Chapter Two
TWO
AISLING
MAY
Hey, are you guys available for a fast video chat?
YSOLDE
Sure, if you give me five. Anduin is performing a play with his pony, and has forbidden me to leave until he’s done. Which, thankfully, he almost is.
ME
He’s performing a play? With a pony? A toy pony, you mean? Also, yes, I’m free for a chat, May. The kids just left for school, Drake is off visiting a couple of shops he owns, and Jim is about to leave to spend the day with Amelie and Cecile for her birthday. Cecile’s, not Amelie’s. What’s up?
YSOLDE
A pony pony, not a toy pony. Oh good, the pony just bowed, and moonwalked off. I take it that’s the end of the play. I’ll hop on to chat as soon as I get inside.
MAY
I hope you recorded the pony moonwalking, because I very much want to see that.
ME
Same.
ALLIE
As do I. And in answer to your question, May, I’m also available for a chat now that the kids are in school again. I second Aisling’s what’s up.
KARMA
Same from me, both to the pony video and the chat, but you’ll have to promise to ignore the squeals from the other room. The imps are having raspberry time, and they get a bit excited.
YSOLDE
I’ll say it again—you have an interesting life, Karma.
KARMA
Eh. It is what it is, although I admit that lately it’s a been a bit extra.
Three minutes later we all logged into our Zoom space.
Karma waved. “It’s so nice to see everyone again. I’ve felt out of touch lately while Pixie was graduating and we were settling on where she wants to go to college, etc. Speaking of that, I have an update, but it can wait. I want all the hot goss, as the kids say.”
“That’s right, you weren’t with us last month when we all met Owain,” I said, sitting back until I noticed Jim marching past the open door carrying its backpack (red hearts and Betty Boop design, since it was still February).
“I have a good hour, so we can gossip away. Er ... give me a mo. Jim looks like it’s going off somewhere other than to Amelie, and I have no idea why. ”
I caught Jim and Suzanne, mate of one of Drake’s guards, with car keys in her hand as the pair was heading out the door.
“I thought you weren’t leaving for an hour?” I asked. “Amelie isn’t expecting you until eleven. I hope you are not going to do anything to ruin her plans for the day.”
Jim rolled its eyes as Suzanne bent to snap the doggy backpack around Jim’s sizable chest before murmuring she’d fetch the car.
“Sheesh, Ash. It’s not like I’m a troublemaker or anything.
I told you the spawn and I were going in on your birthday pressie together.
Suzanne’s taking me to get it before it gives birth, and then she’ll drop me off at Amelie’s place. ”
My eyes widened. “What? What’s giving birth? What are you getting me? You know we can’t have a kitten because of István’s allergies.”
Its face screwed up, it strode through the many layers of protection that Drake felt necessary, including two different detectors, before emerging from the house onto the sidewalk of a ritzy Paris neighborhood. “Did I say give birth? Maybe ‘divide’ might be a better word.”
I took a deep breath, opening the back door of the car when Suzanne pulled up. “You would do well to remember that I can take away your credit card just as easily as I gave it to you. Easier, because it wouldn’t involve us having to make a fake identity and related credentials for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jim said, settling into the seat so I could snap the canine seat belt around it. “Heard it and so many other threats before. Laters!”
I returned to my laptop, about to ask what I’d missed, when I noticed that May had a second person with her.
“Oh good, you’re back,” May said, gesturing next to her.
The woman had the same blue eyes and raven-black hair, although where May wore hers in a 1920s flapper bob, her twin wore her hair shoulder-length.
“Hello, Cyrene,” I said, startled to see her. “How nice to see you again. It’s been a while.”
“Aisling,” she said, all smiles as she waved.
“I was just telling everyone it’s been forever, hasn’t it?
May tells me your news, of course, since she knows how close I feel to all of you, but it’s not the same as seeing you in person.
We should totally do lunches again like we used to when I was with the vile and duplicitous Kostya. ”
I ignored the slur to my brother-in-law, not wanting to get into that history.
“Cy!” May said, shooting her twin a look at the same time she buffeted her arm.
“Well, he is! You saw how horribly he treated me. I just hope his new mate isn’t as blind to him as I was,” Cyrene answered with an injured sniff.
“You can rest your mind there, because Aoife seems to do quite well with him,” Ysolde said, curling her feet under her as she sat on a cream-colored couch. “And she is a very good influence on him. He hasn’t threatened death and destruction to Baltic in months now.”
