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1 January 1857
We lost Fodor to a storm off Cape Horn. I wish that my ascension to wyvern was not due to the tragedy of losing him, but thus are the vagaries of fate. I will do all I can to protect the sept, and have so sworn.
Henceforth, I am known as Drake Vireo.
Drake sat back, feeling both a sense of sadness and satisfaction he had at last taken up the mantle he was born to assume. He tapped on the journal with the end of the pen, then dipped the nib into the inkwell again.
Addendum: I have decided to keep a journal. As my grandam pointed out, documentation of a modern-thinking wyvern will offer much insight and provide a great benefit to future generations. It is for this reason I will devote an hour each day to noting in this diary such things as are brought to my attention.
Also, Kostya has started one.
30 September 1859
I see it has been more than two years since I decided to keep a journal.
I will do better, beginning with today. I am on the way to see my grandam, who has called me to her side. She says the matter is of some impor—
The carriage in which Drake was riding hit a pothole, sending the quill and traveling ink bottle to the floor. He sighed, and decided he’d fill in the rest of the day’s entry after he’d seen Piroska.
A short half hour later, Drake entered the salon lit with sunlight, the noise and scent of the Paris that flowed past his grand-mère’s house filling him with a sense of mingled familiarity and unease. The former was due to his having lived there during his early years, while the latter ...
“There you are, my Drake. How handsome you look in that suit. Did some woman pick it out?”
The voice that greeted him was as soft as the wind, yet had a thread of steel that Drake was all too familiar with.
He bowed over his grandam Piroska’s hand, kissing it before doing the same to each of her slightly perfumed cheeks. “As a matter of fact, a woman did give it to me. A beautiful woman, with green eyes filled with laughter, and a heart bigger than all of the Otherworld.”
“Flatterer,” Piroska laughed, pinching his arm before smoothing a hand over the lapel of the dragonweave suit that she’d given him a few weeks earlier. “I would say that the tailor did an exceptional job, but you could wear sackcloth and still look elegant.”
He bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment, taking a seat next to her and accepting a cup of tea. The conversation for the next six minutes was trivial at best, and Drake wondered if she was going to address the elephant in the room ... but perhaps she was unaware of the happenings?
“And now that I have bored you almost to sleep, I must say my piece.”
Drake stiffened, carefully setting down his mostly untouched tea. “You’ve heard?”
“Of course. Did you think that you could dally with four red dragons in defiance of their wyvern without the news of Chuan Ren’s demand for reparation? I agree her claim is outrageous—you did not force her to remove your sexual partners from her sept—but still, you did have a role in the goings-on.”
He hated the feeling of dancing around subjects with his grandmother. He had always spoken openly to her. “It doesn’t surprise me that you heard of the situation, but I fail to understand why you are concerned about it. I have explained to Chuan Ren I had no designs on the four members of her sept, and that they came to me willingly and of their own accord. I refused her demands, naturally, and that is the end of it. I regret she took such extreme actions as to kick them out of the sept, but she is their wyvern, not I. I can do nothing.”
Grand-mère gave him a long look that had him remembering the time when, as a child, he’d been caught with a plate full of his favorite tarts freshly stolen from the kitchen. He’d received a stern lecture for that particular escapade, and he noted with some amusement that Piroska’s tone bore a remarkable likeness to the one she’d had in that incident.
“It is not Chuan Ren and the red dragons that concern me—although really, Drakeling, four women at once? what did three of them do while you were paying attention to the fourth?—but the fact that for some time, you have been unhappy in your romantic life. I am worried about you, kincsem. You are not just my wyvern; you are a most cherished grandson, and I would see you happy in your personal life as you are with the sept.”
“My personal life is fine,” he attempted to reassure her, pushing down deep the pain that threatened to rise up and ruin the moment. “I am happy. Quite happy, now that Chuan Ren has retreated to Hong Kong.”
She tapped him on his knee. “Now, that is an untruth. What is it, Drake? What has turned you from seeking a mate to attempting to bed the entire female population of Europe?”
“I am, naturally, loath to tell my beloved grand-mère that she is wrong, but I assure you that I have no such goals. I simply find relationships with women ... lacking.” He was aware of a faint warmth on his cheeks, and was more than a little amazed that his grandmother so discomfited him he actually blushed. He was a wyvern! Wyverns didn’t blush.
Wyverns also didn’t have to listen to lectures about their sexual escapades. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Grand-mère that, but the genuine concern in her brilliant emerald eyes kept the words behind his teeth.
“Lacking how?” she asked.
“Grand-mère,” he said, allowing his exasperation to fill his voice. “This is not a subject I care to discuss.”
“Of course not. You’re male, and every male dragon I’ve ever met has the same ridiculous notions that they are not subject to emotions, and thus refuse to acknowledge any issues therewith. What do you find lacking about females?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Drake asked with sudden prescience. He thought of putting his foot down and forbidding the discussion, but a lifetime knowledge of his grandmother’s character warned him she would not let the subject go, not until she’d had her say. It was better to let her vent her spleen so he could go back to the business of being wyvern. “You’re going to continue to pick away at the subject until you break me.”
She laughed as she patted his leg. “As if I could do any such thing. You are a strong man, and a stronger wyvern. But that strength does you a disservice when it comes to finding a mate.”
