Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
YRIAN
“I have failed, dragon sire.” Yrian bowed his head, braced for the disappointment he would see in the First Dragon’s eyes.
He wanted to rail against it, to explain that it wasn’t his fault that Tenite had been in the Duat helping Kashi, but none of that would matter.
He had gone to the Duat to remove Kashi as a threat to the dragonkin, and he had failed to do so.
The First Dragon would not be happy.
Becket moved closer to him, her fingers twining around his in an obvious show of support. A warm rush of emotion filled him at the gesture.
The First Dragon stood in the garden surrounding his home, silent, with crossed arms, the late afternoon sun casting a golden aura around him that heightened the lack of expression on his face.
“It wasn’t really your fault, though,” Becket said, her voice forceful and full of sharp edges.
Yrian was simultaneously surprised by the fact that she was defending him to the First Dragon, and warmed even more by the emotion that continued to drive away dark patches on his soul.
“He looked like Bael. He spoke like Bael. He had black demon blood, and that fancy blue sword. How were you to know it wasn’t Bael?
Also, the fact that your mom was there stirring things up didn’t help. ”
That seemed to provoke the First Dragon into an actual reaction. He considered first Becket, then Yrian. “Tenite was in the Duat?”
“Yes. She was working with Kashi to manipulate Xavier and, I assume, others. Maat mentioned Asfet aiding Kashi, as well.”
A look of speculation crossed the First Dragon’s face as he unbent, no doubt because his mate emerged from the house and made her way to his side, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Asfet. She is the other half of Maat. I will speak to Osiris about her. As for the other ...”
“No!” Becket tossed a glamour onto the First Dragon, taking everyone there by surprise.
“Hey!” Charity said, indignation rolling off her as she moved in front of the First Dragon, taking his face in her hands while she studied him. “Are you OK? What did she do to you?”
To Yrian’s amazement, the First Dragon actually smiled, his eyes warming to gold as he gently moved Charity back to his side, going so far as to place an arm around her.
Yrian had never in all the thousands of years of his life seen the First Dragon do such a thing with Iceni.
He had always assumed his father felt such displays of affection beneath him, and yet, here he was, pulling Charity against his side.
“Dammit!” Becket snarled under her breath, another glamour in her hands, one she clearly intended on using on the First Dragon. “Demigods are just so very—”
Both the First Dragon and Yrian looked at her with lifted eyebrows.
She growled, actually growled in frustration as she stuffed the glamour back in her bag.
“It wasn’t anything to get your knickers in a twist about, Charity.
It was just a clarity glamour, one that I hoped would make the First Dragon see that Yrian did not fail.
He did what he was asked to do. It wasn’t his fault that Bael had Xavier so wrapped around his little finger that he would convince him to swap forms.”
“I don’t care what it was. Don’t do it again,” Charity answered, her brows pulled together.
“Mate,” Yrian said to Becket, bending what he hoped was a stern eye on her.
He was secretly so delighted that she stood up for him, he couldn’t truly be annoyed with her.
“I appreciate you wish to avert some of the First Dragon’s wrath due to fall upon me, but you need not attempt to sway him with glamours.
For one, it won’t work on him unless he allows it, and for another, it will put him further out of humor, and I would rather receive his punishment now so I might continue my search for Kashi. ”
The corners of the First Dragon’s mouth twitched, but his face was as impassive as ever as he continued to watch Yrian for another two minutes before he said in a slow, measured manner, “You said you have failed, and yet, you eliminated one of the risks to the kin. The one called Xavier was a pawn in Bael’s hands, which made him all that much more dangerous. That threat is no more.”
“But I did not kill Kashi,” Yrian insisted, suddenly irritated. Was this his father’s punishment—to keep him standing there, feeling every ounce of the weight of his failure, when all he wanted was to get Becket to the nearest bed, where he could reassure himself that her heart was truly his?
“Did you really believe you could do so?” The First Dragon gave a little shake of his head. “Has time in your griefscape made you forget that your powers were limited in the Duat, just as they are in every other underworld?”
