by Cat Marsters
Then she kicked him anyway.
“Ow! Look, we’re both okay, so what does it matter?”
Kett glanced back at the dragon, steaming with fury. He was right, her rational brain told her. He hadn’t done anything inherently dangerous—aside from walking into a freaking dragon paddock unprotected—and they were both okay. Although she’d kill for a roll in the snow right now.
It was just that she’d barely gotten over being mad at him for buggering off like that in the middle of the night, and then he turns up looking far cuter than any grown man in a bobble hat had a right to, and her hormones surged to the surface screaming more, more!
And that made her angry.
She focused on Fira, who was thrashing around, excited and heavy, arching her long, scaly neck and roaring fire at the sky.
Wait. Arching her neck? She wasn’t supposed to be able to move that much. The short chains on the collar should have—
Oh holy fuck.
“I already knew you were mildly insane,” Bael said, standing beside her and regarding the extremely large and only half-tethered dragon. “But I have to say, major respect for the dragon-working.” He frowned. “You know, if you wanted to keep it on the ground, you should have put, like, a collar on it or something.”
“I did,” Kett said, staring in mounting horror at the piece of broken metal and leather on the ground.
Bael followed her gaze. “Oh,” he said.
Slowly, methodically, Kett picked up the rope she’d had coiled over her shoulder. “You see that mountain?” she asked, jerking her head to the frozen peaks in the distance.
“Which one?”
“Pick one.”
“Uh, okay.”
“I am going to tranquilize this dragon. And then I’m going to go to the high paddock and saddle up another one. And then I’m going to put you on its back, fly it to the top of that mountain you just picked out and kick you off.”
Bael swallowed. “I’ll, er, I’ll just, uh—”
“Fuck off?”
“Yeah,” he said, and backed away.
Chapter Five
Bael retreated down the hill, not because he was scared of the dragon—well, okay, he was a bit—but because he was terrified of that glint in Kett’s eye. This was not precisely how he’d planned breaking the news to her. He’d figured he’d go in and compliment her on her hair, or her dragon-roping skills or something, and buy her a drink or two—there’d been a ramshackle pub in the tiny village he’d passed through, or maybe they could retire to wherever she lived—and sit with her by the fire and coax her to bed. Then after he’d had head-banging sex with her, he’d carefully introduce the subject.
He hadn’t really planned on nearly getting them both killed. Still, he lived on the edge.
He watched as she grabbed her leather bag and strode determinedly to the dragon, still tethered from four points on its harness. The creature watched her warily from one red eye. Kett unwound the rope from her shoulder and weighed it in her hands, never taking her eyes off the dragon. Bael peered closer, frowning. A lasso? She was going to lasso the dragon? With rope? She must be crazy. It’d be incinerated in seconds!
He started to move forward then stopped. Kett knew what she was doing. Surely she did. It was bravery, not insanity.
Maybe a little of both.
Kett and the dragon eyeballed each other awhile. The dragon snorted. Kett pulled her visor down over her face.
She stepped to the side, still watching the dragon. Damn, she had a sexy walk. He’d never noticed before because she’d either been running—and jiggling in much more interesting places—or limping. Her leg seemed to be better now, and she was moving with grace, like a predator. Careful and slow, each movement precise.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being mated to her.
He leaned against a rock, arms folded, and watched her work.
Moving smoothly the whole time, she distracted the dragon with the swinging lasso then flung a hunk of meat high in the air. When the dragon snapped its fearsome jaws on it, Kett whipped the rope around its muzzle, hauled its head down to the ground and leapt onto the back of its neck.
Bael closed his eyes, heart pounding. If it came to the worst, he could probably catch her when the dragon flung her off. Because it would fling her off.
He opened his eyes again, ready to move, and watched with his heart in his mouth as Kett rode the furious dragon as if it was a fairground ride.
A minute or two later—it felt like hours to Bael, whose heart was hammering—the dragon’s head sank to the ground. Its eyes were closing. She’d drugged the meat. Kett tapped its nose, got no reaction then rummaged in her bag again for a syringe, which she stuck inside the dragon’s nostril.
