Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

know who can be annoyed at his mate while someone else holds a sword to your neck. What exactly do you intend to do to Baltic, Thala? You can’t mean to kill him; you’re the one who brought him back to life.”
    She ground her teeth while Baltic answered in just the arrogant tone I was expecting. “Ysolde, you will leave the house. This is between Thala and me.”
    “I don’t think it is—not anymore.” I stepped over Pavel’s form, skirting the two of them in their locked tableau. “Not since Thala ordered her Three Stooges to kill me in Latvia.”
    Baltic’s gaze shifted back to Thala. His eyes glowed with ebony fury. “You tried to kill my mate? Who are these dragons you command?”
    “Clever, aren’t you?” Thala taunted me, her eyes nervously switching from Baltic to me. “Did that little half-dragon bitch Maura talk?”
    “Half-dragon . . .” I shook my head, moving behind Baltic to the far side until I stood behind a couch, resting my hands on the back of it. “She’s the same as you, Thala. You both have dragon fathers . . . red dragon fathers. Was your father killed by Chuan Ren as well? Is that why you’re not a member of the sept?”
    She spat out a word that I didn’t recognize, but I knew it was not particularly polite. Baltic stood apparently relaxed, his hands open, but I could feel the dragon fire inside of him, demanding that he act. He was waiting to see what Thala would do. Neither of us believed she would hurt him, not after she’d gone to significant trouble to resurrect him.
    “My father couldn’t be bothered to recognize me, and the sept refused to allow me in because they said my mother’s blood tainted the precious dragon blood, diffused it into something impure. So, yes, I formed my own tribe, just as Baltic did when I brought him back. Only we have no intention of living quietly while our usurpers reign supreme.”
    Baltic eyed her with speculation. “You raised your own tribe? Then it was you who acted against me.”
    She smiled. “You were so busy thinking of nothing but re-forming the dragon heart, I’m surprised you noticed anything else was going on.”
    “You gave Kostya my shard.” His eyes narrowed. “You did not wish for me to re-form the heart!”
    “Of course I didn’t, you stupid man,” she snapped, the sword waving in the air as she gesticulated. “Ysolde! Ysolde! That’s all you could think of—Ysolde! ‘We must re-form the heart, Thala. We must get the shards from the other wyverns so we can invoke the First Dragon, Thala. Your plans and desires must wait—it must all circle around bloody precious Ysolde!’ I bit my tongue for years while you made your plans, because I knew that they would never come to fruition. I knew that one day you would grow tired of trying to regain that which you could never have again, and then nothing would matter to you.” Her gaze shifted to me. “I didn’t know that wretched sister of mine had already done the job.”
    “But why . . . ? I don’t understand,” I said, sliding my hands down behind the couch so I could start sketching a few wards and begin to gather a ball of arcane power.
    “She wanted the dragon heart for herself,” Baltic answered, his face impassive. The fire raged within him, however.
    “Why? What could it do . . . ? Oh. I suppose if you had the most powerful relic of all dragondom, you could do pretty much anything, couldn’t you? Even bringing your mother out of the beyond.”
    To my surprise, she dropped the sword tip from Baltic’s throat and made a gesture of annoyance with her free hand. “Do you really think I’m going to stand here explaining myself to you as if I were a villain at the end of a movie? I am not so foolish, nor do I have the time to waste on your inanities.”
    She flung down the sword and spread wide her hands, a horrible noise coming from her mouth, part wail, part spell.
    Baltic shouted and lunged toward me, knocking me down behind the couch, covering me with his body. For a moment, it seemed as if time itself stopped, the air inside the house gathering itself; then it was released in a shock wave of fury that exploded outward, taking with it everything in its path.
     
    I opened my eyes to find a blurry face just a few inches from mine. I screamed and tried to sit up, clunking my head against something rock hard. “Ack!”
    “Ow! Oh, man, you broke my head!”
    I blinked rapidly, and my vision cleared enough for me to see that the face belonged