James put a hand on his sword. He asked, “Everything all right?”
“No,” she said. “Get Eva.”
“I’m here,” Eva said from one of the other doorways. She was barefoot but otherwise dressed in black cargo pants and an army green T-shirt that fit snugly against her lean torso. She strode across the room quickly, black eyes sharp. “What up, princess?”
She said to Eva in a low voice, “Dragos has been casting spells so that he and I can dream together, and I didn’t dream last night. Something’s wrong.”
And she couldn’t make a simple, goddamn phone call to see if he was all right.
Eva’s gaze had widened as she talked. “Okay,” the captain said. “Let’s talk it through. Has he ever had problems dream casting before?”
“We’ve only done it together a couple of times,” Pia said. She rubbed her mouth and tried to get in control of her panic, to force herself to think logically. “The Power in the Wood interferes with phone calls. Maybe it can disrupt Dragos’s spell.”
“He’s Powerful as shit and older than dirt,” Eva said, her voice steady and not unkind. “Rather than something happening to him, it’s much more likely that the Wood interfered with his spell, don’t you think?”
Suddenly Pia grew calm. “That makes sense, but he doesn’t know that, and last night was important. We had things to discuss.”
What would Dragos do now?
He would be doing the same thing that she was doing, working his way through the possible reasons for their missed connection. She had the advantage. She knew he went to bed safe in his home territory, whereas to him, she was deep in the heart of enemy territory.
Would he watch and wait for word? If he didn’t—if the Elves discovered that he had crossed the Elven border again without permission, she didn’t think there was anything she could say then that would repair the treaties, and they might not be able to avoid war. The Elves had been quite clear: they would treat any further trespass from him as an act of invasion.
She said, “We need to send someone out and hope they get out of the Wood in time to make a phone call before Dragos decides to come in after us.”
Eva’s eyebrows rose. “Sounds like we better get someone out fast.”
Throwing their bed against the wall hadn’t done anything to improve Dragos’s mood. He knew Pia felt stressed about the trip, and he had no intention of arguing via text messages, but he was utterly furious with her.
How dared she rebuke him, leave their dream and turn off her cell phone? How dared she bring up that old issue of servants and employees, and throw Rune in his face?
Did he not allow her to do as she wished in most things?
How dare she disobey him?
Yeah, he heard that.
He tossed the king-sized bed back into place, showered, dressed in black fatigues and a thin, black silk sweater, and left the Tower.
Another heavy day of fighting was scheduled for that day, so the bouts started at five A.M. Despite the early beginning, all the seats were filled. Tension had ratcheted up. One hundred and twelve contestants would start the day. By tonight there would be fifty-six.
When Dragos arrived at the mobile office, he told Kris and his other assistants, “Find somewhere else to work today.”
None of them asked questions. They took one look at his expression and scattered, leaving him to prowl the supersuite and fume in isolation.
All the sentinels were scheduled for early combat. By some trick of chance, none of them had yet drawn Quentin Caeravorn as an opponent. Aryal, Grym and Bayne had cycled through their fights already, and now Constantine was on the floor.
Con was brawny and blond, as were all the gryphons. He was also what his fellow gryphon Bayne liked to call a “man slut.” It was a testament to Constantine’s actual skill set that he was so effective at his job while remaining so aggressively promiscuous, because from what Dragos heard, Con never got a full night’s sleep.
His current opponent in the arena was one of the gargoyles, and both contestants had shifted into their Wyr form for the fight. The gargoyle had morphed from a mild-looking man into a seven-foot winged monster, with a demonic face, huge batlike wings and a tough, stony gray body.
Their fight caught even the raging dragon’s attention. Dragos paused at the window to watch.
A human would have had a difficult time following the fight without the benefit of instant replay and slowing the action down, but Dragos had no trouble at all making out every detail.
Con was not Graydon. He had broken one of the gargoyle’s legs and a wing, and now, catlike, he played with the guy, letting him get close and then batting at him with a giant paw. Constantine was just plain nasty in a fight, whether he was in gryphon or human form. The gargoyle was done for, but apparently he was too stupid or stubborn to quit.
Dragos shook his head and turned away.
He had been an autocrat for so very long, and he was utterly used to absolute rule. Then Pia came along. She coaxed his arrogance into laughing and charmed him into easing up, giving in. He had convinced himself he was growing more tolerant in indulging her wishes, but the brutal truth was tolerance and indulgence were simply other forms of the autocrat.
Pia had said, The real point I’m trying to make is that I have no idea how to be your partner.
More brutal truth: he had no idea how to be her partner either, or anybody’s partner, for that matter.
She was always going to be a softer personality than he, immensely younger and less experienced. More peaceful. And yet here she was his best teacher again, for she had already shown him how she could bend to his will when he needed it. That, he realized, involved a profound kind of trust in him.
Now he had to learn how to bend to her will when she needed it.
Not tolerate, allow or indulge. Really bend, despite his mood, the circumstances or his temper. As old, strong willed and entrenched in the habit of power as he was, this was a lesson he might have to relearn over and over again.
But Pia also had to learn, there would only be so far he could bend. He was simply too dominant. They were in uncharted territory, and he did not know how far he could go. Plus he had been on edge for months, ever since the economy had taken such a serious downturn, Tiago and Rune had followed their mates and left him and the other sentinels running at full throttle, and the Oracle had made her uninvited, impromptu prophecy last summer that hung in front of Dragos like a mushroom cloud.
He would never forget the strange, dry voice that had come through the Oracle’s Power, or the quiet way it had spoken and what it had said.
It had spoken of stars dying in agony, and the nature of evil, of Light and Dark as creatures, and Lord Death himself having forgotten he was a fraction of the whole.
“I am not form but Form,” the voice had claimed, “a prime indivisible. All these things were set in motion at the beginning, along with the laws of the universe and of Time itself. The gods formed at the moment of creation, as did the Great Beast, as did Hunger, as did Birth along with Finality, and I am the Bringer of the End of Days. . . .”
Which, when it came right down to it, was insane gibberish. It made no fucking sense, and his atavistic reaction to it was just as nonsensical. But every time he thought of that voice he remembered the Power in it, and the hair at the back of his neck raised and the dragon clawed its way to the surface and looked for war.
But it had not targeted Dragos specifically. It had only mentioned him. In a way the real significance was not what had been said but that the prophecy had come to him, and when he and Pia had consulted with the Oracle a second time, the Oracle had said the events might not surface for months or even years.