Then she hopped down, wincing just a little as her weight fell on her right leg, grabbed the broken collar and strode back to him.
Bael started breathing when she started walking. Hell, those long strides, strong shoulders, even her scowl turned him on. She ripped off her leather helmet as she approached, shaking out curls that were damp with sweat and flattened by the headgear, and shoved it at him.
“You,” she said. “Follow. Now.”
He grabbed the helmet and stumbled after her, powerless to resist.
She led him down the hill to a large stone barn. Tacked on the side of it was a smaller building with smoke coming from the stone chimney. The roof, Bael noticed, was tiled. With all those dragons around, he guessed it made sense not to build from wood and thatch. The walls seemed to be several feet thick, the door plated with steel.
Kett slammed the heavy door open as if it was made from cardboard and yelled, “Jarven!”
“Yeah?” a male voice called back, and Bael’s hackles instantly rose.
“Fira snapped her collar. We got any spares?”
A man emerged from the steep ladder to Bael’s right. Tall, his dark hair tied back with a leather thong, hard years etched into his face, he gave Bael an inscrutable look before gesturing back toward the barn. “Should have. What happened?”
Kett dealt Bael a filthy look and threw the damaged collar at the worktable on the far side of the room. On the other side, backed against the barn, was a forge, its fire billowing out heat into the stone room. “Someone distracted me,” she said. “Didn’t get all the chains down, she spooked, broke the collar.”
He frowned. “Fira spooked?”
“Yes,” Kett said, glaring at Bael again. She strode over to the trough of water by the forge, stripped off her gloves and plunged her hands in. There was a sizzling sound and something like relief came over her face. “She’s out now, though. Got the needle in.”
Jarven inclined his head. “I’ll do her wing now.”
“Let me fix her collar first. She’s dosed, but I’d rather not take the chance.”
Jarven nodded and Kett stuck her gloves back on and walked to the door. Bael started to follow her but without even looking back, she barked, “Stay.”
Meekly, he obeyed. Right now, he had the feeling badgering her would be suicidal.
The door slammed and he was left in the welcome heat of the forge with the tall, muscular man she’d called Jarven. Jealousy flared madly in Bael. She was his mate! What was she doing living with another man?
Come to think of it—was she sleeping with him? Did that mean she wasn’t his mate? He ought to be relieved. Especially since that meant she’d been cheating on Jarven in Nihon. Which meant she wasn’t the sort of woman he wanted for a mate.
He swallowed. He’d never allowed himself to think about what sort of woman he did want for a mate, but in the last few days he’d reconciled himself to it being Kett—and had weirdly rather welcomed the idea. She might be an angry, scarred, twisted, bitter lunatic, but she had fire and passion and when her eyes sparkled with silver, he lost his breath and forgot how to finish a sentence.
She was the sort of woman he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life being surprised by.
He glan
ced over at Jarven, who’d picked up the broken collar and was examining it.
“So, er,” Bael said, and Jarven glanced up but didn’t give any other hint he’d heard. “You’re…” Kett’s lover. Her husband? Oh hell!
“Jarven Tenvale,” came the reply. He went over to the forge and started pumping up the fire.
“Baelvar,” Bael said, scrutinizing the other man. His straight dark hair was graying slightly at the temples and there were deep lines in his face. Frown lines, not the brackets around the eyes and mouth that came from smiling. He had a slightly grim look to him, although he didn’t seem to be the sort of man who showed much emotion. Or, apparently, the sort who talked.
“You’re, uh…” Boinking my woman. No. “I didn’t know Kett, er…” Was shagging someone else. No! “We met in Asiatica,” he finished lamely.
Jarven grunted.
“About a, uh, month ago.” Chained to the ceiling, naked, her hot body rubbing all over mine, those lean thighs and firm breasts and hard nipples…
And then he felt it. A twitch in his pants. He was getting hard over Kett. Thinking about Kett! Kett was making him hard!