“A mate.” He couldn’t resist filling the last word with scorn. “Given the scarcity of wyverns’ mates, I’m not holding my breath to find one.”
“And yet, you should,” Grand-mère said in a tone that had lost all its gentle teasing. “No, do not give me that look. I did not mean literally, but figuratively. What troubles me is that over the centuries you have gone from dalliances with a female, singular—mortal and immortal—to groups of mortal females, and seldom any dragonkin.”
“Since you just lectured me about the wisdom of bedding four red dragons, that subject is clearly moot,” he felt obligated to point out.
She waved it away. “From what I’ve heard, that was an aberration. Am I wrong?”
Drake looked away, not answering.
“And that fact tells me that something is lacking in your life,” Grand-mère continued. “Something that drives you to take solace in many shallow relationships with human women rather than searching for one female who will fulfill your needs completely.”
“If someone told me that today my grandam would lecture me about my sexual choices, I would have called him mad,” Drake said calmly, rising and moving over to glance out of the window. It was raining, dampening his spirits along with the city itself, making him aware of the pain he kept hidden deep, now stirred at Piroska’s words. “You are worried unnecessarily, I assure you. Shall we speak of other things? How is Jakab?”
“Why do you think you will not find a mate?” she asked, ignoring his attempt to deflect her.
He spun around to stare at her, wondering if something in his expression or voice had given him away, or if she was simply exhibiting one of the traits that made her so uncanny. “Wyverns’ mates are rare. I would be foolish to expect to find one; thus, I take solace in other relationships.”
“Trivial ones with mortals,” she insisted. “Ones where you are evidently—if what your brother says is true—uncomfortable with just one partner. Kostya told me he went to visit you recently, and when he found you, you were engaged in what appeared to be an extremely spirited session of sexual congress with three women. And now there is this episode with the four red dragons. No, do not glare at me. It is not your fleeting dalliances of which I speak. A mate is something unique, something precious, and a wyvern’s mate doubly so. There are not enough of them to go around as it is, and your cavalier attitude toward women—”
“I do not have a cavalier attitude,” he interrupted, squaring his shoulders and making a mental note to have a few words in Kostya’s ear about tattling private details to their grandmother. “I enjoy women, yes, but that does not have any impact on my ability to lead the sept. And Kostya needs to mind his own business.”
“He loves you. He worries—less than I do, that is true, but he sees that in your personal relationships, you are not happy. I’m sure you will consider this forward of me to ask, but I remind you that I am an old lady who has seen more than a millennium of dragons live their lives—are you afraid that there is no mate out there for you, or that you are not worthy of such a woman?”
Drake ignored the question. It was too close to the secret pain, the one that haunted him in the late hours of the night. He’d long learned that the only way to deal with it was to fill his bed with as many women as would reasonably fit, spending his time both providing and taking pleasure until he was too exhausted to think. It was only then that he could sleep without the nagging pain. “The sept will always come first. Always. Yes, it is true that I have many sexual assignations, but that is simply my nature. As you said yourself on many occasions, I am different from most other dragons. Thus, I do not feel bonds to any one female. I never have, and I honestly don’t believe it is in me to so honor a mate. It is for that reason that I do not seek one out, and am instead content to live my life with as many ‘fleeting dalliances’ as I desire.”
She said nothing, just watched him.
Drake gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Since you have spoken so frankly to me, I will do the same. Do not worry about me, Grand-mère. I am simply not meant to be bound to one woman, mate or not. It is not within my nature to live that way. Women are intended to provide men pleasure, and if I partake of what they offer me, it is of no importance. Sex with mortals, especially, is merely a release, a physical necessity to clear the mind. Enjoying a variety of women is as natural to me as breathing, and to do otherwise would put the sept at risk.”
“I feel the pain in you, kincsem,” she said softly, her eyes now somber.
He shook his head. Not even to the person he trusted most would he bare his soul.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a dragon say he was shtupping as many women as he physically could in order to keep the sept safe,” she finally said, adjusting a pillow to a more comfortable position.
“Grand-mère!” Drake reared back, frowning. “Shtupping?”
She bobbed her head to the side. “My next-door neighbor Miriam is Jewish. She has many excellent insights on her grandsons, and we take much pleasure talking about life over mahjong in the afternoons. Very well. You do not wish to confide in me what is causing you to feel that you are unworthy, or perhaps that it is hopeless to seek a mate. Just remember that I will do whatever it takes to ensure your happiness. If you ever need help, I am here.”
“It does not surprise me that the First Dragon has so honored you by making you a reeve,” he said, kissing her cheeks again before rising. “You are infuriating and nosy and pushy, and the most wonderful of all dragons. I love you dearly.”
She smiled, one hand caressing his cheek before she waved him away. “As I do you. Go, then. But remember my words. I will always be here for you.”
He left, one part of him warmed by her obvious love, but the other part of his soul, the part stained with shame, tainted the emotion and left him squaring his shoulders with the now-familiar weight of responsibility.
Perhaps Grand-mère was right and four women at once was folly. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed having all four of the red dragons dally with him three nights before, but they had served their purpose in distracting him from the fear, and that was all that mattered.
Wyverns did not fear.
