by Ann Gimpel
“One of many dragon gods. Ye’ve enough dragon blood, ye’d adapt to Fire Mountain.” He waved a foreleg in my direction. “Ye might even come to like it there, but ’tisn’t the locale I had in mind. Ye need a lot of empty space and practice. One of the alterations from losing Hel’s shrouding is your magic has grown far stronger.”
Judging from how rapidly it had responded to my teleport casting, I’d already figured that part out. “It’s one of the reasons I need to get out of here,” I said. “None of my clients will think anything has changed. They’ll come for a spell or a potion or an unweaving, and goddess only knows what I’ll end up giving them. I might send some poor, unsuspecting soul so far away, they’ll end up tangled in Yggdrasil’s roots.”
Quade cocked his head to one side and regarded me.
“Go ahead.” I made come-along motions with one hand. “You want to say something. I wasn’t aware dragons practiced restraint.”
He snorted steam. “We doona, but ye’ve had quite a few difficult events to deal with. I was debating how much more truth ye could tolerate.”
“Try me. And then I’m going inside to get a few things together.”
He nodded to the accompaniment of more steam. “That other life—the one where ye served as master sorcerer—is over.”
“Not according to Odin,” I muttered.
“Aye, well he has yet to think things through,” Quade retorted. “Once he does, he’ll ken it well enough.” The steam ceded to a stream of smoke, and the dragon turned his head to one side. “For one thing, ye and I are bonded, and—”
Damn. There it was. I held up a hand. “Please. Stop. I’m not ungrateful. Not at all. And I love riding you, but why are we ‘bonded,’ and what exactly does it mean? Will we go everywhere together? Like a set of conjoined twins? Furthermore, I already figured out Odin—or Nidhogg—conscripted you to spy on me. If it was Nidhogg, I guess he assumed the moonstone he gave me wasn’t enough.”
“What stone?” Quade regarded me.
“Pfft. As if you didn’t know.” I reached into the pocket where the damned thing lived and came up dry. Maybe it had picked another pocket. It scarcely required help from me to move about. After a frantic few minutes where I searched every nook and cranny in my garments, relief washed through me.
I shrugged. “Guess it’s gone and good riddance. I hated that blasted thing. Nidhogg crafted it to keep an eye on me.”
Quade’s great head bobbed up and down. “He may have, but he dinna tap me to spy on you. I’d never have agreed to such a scheme. Ye’ve claimed your dragon blood. The stone is no longer required. So long as Hel’s shielding protected you, your activities were invisible to Nidhogg and the other elders.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else, so I prodded, “There’s more.”
“There is. Ye willna care for it overmuch.”
“For fuck’s sake”—I cast a longing glance at my cottage door. Would I ever walk through it?—“tell me and be done with it.”
“Done is relative. Nidhogg is linked to all dragons. If ye even think about doing something he doesna believe wise, he has ways of reaching through that link and—”
“Dewi appears to be immune,” I blurted.
“Aye. When she was tapped to become a Celtic deity, she erected wards to keep him out.”
“Fine. Means I can do the same thing.”
Smoke puffed from Quade’s nostrils and out the sides of his mouth. “Silence,” he thundered.
“Bullshit,” I yelled back. “This is my courtyard. My house. You have no right to order me about.”
“Ye may be powerful for someone wearing a man’s skin, but as dragons go, ye’re weak as last week’s gruel.”
“Oh yeah? It’s past time for you to leave.” I planted my feet shoulder-width apart. Once kindled, my anger was raging, burning out of control.
“That would be a mistake,” he bellowed back. “Doona make this harder than it already is.”
Copper scales caught the edges of my peripheral vision. Damn it all to bloody Hel, I had enough problems without Zelli and Rowan. Why hadn’t they remained in Valhalla?
Next thing, one of Yggdrasil’s roots would shoot up from the dirt beneath my feet. I needed to be alone. Alone. I wasn’t in a fit mood to be calm or nice or even to listen to anyone’s voice except my own.