Bael would have sung a hymn of joy there and then that his penis was working once more, were it not for the fact that Jarven might perform an exorcism on him for it. Also, there was the small matter of him living with Kett.
“How long have you known her?” he asked.
Jarven scratched his whiskered jaw. “Thirty years.”
Bael’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow. So you must know her pretty well?”
Jarven shrugged.
This was like getting blood from a stone. Bael gritted his teeth and debated whether or not to be honest about it.
Better not. Honesty always got him into trouble.
“What—um. She never told me what she was doing in Asiatica.”
“Didn’t she?”
Bael waited for more, but didn’t get it. Okay. No more leading questions.
“Did she tell you how we met?”
“Nope.” Jarven sounded like he didn’t care, and a thought occurred to Bael.
“Did she tell you that we had met?”
Jarven sighed. He waved his hand over the forge as if to test the heat. “No.”
“Right, then. Well, the truth is we were both sort of captured. I don’t know who by. They seemed to want us for some sort of ritual. There was blood and silver chains…”
Jarven was heating up some sort of poker in the forge and didn’t seem to be listening.
“Anyway, we escaped. Ran into a friend of Kett’s. Miho? Little Xinjiangese woman, lives in Nihon?”
Jarven gave another grunt.
“And, uh. Her cousin was there. Kett’s cousin, I mean. Chance. Do you know her?”
Jarven gave a shrug that implied he might.
Bael swallowed a little nervously. Here he was, about to explain to a big man with a piece of hot metal in his hands that he’d shagged the woman who was quite possibly his wife. And that he intended to carry on shagging her.
He didn’t want to. Tell Jarven, that was—he definitely wanted to shag Kett again—but he couldn’t think of another way to get around the subject.
“I slept with Kett,” he said, and immediately afterward it occurred to him that he could have just asked Jarven if they were involved. Fuck it. Well, he knew he wasn’t very bright. Albhar was always telling him that his inability to think first, speak second was going to be the death of him.
He watched Jarven carefully, anxiously. The other man was concentrating on the poker thing he was heating up in the fire. Had he not heard?
“I said, er—”
“I heard,” Jarven said. Then he added, as if it was an afterthought, “Makes no never mind to me.”
Bael blinked. “It doesn’t?”
“Nope. Who she sleeps with is her business.”
“So you’re not…er…”
What looked like the faintest smile crossed Jarven’s face as he turned back to glance at Bael. “Nope.”
He sagged against the ladder. “Oh, thank gods.”
Jarven snorted.
Crisis averted, Bael glanced around the small room for somewhere to sit. As far as he could tell, it was a working room and nothing else. There was the big forge, a large tub of water and an anvil, and a table or two holding various items that all looked like torture instruments. There were no chairs.
Did Kett live here, he wondered, or somewhere else? Maybe in the village. Maybe this was just a workplace.
Maybe he’d live here with her. Let Albhar run his other lands and estates, buy a house up here. He frowned as he thought of the tiny, gloomy stone cottages he’d passed on the way to the forge, then grimaced. Maybe build a place here. Nice house with large rooms, big fires lit all the time to keep the chill off, because he strongly suspected without the heat of the forge, this tiny, dark cottage would be as freezing as the outside temperature.
He was just opening his mouth to ask where Kett lived when a buzzing sound caught his attention. It also caught Jarven’s, which Bael figured was a minor miracle.
Jarven put down the hot metal he’d been messing with and reached for something hanging on a leather strap from a peg on the wall. A hemisphere of rock, the flat, polished surface of which seemed to be glowing red.
Well, that was interesting.
Even more interesting was that when Jarven picked it up and looked at the flat surface, it stopped glowing and Kett’s voice came out of it.
Bael started. Now that wasn’t normal.
“Collar’s done,” Kett’s disembodied voice said. “She’s still out, but do you want the syringe?”
Bael stared at Jarven, who wasn’t looking remotely surprised or stunned or bewildered. Well, Bael conceded, it didn’t look as if he ever would.
