. Is the basement blown up as well?”
I smiled, relieved that the strained expression had faded to one of purely mercenary interest. “I’m sure it was. We’ll have to get you some new equipment for your ghastly experiments, all right?”
“OK. Nico says he’ll go with us the next time Maata and I go to the British Museum. He says he knows someone who works there who will let us see behind-the-scenes stuff. He says they have mummies that they don’t even let people see, but that he can talk to them and they might show them to me. He says they have mummies of cats.”
“You’re just a really weird kid,” Jim told Brom. “Luckily, I like weird.”
“And once again balance is restored to the world,” I said, smiling.
Chapter Twenty
“Mate, stop fussing over me.”
“Gabriel says—”
“I don’t care what the silver wyvern says. You will cease trying to force me into bed, and instead give me my trousers.”
“You haven’t rested enough!” I stuffed the pair of pants that one of Drake’s men had brought into the wardrobe and spun around with my back to the door. “Gabriel was very clear that your injuries were sufficiently serious that you needed time to finish the healing he started. That doesn’t mean you can get up a few hours after you were just about blown to kingdom come!”
“I will not be ordered around by Gabriel Tauhou!” Baltic stormed, marching toward me in all of his naked glory, his scowl truly magnificent. He held out his hand. “Give me my trousers.”
“If you go back to bed, I’ll give you a sponge bath,” I said, batting my eyelashes.
That made him pause, but after a long consideration, he shook his head. “I could not make love to you in the home of the silver wyvern. Give me the trousers!”
“How about this?” I cooed, sliding my hands up the muscled swell of his chest and stroking his neck as I nibbled on his lower lip, my body moving gently against his. “You get back into bed, and I’ll give you a massage to work out the kinks in all those poor abused muscles. I bet I could get some massage oil . . . the lickable kind.”
Passion kindled in his eyes, and for a minute I thought he’d go for it, but at last he shook his head, reaching behind me to yank open the wardrobe door. “I know you desire me as much as I desire you, Ysolde, but this is not the place to perform those acts in which I clearly see you wish to indulge yourself. We will return home, and then you will lick oil off me.”
The faint sound of voices yelling reached my ears, followed by the thump of footsteps.
“Our home is nothing but a heap of stone and timber,” I said, sighing as he pulled on the pants. “Thanks to your crazy ex-girlfriend. It sounds like we’re going to have company.”
He grabbed a shirt from the wardrobe, and was just buttoning it when Jim burst into the room, its eyes round with excitement. “Good, Balters is up. You’re going to want to see this.”
“See what?” I asked as the demon turned tail and ran back to the stairs.
“Is my son here?”
“Yes, Aisling left him here when they went off to save us, not that I expect they knew that they would be called on to do just that. She just said that she was worried because I babbled something about Thala wanting to hurt you, and she convinced Drake to make sure we were all right.”
Baltic made a noncommittal noise and put on his shoes, which oddly enough hadn’t been destroyed in the explosion. “Gather your things. We are leaving.”
I smoothed out the dress that Aisling had lent me, May’s clothing being too small for me. “Things? What things? This is pretty much it.” I looked up to find him disappearing out the door. “Baltic, wait! You’re not fully healed—”
Raised voices could be heard filtering up the stairwell. Baltic paused for a moment as he listened, then sighed his best martyred sigh and took my hand as we continued to the ground floor at a more decorous pace.
The hall of Gabriel and May’s house was large and filled with plants. A heavy round table dominated the center, upon which an elegant vase sat filled with a beautiful flower arrangement. Now, however, the flowers and vase lay in ruins on the marble floor, the glass shattered and water creeping across toward a gorgeous old handworked rug. Brom peeked out around Pavel, who stood guarding a doorway, Nico hovering protectively behind both of them. Gabriel was being held back by Drake and Tipene, while Aisling and May stood on one side, expressions of incredulity on their respective faces. Standing on the table was a thickly built man, his voice filling the hall as he declared, “I don’t care what your name is or who your father was, or what you used to be, you are no longer wyvern! I brought this sept into being, and I will not allow another to be wyvern so long as there is breath in my body!”
“Constantine,” I said, sighing right along with Baltic. “I might have known he’d find his way here.”
Baltic said nothing, just dropped my hand and strode forward. Constantine spun around, his eyes lighting with pleasure as he jumped off the table, obviously intent on giving Baltic yet another piece of his mind.
He didn’t have the chance to, however. Baltic’s fist shot out, sending Constantine flying backward a couple of feet, his body hitting the ground with a loud whump.
May grinned. Aisling applauded. Jim whistled as it peered into Constantine’s face. “He’s out like a light. Nice one, Baltic.”
“Yes, nice one,” Gabriel agreed, shaking off Tipene and Drake to stalk forward to us. “I take it we have you to thank for resurrecting Constantine?”
“Yes, because it’s not enough I have a lieutenant who wishes to destroy my mate, and a former heir who insists on taking what is not his. I must add the treacherous bastard who slayed Ysolde into my life, as well,” Baltic answered with a grim look.
Gabriel’s fury dissipated somewhat, but before he could say anything, a feeble voice spoke from the floor.
“I told you that I did not slay Ysolde. How could I slay her when I gave my life for hers?” Constantine groaned as he sat up, gingerly wiggling his jaw.
“You what?” I asked, shaking my head. “No, you killed me. Baltic and I shared the vision. We saw you with the bloody sword, standing over my body.”
“I found the sword,” he said wearily, getting to his feet. “Lying next to your body. I knew someone had slain you, and that I could not survive your loss.”
“She is not your mate!” Baltic bellowed, starting toward him. Pavel was immediately at his side, as was Drake, both of them blocking him. “She’s mine! It was me who died when you killed her!”
“I didn’t kill her!” Constantine yelled back. “Are you deaf as well as stupid?”
“Hey!” I said, pushing Pavel aside. “I will not tolerate any name-calling!”
Baltic shoved me right back behind him. I pinched his butt.
“I gave my life for yours,” Constantine repeated. “I sacrificed myself for you. Just ask the First Dragon.”