Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [74]
“It was the shard,” I said, still feeling it thrum inside me, and shaken to my very core by what had happened. When the shard reacted to Magoth, I knew it for what it was—an attempt to seek power. But this was different—this was tied up to the faintest shadows of Ysolde. She had loved Baltic, I realized at that moment. She had loved him desperately, absolutely, beyond all reason. And he had built a house for her, just to please her, because he, too, loved with an all-consuming passion. I could only guess at the depth of the pain he felt at losing her . . . but it did not excuse his actions. I lifted my chin and gave him a long, level look. “The shard is what’s making me react to the house . . . to you.”
Baltic looked bored. “You bear the shard my mate once possessed. I have no doubt she imprinted something of herself upon it. All the more reason for me to have it.” He turned to leave and saw Fiat. He frowned. “What are you still doing here? I told you that I had no further need of you. You may leave.”
A parade of emotions passed over Fiat’s too-handsome face; disbelief was quickly followed by anger, which settled into a deep fury. I’ll say this for him—he kept his emotions in check, the only hint of his feelings visible in the glint to his eyes.
“Take them below,” Baltic said, waving toward Cyrene and me as he turned to leave the room.
Two dragons emerged from the shadows, one of whom was the man who’d accompanied him to Gabriel’s house.
“Below where?” Jim asked somewhat nervously, pressing into me. “Below as in a comfortable suite with digital TV and a hot tub?”
Baltic paused at the door and smiled again. It wasn’t a nice smile. “It pains me to be clichéd, but I believe in keeping a dungeon traditional in its accoutrements. You might not find the torture devices as entertaining as digital television, but I certainly will.”
“No,” I said simply.
Baltic gave me a disbelieving look. “You will not defy me, mate.”
“I think I just did,” I said calmly, hoping my usual placid expression was hiding the fact that my heart was beating wildly, my palms suddenly sweaty. “I will not move one foot from this spot until you tell us why you’ve had Fiat kidnap us.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” he said, his brows lowering. He took a menacing step toward me. I raised my chin a smidgen and gave him my blandest look.
“It can’t be the dragon shard. You wouldn’t kidnap Cyrene and Jim to get that—you’d just lop off my head and take the shard. Therefore, you must want us all for a specific purpose, and the only one I can think of is that it’s a trap of some sort, and we’re the bait.”
“Clever little witch,” he said, moving close enough to me that I could feel his breath on me. I felt something else, too, something familiar, some sense of déjà vu that I couldn’t pinpoint. “Too clever for your own good, as the saying goes.”
“Gabriel isn’t stupid,” I told him, clamping down on the sense of familiarity. I didn’t want to be familiar with Baltic. I didn’t want a repeat of that kiss or, more important, of the sense of kinship that I had felt with him when he talked about the house and Ysolde. I didn’t want her memories of him; I wanted him at arm’s length, back to the status of an evil, despised foe, not of a man who loved a woman so much he was willing to give her everything he had. “He’s not going to walk blindly into any trap you set, no matter if you use me as bait or not.”
Baltic looked at me long and hard, as if he could see my thoughts. At length he merely asked, “What makes you think I want Gabriel?”
I stared at him in incomprehension. If he didn’t want to trap Gabriel, why kidnap me?
Fiat’s bodyguards staggered into the house with Magoth. Baltic, once again on his way out of the room, hesitated as he looked at the demon lord, then spun around to give me a questioning look.
“Surely you know by now that I never travel anywhere without my little posse,” I