Vixen Page 4

  “So, where do you want to start looking?” Ion asks.

  It takes me a second, but I realize he’s offering to help me look for the mysterious artifact. This is perfect, because it means I get to spend more time with him and hopefully make some progress on my nearly-woefully-derailed seduction. I throw my hands into the air again. “It could be anywhere. I don’t know where you keep it. I don’t know anything about this place. Why don’t we start with a tour?”

  “Good plan.” Ion slips his jacket back on, opens the door for me, follows me through, and then offers me his elbow like an usher at a formal wedding. Or, you know, like a gentleman. Yes, gentlemen used to do that, probably somewhere back in Ion’s lifetime.

  It’s also quite polite of him to help me search for whatever it is I’m supposed to be stealing from him. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m here as a burglar, and while I don’t like being misconstrued, it’s not as bad as being thought an assassin, so I’ll gladly take the role. Anyway, it gets me what I want, which is more time with Ion.

  It seems almost a bit too handy that he’s so willing to help me, but I’m sure he has his reasons…like finding whatever artifact I’m looking for, so he can hide it before I get my hands on it, or something. Who knows what he’s thinking? But since the artifact is only an excuse, I don’t care if he wants to learn of its importance before I can use it against him.

  If it buys me more time, I’m all for it.

  We head down the hallway and pass a closed door.

  “What’s that?” I gesture back at the room we didn’t enter. Maybe it’s something entirely insignificant, like a janitor’s closet or a powder room, but if I’m going to keep up the façade of looking for something, I should at least act concerned that we passed it by.

  “That’s my private study.”

  “Can we go in?”

  “It’s private.”

  “But that’s the most logical place for you to hide an artifact.”

  “Is it?” Ion has paused in the hallway, but he’s not moving any closer to the door. He makes a face like he’s weighing a decision.

  I want to go inside his private study. I mean, it’s private, right? Which means there are personal things in there, things nobody else gets to see, which if I get to see them will give me a connection to Ion that nobody else has. It’s a major rung on the ladder of seduction, I’m quite sure. I need to go in there.

  “I don’t even go in there very often,” Ion admits, the volume gone from his voice, as though it’s been tugged away to some distant place.

  “Please can I see?”

  He meets my eyes.

  Oh, his eyes are so dreamy and silvery green. There’s not a gemstone in the world so lovely.

  Ion clears his throat. “You can take your contacts out now. I know who you are.”

  “How do you know I wear contacts?”

  “I saw you when you were spying on me from the woods yesterday. You didn’t have them in then. Besides, every dragon has jewel-toned eyes.”

  I’m tempted to ask him how he knows that was me in the woods, since he could only have seen me for, at most, a second or two. Likewise, I’m curious why he happened to step out at that precise moment, if he somehow sensed me looking at him, or if he’s just the brooding type who stands on random balconies and looks out windows a lot.

  But I don’t know how to phrase the question, and I’m too nervous with him standing so close to me, waiting patiently for me to remove my contacts.

  I reach up and pinch the lenses from my eyes, tucking them away in a spare contact lens case I keep in my purse (which I grabbed from the massage room on our way out—after all, it has my cell phone in it. You don’t think I’m going to explore this castle with my family’s arch-nemesis dragon without a means of calling for help, do you?). I blink up at Ion, able to see him perfectly clearly for the first time up close.

  And he is even more handsome.

  “Beautiful,” he whispers.

  The word sends a delighted quiver trembling through me. Ion thinks my eyes are beautiful?

  I’m doing this. I’m actually doing this.

  It’s working.

  “All right, the study.” Ion backtracks toward the door, as though just by looking in his eyes I’ve convinced him.

  The hinges creak slightly as he opens the door, and when he switches on the light, the bulb pops and goes dead. In that single flashing instant I saw a room covered in dust and cobwebs. He wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t go in very often.

  More like, ever.

  “Just a moment. Here—can you hold the door open? I need the light from the hallway to look for the candles.” Ion runs his hand down my arm, finds my fingers, and directs them to the doorknob.

  I miss his touch when he darts away to a cabinet, rummaging until he’s found matches and a candle on a brass candleholder. He strikes one of these, and the tiny flame illumines his face, which was already gently lit by the glow from his eyes.

  Ion blows out the match, hands the candle to me, and then finds another in an identical holder, which he lights from my candle. We are two warm circles of light in an otherwise dark room.

  “Let the door go gently, so the rush of air doesn’t snuff out the candles,” Ion instructs me.

  I do so, and now we’re alone in this interior room. There’s a massive desk on one side, and bookshelves along three walls and the corners of a fourth, which otherwise is composed of a large, ornate fireplace. A large family portrait occupies the place of honor above the mantel.

  I shield my candle’s flame with my hand as I walk over to see the picture. “Who is this?” I ask before I’m even close enough for my tiny flame to illumine the portrait.

  “Those are my people. The last of my kingdom.”

  A tiny gasp escapes my lips. “It’s the Romanovs—the Russian royal family.” I recognize the famed martyrs of Russian royal history, having brushed up on all things Russian in preparation for this trip.