What was wrong with me? If yanking off the shrouding had turned me into a class A dick, maybe I should demand Hel put it back. I had a niggling suspicion it wasn’t possible. Rather akin to stuffing a genie back inside a bottle once enchantment had freed it.
Zelli thunked down a couple of meters from Quade. Rowan jumped to the ground and walked toward me, her forehead furrowed into an appraising expression. Where before, she’d have run to me, wrapped her arms around me, this time she stopped a respectable distance away and asked, “How are things going?”
I didn’t bother to mute the snort that blustered past my lips. “Badly. How would you expect ‘things to be going’?” I copied her words with a singsong intonation.
“I get it,” she said. “Feels like we’re living in the midst of our own reality television show called, Revelations are Us.”
“Not funny,” I ground out.
She blew out a breath. “Yeah, it is. What happened to your sense of humor? You used to have one.”
“Used to being the operative term,” I shot back. “I appreciate you making the effort to check on me, but I need to be alone.”
Rowan twisted her mouth into a frown. “The first part of that is an outright lie. You were appalled when you first saw Zelli in the sky. The alone part is true enough, though.” She tossed her shoulders back. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why the sudden need to closet yourself away?”
My hands curled into fists of their own accord. What in the nine hells was wrong with everyone? Why couldn’t they accept I required solitude. A whole lot of it. Maybe years at this point.
“Lot of things to figure out,” I muttered.
“Yep. But everything will go a whole lot faster and easier with help.”
I’d been avoiding looking at her because I feared I’d weaken. She was smart, though. And savvy enough to understand her power over me. With a few steps, she planted herself square in my field of vision.
“I don’t agree.” Breath huffed from me as I did my damnedest not to get sucked in by the red-gold hair swirling around her and her golden eyes. A long skirt clung to the lines of her hips and thighs, and the outline of her breasts was visible through the thin weave of her shirt. Maybe if I hadn’t seen her naked, touched the curves of her body, lost myself in her mouth and hands…
I shut off images of her long-legged form writhing beneath mine. They weren’t helping.
“You may not agree,” she said, “but this isn’t about you.”
“Right now, it is.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Your temper tantrum has the stink of ill-conceived, lone-wolf desperation. You’re terrified, and—”
“I am not terrified,” I shouted, furious at her labeling my outburst a temper tantrum as if I was still a boy in short pants.
“What would you call it?” Rowan held her ground.
“Not ill-conceived, lone-wolf desperation, either,” I said, tightlipped.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “We’re establishing how you’re not feeling. We can do this via a process of elimination and explore whatever is left.”
I wasn’t sure quite what changed, but the righteous indignation stick that had been rammed up my ass crumbled. The anger thrumming through me began to recede bit by bit. While Rowan and I had been sparring, the dragons had moved next to one another. A glowing halo suggested they were conversing in mind speech.
I breathed deep, blew it out, and did it a few more times. Rowan’s gaze never left me. In it, I read acceptance and caring. I’d all but told her to leave. She hadn’t budged. Neither had Quade.
“Feel like a cup of te
a?” she asked.
I nodded. “Tea would be lovely. There’s mead left too.”
“Perfect.” She strode briskly to my door and let herself inside.
The dragons were deep into a discussion. Neither of them said boo when I followed Rowan inside. The familiar walls of my home soothed me. A lot had changed, but some things remained the same. My home was one of them. I walked to my collection of lore books and scrolls and ran my fingertips over them. One look at my hands convinced me I needed to wash up.
My next stop was the pump handle next to the sink where I scrubbed grime from myself until the icy water ran clear. Once my hands were clean, I cupped water into them and bent to wash my face. The cold dunking encouraged a return of rational thought.
Rowan had set up shop on the far side of my kitchen ledge and was adding herbs and honey and mead to mugs. She was quiet as she heated water with magic, and I appreciated her not asking more questions.
