Julius closed his eyes with a ragged breath.
“I’m waiting.”
“Yes,” he growled.
“Good,” Ian said, his voice smooth as silk again in an instant. “I’ll be expecting word of your success by tomorrow.”
Julius almost choked. “Tomorrow? But—”
“You’re a dragon,” Ian said. “Figure it out.” And then he hung up.
Julius lowered the phone with a muffled curse, kicking the dead street lamp as hard as he could. The metal pole rang like a gong, startling a small colony of bats that had taken up residence in the broken light fixture. It also startled the pigeon perched on top of the ancient NO PARKING sign directly above Julius’s head.
The bird took flight with a frantic spate of flapping, sweeping so low its tiny talons almost caught Julius’s hair before it found its wings and flew straight up into the dark, vanishing through a crack in skyways high, high overhead.
Chapter 6
Meanwhile, high atop a superscraper in the Upper City, far from the dirt and tawdry worries of the world below, Svena, White Witch of the Three Sisters, Terrible Serpent of the Sibirskoe and, once, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, the Savage Protector of Ljubljana, lay reclined in Ian’s enormous bed, regarding her newest lover through slitted eyes.
Said lover, however, was not looking at her. Ian was typing messages into the AR keyboard of his phone, an activity that had occupied his attention ever since he’d hung up on his whining puppy of a baby brother. But where a younger, less secure dragoness would have been deathly insulted by such divided attention, Svena did not mind. As the second daughter of her own clan, she understood the demands of having to report on the doings of absurd younger siblings, and anyway, the lull in their activities gave her a chance to enjoy the view.
And what a view it was. All dragons were pleasing to look on in their human forms, but Svena had always secretly considered the Heartstrikers a breed unto themselves. There was just something intoxicatingly exotic about their warm tanned skin, sharp, haughty features, and straight, ink-black hair that brought to mind equatorial climates and golden cities full of cowering humans who still remembered their rightful place. Even Ian’s eyes reminded her of bright green jungles, and this was just his mortal disguise. After hearing tales of Bethesda’s beauty for the last thousand years, Svena was perishing of curiosity to see if the Feathered Serpent’s glory had bred true in her son, enough that she’d actually asked him to change for her as they’d lain together in the aftermath. A request that Ian had refused, the clever little snake.
“I see what you are doing,” she said when he finally put down his phone. “You are teasing me. You think if you do not show me your feathers, curiosity will drive me back to your clutches.”
Ian leaned across the silk sheets to kiss her bare shoulder. “Naturally.”
She arched an eyebrow, and Ian gave her a serpentine smile. “If I wasn’t sure you could see through such a shallow ruse, I would not have pursued you in the first place. Fortunately for me, knowledge of the bait’s true nature does not lessen its temptation.” His smile widened. “Of course, considering how much you enjoyed being in my clutches, perhaps I didn’t need to bother with bait at all.”
He reached for her as he spoke, but Svena slid away at the last moment, rising from the bed with a languid stretch. “Arrogant creature. You talk very big for a hatchling not yet out of his second century.”
“You deserve no less,” Ian said, lying back on the bed to watch her. “A little youthful arrogance would serve you well, Svena, and you know it. That’s why you agreed to come home with me in the first place.”
She picked up her discarded dress off the floor and pulled it over her head. “Are you a seer, then, to predict what I do?” When he didn’t reply, she turned to face him and let her human form recede. Not fully, not even enough to change size. Just a hint, an icy whisper to remind him of the force he was daring to taunt. “Do not presume to know my mind, little dragon. Perhaps I only wished to see for myself if you were as wanton as your mother.”
For a moment, Ian’s green eyes flickered. That surprised her, but then, she’d never met a Heartstriker who could stand to hear his mother’s name impinged. A prideful idiocy, Svena had always though, and a pointless one. With ten clutches from ten different fathers in barely a thousand years, Bethesda the Heartstriker’s honor was an impossible thing to defend.
“My mother is my mother,” Ian said, lifting his chin with a look of such arrogance, Svena’s breath caught in delight. “A great and powerful dragoness who commands the largest dragon clan in the world. When the magic faded centuries ago, your mothers fled beneath the Siberian ice, sleeping and hoarding their power out of fear. My mother adapted, and now that magic has returned, she is already moving to make this world her own. It’s true she isn’t an ancient power, but no power lasts forever, Svena. By the time your mothers wake, they will find themselves forgotten, and Heartstriker will be the name all the world fears.”
Svena regarded the young dragon in the bed with a new eye. “I was wondering when your true colors would show,” she said softly. “Is this why you invited me here? To spew Heartstriker propaganda? Or are you Bethesda’s lure? A tasty morsel to tempt me into a mating flight so she can add another clutch to her army?”
Ian rose from the bed in one swift motion and stalked forward to stand right in front of her. Given the age difference between them, Svena was certain she was the larger dragon, but in their human forms, she and Ian were the same height. Yet another reason she’d accepted his suit. Svena despised being looked down upon.
“Just because I respect what my mother has built does not mean I’m bound by her plans,” he said quietly. “Not when there are so many other, more tempting options available.”
Svena flashed him a predatory smile. “Does that mean you wish to turn traitor?” she whispered, reaching up to run her nails over the smooth shaved line of his jaw. “Poor Ian, we’re not interested. Our clan is full up. And in any case, you’d make me a very bad sister.”
“The last thing I wish to be is your sister,” Ian replied, fearlessly leaning into the knife-sharp tips she’d pressed against his skin. “But there are more things in this world than siblings and parents, Svena.”
She removed her claws from his face, waiting for him to finish, but all Ian gave her was a long smile before turning away.
“For an ancient and wise dragoness, you think very small,” he said, walking over to retrieve his robe from its hook inside his expansive closet. “I may not be the oldest or the strongest of my clan, but I am, without question, the most ambitious of all Heartstrikers, and my plans for you go far beyond anything our mothers could dream.”
It had been so long since anyone had dared to play a game like this with her, Svena was forced to take a moment to make sure her voice didn’t betray her excitement. “And what would these fantastical, undreamable plans entail?”
Ian chuckled, a low, delightful sound. “For that, you’ll have to come to me again. Tomorrow night. I’ll send a car.”
“Clever snake,” Svena whispered, wagging her finger at him.