Page 55 of The Dragon With A Girl Tattoo
A second silence fell while the dragons all looked at one another.
“Does that matter?”Drake asked after almost a minute of no one speaking.
“It does when he has it on his person,” Yrian said, his gaze shifting to his brother.“Did you know he had a shard?”
“Yes.”Baltic frowned.“But like Drake, I don’t see why that matters.It’s not as if it could be damaged even if you were to outright kill Xavier.”
“You might not be able to destroy a shard, but I can,” Yrian said, then rose, holding a hand out for me.“Becket is tired and needs to sleep.I will guard her so that the Dark Ones may rest.”
“Wait, what?”Aisling said at the same minute Ysolde asked, “You can break the shards?”
“Yes.”
I got to my feet, but slowly, wondering at this man who had appeared abruptly in my life earlier this morning and now felt like I’d known him a lifetime.“Am I the only one who doesn’t understand the significance of a shard?”
“The dragon heart was created by the First Dragon.It is made up of four shards, one granted to each of the original four septs,” Gabriel said with obvious hesitance.His eyes were shadowed as they watched Yrian.“It is the most valuable relic of dragonkin.I had never heard that it could be destroyed, however.Re-formed and then sharded again, yes.But destroyed?”He shook his head, clearly confused.
“Is it possible for you to ...I don’t know, banish or remove Xavier from the mortal plane without hurting the heart shard?”I asked Yrian.
“Not if he has it on his body, which he does.I felt its presence as soon as he attacked.If I had destroyed him as I did his followers, it would have meant the end of the dragonkin.”
“Are you saying that if a shard is destroyed, we all die?”Aisling asked, leaning into Drake just as Jim’s glamour dissolved into nothing.I’d set it to last only five minutes, feeling that was just punishment for speaking unfairly of Yrian.
“Die?No.”Yrian took my hand again, and I was distracted by the sensation of his fingers around mine.My libido kicked into high gear despite the situation.I told it to chill until such time as I decided whether I wanted to get involved with Yrian on a romantic level.“But it is the heart of the kin, and without it, we will decline.No new dragons will be born.”
“Holy shit,” Thaisa said, looking at her dragon.“We haven’t even talked about kids yet.What if we can’t ever have them?Who will take over the tribe when you want to retire?”
“I know Drake has our shards tucked away safely in his lair, but I sure as shooting hope Gabriel and May are doing the same, because man alive!I didn’t know we hadthathanging over our heads!”Aisling said, her expression stark.
“The shards have survived since the creation of the dragon race,” Drake reassured her at the same time Gabriel murmured that their shard was safe.I couldn’t help but notice the similarly stricken expressions on all the other women’s faces.“There have been wars and attacks, and they have not been destroyed.Until now, I wasn’t aware that was a possibility.”
Everyone looked at Yrian.
“Hey!”I said, taking offense on his behalf, since he didn’t seem to want to do the job.“You can just stop looking at Yrian like he’s a villain.He’s here to help you guys ...and me ...and is not Mr.Destruction.I’d think you’d be a bit more grateful that he realized what was going on and didn’t damn you all to declining.”
Yrian gave me an odd look.“What are you doing?”he asked.
“Defending you to your family,” I told him, my ire spiking despite my exhaustion.
“Why?”he asked, tipping his head a little to the side, an act that made my stomach go wobbly with want and need and a plethora of other emotions I decided I didn’t want to deal with at that moment.
“I told you—I don’t like bullies.”
“We’re not bullies,” Ysolde said, but her expression was troubled.“We just want Xavier dealt with, especially if he’s now targeting the green dragons.”
“You’d think with a roomful of wyverns, they’d suss out what’s going on, huh?”Jim asked Yrian, giving me a side-eye as it approached him.
“What do you mean?”Gabriel asked, now frowning at Jim.
“Jim!”Aisling said almost at the same time, clearly outraged.“May I remind you that you are on Team Green Dragons, and that insulting everyone here is not likely to get you vacation time with Amelie and Cecile next month?”
“I second Gabriel’s question,” Ysolde said, her fingers twitching.“Would you mind explaining your accusation, Jim?”
“That depends,” Jim answered, watching her closely.“Are you going to bananate me if I don’t?Because those crumbs I found when Becklestein chickened me—which I gotta admit was more fun than I thought it would be—ain’t gonna hold me over until breffy.”
Aisling took a deep, deep breath, and said through gritted teeth, “Answer the question, Jim.Yes, that is an order, and furthermore, you will continue to answer any questions that anyone else puts to you in the next ten minutes.”
“Why only ten minutes?”Jim asked, also doing a head tip.It wasn’t nearly as effective as the one Yrian did.