  “I know your father and grandfather are the functioning kings of their kingdoms,” Ion acknowledges, “but we did things differently here in Russia. Heads of other kingdoms wanted to intermarry with ours, but dragons and humans cannot marry. Not to mention, dragons don't age. There was a time when the world understood and accepted this fact, but that time was passing away, even here. We couldn’t have kings and queens who ruled forever.”

  As he speaks, Ion looks at the picture wistfully, and I can’t help but wonder what memories he’s recalling. He continues, “Rather than snub our neighbors or grow increasingly obsolete, the dragon rulers chose instead to appoint a new family to rule Russia—a family, not of dragons, but entirely human. They chose the most noble and faithful of their citizens, and essentially switched places. The dragons became servants to the royals, protecting them, and thereby being protected by them.”

  Ion glances at me, then looks back to the picture. “It worked. For over three hundred years, it worked. And then we failed.”

  I’m sure there’s more to the story, so much more, but Ion’s gone silent. He looks so sad relating what he’s told me already. And knowing what I do of what happened to the Romanovs, I can’t imagine the account will become any more cheerful the more details he shares.

  “I don’t think it’s in here,” I announce, casting a meaningful look around the room as though to rule out any further possibility.

  “How can you know without a closer look?”

  How can I know? What makes this room different, besides the fact that it’s haunted by Ion’s tragic past, which is no doubt precisely why he’s avoided this room for so long, until I, like a selfish bully, insisted he go in and resurrect painful memories.

  Not a good way to woo a guy, I don’t think.

  “Because you haven’t been in here in a long time. What I’m looking for—you couldn’t have neglected it for so long.” I take a cautious step toward the door.

  To my relief, Ion follows me. “Oh, a clue. Is it alive, then—this relic w
e’re looking for?”

  “I can’t give you too many clues, or it will give it away.” I hold the door open again as Ion blows out the candles and places them back on their shelf.

  We step into the hallway and I can finally breathe freely again.

  Even Ion looks more cheerful. “This next room is much better. It’s a room I go in all the time—one of my favorite rooms. I think you’ll like it.”

  We step toward a wide-open doorway, and when I recognize what’s in the room, I gasp delightedly. For the first time, I don’t just want to woo Ion so I can find a mate. I want to live here and visit this room all the time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What a fabulous library!” I breathe in deep lungfuls of the smell of books—one of my favorite smells on earth. The room is huge, multistoried, with those rolling ladders that lead up to a balcony that encircles the room, providing access to the second level of books, and above it, a third.

  “Fiction, non-fiction,” Ion gestures to opposite sides of the room in turn. “I’ve been expanding my collection of English works. They now outnumber the Russian and all the other languages combined.”

  I make a quick circle around the room, drinking it in, then come to a stop in front of him. “Which book is your favorite?”

  Ion laughs. It’s a lighter laugh this time, or maybe it only feels lighter after the heavy discussion we had in his private office. Or perhaps that heavy discussion sloughed off some of the weight that dampened his laughter before. “I can’t pick a favorite.”

  “You can’t?”

  “No. Can you?”

  “I don’t even know which books you have here.” I protest, being purposely evasive.

  He crosses his arms and gives me a look that says he knows full well I’m being purposely evasive. “What’s your favorite book?”

  “Mmm,” I close my eyes. I could list a hundred that I love. “It depends on the day, on my mood—”

  “You can’t pick just one?”

  “No.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Who’s on your shortlist, then?”

  Ion shrugs, roving the shelves with his eyes. If his dragon vision is anywhere as good as mine, he can read the title off the spine of any book in this room without moving from where he stands. In fact, I wonder if perhaps the library wasn’t designed with that capability in mind. “Depends on the season. Sometimes I love Dostoyevsky.”

  “He lived in Siberia at one point, didn’t he?” I burst in, ready to impress him with my knowledge of the Russian great. Let’s bond over Dostoyevsky. I won’t mention the fact that I’ve never actually read a word the man wrote. “Did you know him personally?”

  “I’m not that old.”

  “He wasn’t from that long ago. What, late nineteenth century?”

  “Eighteen twenties to eighteen eighty-something-early, I think. Don’t quote me, but it was solidly before my time.”

  I can’t help thinking about the portrait of the Russian royal family in his private study. They were assassinated when, 1918? It wasn’t that much later—a fraction of a dragon’s lifetime. “What year were you born?”

  “Nineteen-hundred-and-four.”

  “Oh,” I gasp. “You’re just a baby.”

  “I’m quite a bit older than you are—several decades older, so who’s to talk? What are you, a premature infant, then?” He teases me.

  I laugh, nervous, my thoughts spinning. I’d pegged him for so much older. And really, in light of how old most surviving dragons are these days, seeing that so few of them have been able to find mates in the last century, the odds of my finding such a young groom were pretty slim. Wren’s husband is something like six hundred years old, and my brother Ram’s wife has nearly two centuries on him. “You’re hardly any older than my father.”

  “A couple of decades. I believe I’m older than he is by almost as many years as you’ve been alive.”

  I don’t argue with him, I only laugh again. He’s not nearly so scary if he’s not so old. A century is like a decade for a dragon, though we develop much the same as humans for the first twenty years of our lives.