“No, I’ll bring one,” Jarven said.
“Right. I’m dying for a drink. See ya.” Jarven nodded and put the thing back on its peg. Then he turned back to what he’d been doing at the forge.
Bael stared at the thing, which now just looked like an inanimate geode. How had it been responsible for conveying Kett’s voice? Had she been poking her head through the window and he hadn’t noticed?
He looked around. There didn’t seem to be any windows.
Maybe Jarven was a Mage. Bael went cold despite the heat as he watched the other man poking at the fire. Maybe Jarven was with the Federación.
“What…” His voice was all broken, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That, er, thing. You were talking to Kett, but she’s not here.”
“No,” Jarven agreed.
“But—how—?”
Jarven sighed again, turned with the hot metal still in his hands and said, “It’s called a scryer. It’s a kelfish device, powered by kelfish magic. They act as conduits for thoughts. If you want to talk to someone else who has one of them, you hold the scryer and concentrate on that person, and it makes a connection with theirs. Then the face of the scryer turns into a sort of window so you can see each other as you talk.”
A kelfish device. Okay. The kelfs had nothing to do with the Federación.
Bael shook his head, relieved. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” Jarven turned back to the forge.
“So is that like the longest speech you’ve ever uttered?” Bael asked, and Jarven stabbed the metal into the fire with a little more force than before.
“There are chairs upstairs,” he said. “Go and sit.”
Bael grinned. Hey, he’d rattled the emotionless man! In retrospect, being that Jarven was clearly close to Kett, not a good choice. But Bael had never much cared for consequences.
“Those drinks she mentioned,” he said, figuring Kett should be back around now. “Where are they? I’ll get one for Kett. You thirsty?”
“They’re in the village,” Jarven said.
“Oh. So she’s going to fetch them?”
�
�No,” Jarven said in slow, patient tones. “She’s going to go to the pub, order a beer, drink it there, repeat the process several times and come back when she’s done.”
Bael opened his mouth then shut it again. “She’s avoiding me!”
Jarven muttered something that sounded like, “Can’t imagine why.”
“Where’s the pub?”
Jarven was silent a moment or two, as if deliberating whether or not to tell him, then evidently decided it was worth it to get Bael out of his hair, and gave him directions.
“Avoid me!” Bael said indignantly, pulling his gloves back on. “What did I do?”
Wisely, Jarven said nothing.
* * * * *
“Beer me,” Kett said before she’d even taken off her coat.
Across the bar, Bill, the grizzled old landlord, filled a tankard. “Bad day?”
“Fucking horrible.” Kett ripped off one glove, strode over and downed the beer in one go. “More.”
Bill laughed. “Dragons been giving you the runaround?”
“No, the dragons have been fluffy little kittens. It’s a different species entirely that’s pissing me off.”
“Men?” suggested Angie, Bill’s pale, skinny daughter.
“Close enough,” Kett growled, and stomped off to the back reaches of the dingy pub to see if anyone wanted a game of darts. They didn’t, because even drunk men knew it was a bad plan to get near Kett when she was angry and had a fistful of sharp objects, but a couple of them ventured to offer the snooker table as an alternative.
They’d been playing for five minutes when Kett realized there were three of them and only ten balls. Still, variety was the spice of life.
“Is it Jarven, then?” Bill asked as he watched.
Kett banged a ball into the pocket. “Nope.”
“Jarven’s incapable of annoying anyone,” Angie said. Kett suspected she harbored a crush on her silent roommate.
“Yeah, he’d have to speak for that.”
“Well, who is it?” Angie asked. “Can’t be anyone in the village or we’d have heard.”
“It’s—” Kett began, but then the door banged open and she turned her head, distracted, to see who was coming in amidst the flurry of snow. Up in the mountains of the Northern Province, winter lasted for months and Kett couldn’t remember how long it had been since they’d had a snow-free day. For the newcomer to stand there with the door open, letting in billowing gusts of freezing cold air, marked him as an outsider. Or an idiot.