“It’s because Aoife’s pregnant, and Kostya has inherited his brother’s tendencies to view pregnant women as being made of glass,” I said with a fond smile recalling how overprotective Drake was when I was in the same circumstance.
“I thought Kostya was older than Drake?” Cyrene asked, looking confused.
“He is,” I said, wondering why May had called us. It couldn’t be just to say hi to Cyrene. Allie and Karma had met her the summer before at a gathering we hosted in Hungary, but to my knowledge, that was the only time they’d met.
“Then how can he inherit anything from Drake?” Cyrene asked.
“She wasn’t being literal,” May told her, then turned back to the camera. She looked stressed, which instantly had me worried. “And because I know you’re going to ask, yes, Cyrene needs to be here for this.”
“Of course I do,” Cyrene said with a dismissive gesture toward nothing in particular. “I have something to tell you.”
“Cy recently attended a water-elementals gathering in Africa,” May said, clearly taking it upon herself to do part of the heavy lifting of explanations. “And while at the conference, she ran into a friend.”
“Calypso is a very old friend,” Cyrene explained. “We met about a millennium ago when I was visiting turtles. You know how I love turtles. Anyway, she was there with her sisterhood, and of course, I was with mine. We always did like celebrating in Zanzibar.”
“Zanzibar?” Ysolde asked, her brows furrowed.
“Calypso?” Allie asked at the same time, her eyebrows rising. “Like ... the Calypso? The goddess one? Is she also related to the First Dragon?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrene answered, looking as confused as I felt.
“You were visiting turtles?” I tried to puzzle out what was so important about her choice of vacation spot.
“The Naiad Sisterhood likes to visit Nungwi,” May clarified with a swift glance at her twin. “It’s a pretty beach on the island of Zanzibar.”
“It has gorgeous beaches, and, of course, lots of turtles. Hawksbill sea turtles. Green turtles. Just ... a lot of turtles,” Cyrene said with a nod, then, at another pointed look from May, hurried on.
“So there we were last week, having the Naiad Sisterhood yearly retreat on the beach, when out of one of the other hotels comes the Nereid Sisterhood, including my old bestie Calypso.”
“Wait a second,” I said, shaking my head in an attempt to clear it. Conversation with Cyrene frequently left me in that state. “What’s a nereid?”
“Another type of water elemental,” May said quickly. “Cy is a naiad, and as such, she’s responsible for the care and protection of freshwater sources. Her streams, rivers, and lakes are in Italy. Nereids are the saltwater version of naiads.”
“Gotcha. Please proceed.” I nodded at Cyrene.
Ysolde looked like she wanted to take notes but had nothing handy to use.
Allie, on the other hand, was clearly typing on her phone. I hoped she’d share the notes with everyone.
“Here’s the important part,” Cyrene said, clasping her hands together, no doubt enjoying the spotlight.
Outside Drake’s office that I was using for our call, I heard the sound of the front door, and a subsequent rumble of masculine voices.
“Calypso has a friend named Tara, who just got married to a dragon. Yes! A dragon!”
“OK,” Ysolde said, a little frown pulling her brows together. “That’s interesting that another water elemental has found a dragon mate.” She bit off the end of the sentence, clearly not wanting to add, “And why is that important?”
“I thought so. I mean, we naiads—and nereids—aren’t everywhere, you know.” Cyrene’s expression turned a bit sour. “And we don’t normally fall for beings as impossibly stubborn and obnoxious and self-centered and—”
May nudged her, glancing at her phone. “Get to the point. Gabriel is going to be back anytime.”
“Tara!” Cyrene said with a glare at her twin.
“The point is Tara. Or so Calypso said. Because when I asked her what dragon Tara had married, she said his name was Amadeus, and he had just merged his Chaos Tribe with his dad’s Blood Tribe.
Tara was excited to start her new life helping him running all the tribes once he gets them to join together against the weyr. ”
I stared in open-mouthed horror at the screen, which was exactly the expression I did not want Drake to see when he loomed up in the doorway ... which, of course, he did.
“What is it?” he asked, switching instantly from relaxed sexy-as-hell wyvern of the green sept to hyperaware sexy-as-hell wyvern as he stalked into the room. If he’d been a dog, his hackles would have been up all the way down his back. “What is the matter?”
I lifted a hand to shush him—something he barely tolerates, but he’s no fool, so instead of even doing so much as cocking an eyebrow at me, he simply came over to the couch and sat with me, his eyes on the screen.
“Are you sure about that name?” Ysolde was asking May as Drake leaned in. She looked as dismayed as me. “She named the Chaos Tribe, specifically?”
Next to me, Drake froze.