  Then I do a little more math and realize something else. If he was born in 1904, and the Romanovs were murdered in the summer of 1918, he would have only been thirteen or fourteen years old when they died. And yet he spoke of failing them as though it was somehow his fault.

  But he was barely a teenager—in human years, even. Hardly more than a kid. Certainly not old enough to be a soldier or anything remotely related to protecting the lives of the royal family.

  My laugh dies on my lips.

  “What?” Ion asks, looking me full in the face as if he could search out the cause of my sudden sobering.

  I turn my face to the side, because for all I know, he very well might be able to do just that. “It’s nothing.” I don’t want to ask him any more about the Romanovs, and how they died, and why he would consider himself in any way responsible. I’m sure there’s more to the story, but I can’t bear to ask him to tell it.

  I open my mouth to answer, though I don’t know what to say, and instead of saying anything, my stomach grumbles audibly. I wasn’t very hungry at lunch, being too nervous to eat, so now that I’m not as nervous, my stomach is making its needs known.

  Ion looks slightly concerned. “You’re hungry?”

  “Sorry about that.” I may have gone slightly pale. Is it nearly suppertime? Am I going to have to leave?

  “No, don’t apologize. I should have offered you something sooner. I’m not used to having guests. Will you stay for dinner?”

  Relief and happiness bubble up inside me with such sudden force, my feet actually leave the ground in a little delighted hop, and Ion looks startled.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes,” I confirm, blushing horribly. I hopped. Like some kind of eight-year-old.

  This guy knew the Romanovs. He’s probably used to formality and fanciness, and I probably just outed myself as not remotely belonging to the circle he’s used to running with. How’s he going to ever see me as a viable romantic partner when I can’t even manage to be a civilized dinner guest? I’ve got to do better, appear more refined, cultured. We definitely can’t talk any more about Dostoyevsky, or I’ll look like an ignoramus.

  Ion offers me his elbow again, and this time, when I take it, it doesn’t feel so weird. It’s not like I belong on his arm, or in this amazing palace with its fabulous library, or even with this man who once walked among the storied pages of history. But it feels a little more natural, at least.

  “Do you like salmon?” Ion asks as he leads me down the hallway and deeper into his castle.

  “Love it.”

  “And asparagus?”

  I open my mouth to respond, but I can’t speak. What am I supposed to say? I’m supposed to be cultured, refined, even sophisticated. I can’t admit that I hate asparagus. Granted, I lied about who I am and why I’m here, but I can’t lie about liking asparagus, because then he’ll make me eat it.

  “Not your favorite?” Ion guesses after my silence extends for several seconds.

  “That’s a nice way of putting it.” I admit with a wave of relieved laughter which I realize a second later did nothing to make me seem more sophisticated.

  Ion places his other hand on my arm and gives it the slightest squeeze. “I can make asparagus in such a way, you will enjoy it.”

  “You can?” I try not to sound too doubtful. What guy wants to fall in love with a woman who doubts his ability to cook asparagus? But at the same time, I’m not confident about his chances for success.

  We’re talking about asparagus here. Not like broccoli or something normal that can be drowned in ranch dip.

  As a general rule, dragons are pretty much completely carnivorous, save for a little roughage here and there for the sake of vitamins or preventing scurvy, or whatever. But I can prevent scurvy just fine with a multivitamin and the occasional orange. I don’t need to eat asparagus.
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br />   Of course, I don’t mention this to Ion.

  He leads me to this kitchen that looks like it belongs in the back of a five-star restaurant, except kind of dated. Some pieces, like the stove, seem to belong, if not to this century, at least to the last one.

  Other items, like the copper pots big enough to bathe in, look as though they might date back to the last millennia.

  When was the copper age, anyway? I have no idea. I’m going to have to study up a bit if I expect to pull off the sophisticated image I’m trying to project.

  While I’m marveling at the metalware, Ion pulls two large fish from the fridge (which appears to date from the current century, thankfully). “Perfect timing—I just returned from a fishing excursion yesterday morning. These are quite fresh. They’re the last two I put in the refrigerator. The rest are in the freezer. They’re never quite as good once they’ve been frozen.”

  “Still better than asparagus,” I blurt half a second before I realize I should have kept my mouth shut.

  But when he looks up at me, his eyes are twinkling, the sorrow that welled in them earlier now chased to the darkest corners. “Still better than asparagus,” he agrees, starting the fire under the griddle portion of the stove.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  With Ion giving instructions, I play sous chef, chopping asparagus and dousing it in olive oil before scattering it across a broad pan. Meanwhile he’s set the oven to broil and thrown down a pile of butter, whole garlic cloves, and lemon slices on the heated griddle. It sizzles, and he drapes the gutted fish across the bed of browning citrus.

  “What do you think?” I hold out my pan of asparagus and give him a look that says I’m not optimistic.

  “Perfect. Not too close together so they don’t accidentally steam.” He sprinkles sea salt over the asparagus, takes the pan from me, and pops it under the broiler. “And while that cooks, can I get you something to drink? I live mostly off green tea, myself.”

  “That would be lovely.”