I might be feeling a tad more settled, but I didn’t have the answers she wanted. Not yet, and maybe not for a long time.
She carried the steaming mugs to my battered table and set them across from one another, the invitation obvious. I shuffled to the table, intent on holding a chair for her, but she’d already seated herself. I sat catty-corner from her and inhaled the herbal mix from the tea and mead.
The scents of flowers and heather tantalized me, made me long for a time before the Breaking when the worst thing that ever happened was a disgruntled client.
“Thank you.” I picked up a cup, warming my hands. They were still chilled from their trip through the chilly water delivered by my pump.
“You’re welcome.” She offered a warm, soft smile that made me want to lean across the table and crush my mouth over hers. “I thought about saying I know what you’re going through,” she went on, “except it’s not exactly true. I went a little nuts when Nidhogg dropped the whole Dragon Heir thing on my head, but our situations are different.”
“How so?” I was content to let her talk. For one thing, it put off the inevitable, which was my side of the conversation, for a while longer. For another, I loved the sound of her voice. Rich, low, lyrical, it inflamed and soothed at the same time.
“You’ve lived among people who’ve loved and cared about you from your earliest memories,” she said. “I was the red-headed stepchild until I ran away, and then it took me years to gin up the courage to ask if the witches would let me stay with them. Not for long, but for enough time to pull myself together. I never, never took their hospitality for granted and always gave more than I got. You see”—she leveled her gaze at me—“I never felt worthy of anyone’s love or attention. When that damned cat picked me to be his human, I cried.
“The last few years, I’ve carved out a place with the witches. One where they accepted me. But it blew up in my face when I found out Ceridwen was behind the Breaking. I had to tell my witch family—and I did. But I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d hexed me, kicked me out of the coven.”
Listening to her drew me out of my self-absorbed misery. Feeling like a total jerk, I murmured, “They’d never have done that.”
Rowan nodded slowly. “You see that, and the witches did, but I’ve never believed in myself enough to trust that others’ affection toward me ran more than skin-deep.”
She stopped to take a measured breath. “As in, if I left they’d never miss me. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolute confidence in my magic. And I’ll be the first to stand up and shout if I think someone’s been mistreated. Beyond that, I’ve always been a loner. So I understand the thing I accused you of intimately. Because I’ve lived with it almost every day of my life.”
I smiled. “Ill-conceived, lone-wolf desperation?”
She nodded. “Exactly. It’s why I had the catchphrase on the tip of my tongue.”
Speaking of tongues, the combination of her honesty and the spiked tea had loosened mine. I set my empty mug down and said, “I’m confused. And angry.” I shook my head. “All those people who knew about me, yet no one had the simple decency to let me know.”
“Yeah. We do have one thing in common. Both our mothers knew the truth, but at least yours made certain you had a normal childhood.”
I thought back to my trips to Niflheim and Hel proper. “Hel was right,” I mumbled.
“About what?”
“Not trying to raise me in her realm. If the frost giants hadn’t nabbed me, the souls of the dead would have preyed on my innocence. Most of the dead in Hel’s care were rotters. Murderers. Thieves. Adulterers.”
Rowan smiled. “Another thing we would have had in common—if Hel had kept you by her side. No other kids to play with and a collection of fuckers on the adult front.”
The comparison was so ludicrous, I laughed. “Better not let the Celts hear you comparing them with Hel’s dead.”
She leaned forward and adopted a conspiratorial tone. “I won’t tell them if you don’t.”
“Your guilty secret is safe with me. On a more serious note, the Celts seemed genuinely distressed by Ceridwen’s treachery. Dewi apologized to you. Dragons never apologize to anyone.”
Rowan nodded. “It’s a case of too little, too late. Whatever damage was done when I was young can’t be canceled out by an apology. My hurt places have made me prickly and my own kind of lone wolf. It’s very hard for me to trust anyone.” She hesitated and then added, “You have a genuineness about you where you expect the best from people. It’s a gift. Try not to lose it with all that’s happened.”
