Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [29]
Cyrene, who had continued with an lengthy line of reasoning why she was obviously the best person to be Kostya’s mate, drew up short when I interrupted her. “We can talk about the situation with Kostya later. I assume the trouble you referred to earlier is something to do with him? Have the other dragon septs said anything to you?”
“Oh.” Her voice, which had been its usual light, burbling self, flattened to a whisper. “No, that’s something else. May, it’s . . . oh, it’s horrible!”
“What?” I asked, my stomach tightening despite long decades of familiarity with the sort of trouble into which she could get herself. “Stop hemming and hawing, and just tell me. You know it’s always worse if you try to prepare me for it ahead of time.”
“I know, but this time it’s especially tricky. It’s . . . it’s Neptune.”
“Who?” I asked, startled.
“Neptune. You know, the head of all us water beings. He rules the sisterhood, not that we like to admit it, because, well, you know how some of the sisters are—they don’t like men very much, and Neptune has always been rather condescending toward us naiads, like we’re not valuable to the planet or something. As if! We do more work than any of the other elemental beings put together. Anyway.” She took a deep breath, her words having slowed down from their initial tumbling rush. “Neptune called me before him, and, May, it wasn’t pretty at all.”
“I have no doubt of that. How bad is it?”
“Bad. He stripped me!”
“What?” I asked, shocked.
“You and your dirty mind. He stripped me of my title,” she wailed. “It was horrible!”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “For the love of all that’s . . . what exactly happened?”
Ten seconds of silence followed my question. “It’s my spring.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been so busy with Kostya the last month, the spring . . . He was so very needy, you understand, I mean, seriously needy, and he took up vast amounts of my time and attention . . . and the spring . . . well, it just sort of . . . became tainted.”
“You let your spring go unattended?” I asked in stark disbelief. Naiads, as water beings, had charge of various freshwater resources. Some protected lakes, others rivers, and some, like Cyrene, personally watched over and preserved springs that fed a number of rivers and underground tributaries. I was familiar enough with the Sisterhood of Hydriades to know just how serious a matter it was to let your charge go without due attention. “Oh, Cy. How could you do that?”
“It was Kostya! He needed me, Mayling! No one has ever needed me the way he has. He . . .” Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper. “He’s so incredibly sexy. I just couldn’t resist him.”
I sighed softly to myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that chastisement has little effect on my twin. “Sometimes I wish you’d given up some other trait than your common sense to create me.”
“I’m sorry,” came the very small reply.
“I know you are. So you were too busy being madly in love with Kostya to watch your spring, and it became tainted. Surely that’s not irreversible. Why is Neptune involved?”
“Because Hahn the German sylph wants my position; that’s why. Did I ever mention him?”
“No. Him? I thought sylphs were female.”
“Don’t be so behind the times. At the last consortium of elemental beings, they dropped the gender requirements to be more in line with the political correctness of the mundane world. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with a man wanting to join the sisterhood, but Hahn is evil, Mayling, pure evil.” Cyrene’s voice was filled with righteous indignation. “He wants to become the first male naiad, and duly applied to the sisterhood. When I told him that there wasn’t a position open, he claimed we were refusing him based on his gender and threatened to report us to Neptune.”
“Wait a minute.” Cyrene’s life always seemed to be something straight out of a soap opera, so I was used to the usual assortment of odd characters who were attracted to her. But this seemed a bit odd even for her. “Aren’t sylphs air elemental beings? Why does he