“I did not forget,” Yrian said, his jaw setting despite his trying to appear humble before his sire. “On the contrary, I had little choice but to attempt to honor your request. It is in that I failed. I was too weak to overcome the forces Kashi had rallied to his side.”
The First Dragon continued to consider him for another few minutes before he did the last thing Yrian expected—he put a hand on his shoulder, saying, “You, Yrian Shadowsworn, are stronger than you think, but you are not capable of overcoming the restrictions set for underworlds. You did not fail.”
“I had hoped to keep Kashi away from the mortal world because he was weaker in the Duat,” Yrian said, fighting briefly with his fire.
It threatened to explode out of him, but he wrestled it back under control at the same time the First Dragon gave his shoulder a squeeze before dropping his hand.
“Now I must defeat him where others could be harmed. That is the weight of the failure I bear.”
Once again, the First Dragon took him by surprise. Instead of agreeing, or even heaping more scorn and chastisement upon his head, his father asked, “Why did you create the weyr?”
“The weyr?” Yrian frowned, momentarily distracted when Becket rubbed her thumb across his fingers, obviously trying to provide support in the face of the upcoming punishment.
The First Dragon knew full well why he had felt driven to form the weyr.
Was this yet some other form of torment, a way to drive home just how much he’d failed the septs? “To bring the kin together.”
“Why?” the First Dragon asked again.
Becket opened her mouth as if she was going to speak, shot Yrian a fast look, then closed it again, and scooted closer to him.
“The weyr has strength where smaller groups do not,” he answered, confused what his father wanted him to admit. He’d already stated he’d failed, and his willingness to bear the First Dragon’s punishment.
“This is so,” the First Dragon answered, blinking his eyes in a manner that had Yrian remembering a long-dead Persian king’s favorite pet tiger.
Yrian was at a loss for a few seconds until Becket said softly, “Bael isn’t wholly your problem, Yrian. I think your dad is saying that you should let the other dragons help you.”
The First Dragon gave her a brief nod before turning back to him. “Baltic was intended to bring balance to the weyr. He has finally seen fit to do so. But even with that, the weyr cannot destroy Bael by itself any more than you can do so alone.”
“Kashi will not hesitate to destroy as many dragons as he can,” Yrian said, feeling the full weight of his responsibility. “I hesitate to involve the others in the fight lest he obliterate them just as he did my sept and your mate.”
Silence fell over them, even the birdsong stilling for a half minute.
“You created the septs. You drew them into the weyr,” the First Dragon told him.
“Do you believe both are so insignificant that together you can’t face this threat?
Look to your past, wyvern, for it is there you will find the answers you seek.
There ... and in Paris,” the First Dragon said, then, without another word, and with his arm still around Charity, returned to the house.
“I know he’s your dad and a god and all—OK, yes, demigod—but there are times when I want to do something to him.
Something ... I don’t know. Not truly cruel, but maybe just a little mean.
Maybe pinch him hard on the arm,” Becket said, glaring at the glass doors to the house.
“What did he mean, look to your past? What answers are you looking for? And why Paris? What does he know that we don’t? Why is he so very ... gah!”
Yrian was struck by a thought, one that clearly the First Dragon had intended for him to realize some time ago.
The answer lay with the kin.
“Look to my past,” he said meditatively. “He was talking about Kashi destroying my sept.”
Becket, who was busily creating a glamour that Yrian suspected would do something objectionable to the First Dragon, continued to mutter to herself but stopped at his words, glancing up at him. “You’re not to blame for that—”
“I am, but ...” He thought about what the First Dragon had said.
“But I see now that I failed because I tried to protect my sept from Kashi, rather than relying on them to help defeat him.” He turned a stark face to Becket.
“It’s my fault he is here now, posing such a threat to the weyr.
If I had taken care of him in the past, he wouldn’t have survived to threaten the dragonkin now. ”
“No!”
He jerked back at her bellow, taken aback by the fact that not only was she suddenly furious; she had manifested his fire around them both in a blazing ring.