I thought back to wanting to lay waste to the world in Valhalla’s upstairs meeting room. Shame scoured me. I’d been so sunk in feeling sorry for myself, my perspective had flown right out the same window Odin’s ravens had used to come inside.
“A lot has changed,” I said, “but many things are the same too.”
“Same conclusion I came to after we killed the griffon-esque monster. Want to know what I think?”
“Sure.”
She narrowed her eyes in appraisal. “Good. You truly meant that. When we stood outside, you wanted all of us to leave, but if we had, you’d have started along the same downward spiral that’s turned me into a lonely, bitter woman.”
“I wasn’t in a good place,” I admitted. “And I’ll probably stay pissed at all of them for hiding my true nature.”
“Not forever,” she pointed out.
“Nay. Not forever. Anger takes too much energy to maintain, but it might be forever before I trust any of them again.”
“Know what you mean. It’s how I feel about the Celts who are suddenly all googly-eyed with apologizing.” She exhaled sharply. “All that is beside the point. What I believe is this. There are no coincidences. Midgard—Earth—stands at a nexus. It is close to failing entirely. The only thing that will save my world—and yes, it is mine—will be drastic measures.
“You and me. We’re the drastic intervention that will keep Midgard whole and part of the Nine Worlds. Will it be easy? Of course not. Will our job be quick? No to that too. Think about how our magic works together.”
“It will be different,” I cautioned her. “Mine is a whole lot stronger now.”
A fierce smile split her face. “I can’t wait to experiment. We are exactly where we are supposed to be. A Dragon Heir, the likes of whom has never before been born. And a Dragon Mage.”
“Also an anomaly,” I said. “No one has the faintest idea about me or my magic.”
“See?” She slapped a hand down on the table. “We’re invincible. We can do this. Us and the dragons.”
“I want to sign up for your enthusiasm,” I said slowly, “but what makes you so certain?”
She turned her hands palms up. “I feel it. Here.” She twisted one hand to thump her breastbone. “And my instincts have never been wrong. Also, the enemy we face won’t understand how our power works. How could they? We barely do.”
I could have catalogued all the problems facing us—and our lack of solutions—bu
t we had each other and the dragons. Maybe it would be enough. I got to my feet and opened my arms. Would she come to me? Needing to hold her, feel her body against mine, drove me so relentlessly I almost couldn’t breathe.
Rowan stood and closed the distance between us. Twining her arms around me, she smiled softly. The curve of her mouth was impossible to resist, and I slashed my mouth over hers and held her tight while I kissed her.
Chapter Eleven, Rowan
I was relieved when the worst of the anger melted out of Bjorn. I’d been fearful he’d hang onto it, drape it around himself like a banner. Just like I had. Standing in Odin’s halls watching Bjorn had been quite the eye-opener. I’d viewed myself as strong, independent, rather like a very small nation more than capable of going it alone. I may have let Mort get his feline claws into me, but it was only recently I’d hewed chinks in my thick armor and trusted the witches enough to drop some of my barriers.
Anger was a small blessing and a huge curse. It was what I clung to when everything else was gone, and it had been what got me through. Anger and blaming Ceridwen. But the cost was high. My self-imposed isolation blinded me to the love and support of those who stuck by me.
All those elements were why I tried so hard to get through to Bjorn. Usually, if someone tells me to get lost, I’m out of there so fast all that’s left is my dust.
But Bjorn was hurting. Really hurting. My heart cracked wide open because it was so similar to what I’d gone through. And because I’m an old softie—beneath all my emotional fortifications—I can’t stand to see anyone suffer. More important than either him or me, though, was the blackness bearing down on us.
Someone—or something—knew about him. And about me. Not the specifics, but they understood full well our combined power would be a problem. It was the only explanation for the monsters that kept trying to disable our ability. Even absent seer talents, I saw endless battles looming. At least one of my worries had been for naught, though. With a dragon father and Hel for a mother, Bjorn had to be immortal.