“Yes, she is, and I dread trying to explain dragons and the Otherworld to her, so if you could keep the fire-breathing to a minimum, I’d be greatly appreciative. Is there anything else you’d like?”

“No.”

I picked up the tray and went to the door. “Try to get some sleep. I’m sure you’ll feel better afterwards.”

Before I could close the door, his voice called out my name. “Aisling?”

I paused and looked back.

As seen by electric light, Konstantin Fekete—a name I was gravely informed was never used, the man in question preferring the diminutive Kostya instead—looked a far cry from the filthy, unkempt creature who crawled out of the back of the aerie prison. The long face, reddish brown hair that swept back from a high forehead, and ebony eyes were unfamiliar to me, but the jaw and chin were all Drake. Kostya shifted slightly in bed, winced as his still-healing wounds pulled, and gave me a smile filled with irony. “You are angry at Drake.”

“That’s neither here nor there, but yes, I am.”

“You do him an injustice. His loyalty was given to me centuries before he met you.”

I thought about that for a moment, nodded, and left the room, quietly closing the door behind me.

Drake stood directly opposite, leaning against the wall in apparent negligence, but I knew better. His dragon fire was barely contained, indicating his emotions were running very high at the moment. “Would you prefer to yell at me now, or can it wait until later?”

“I’m not going to yell at you,” I said serenely, and headed down the hallway to the stairs.

“You’re not?”

“No. There is nothing to yell at you about. About which to yell. Whatever. I am perfectly in control, and I can guarantee you there will be no yelling.”

Drake said nothing as he followed me down the stairs. The silence lasted until my foot hit the tile floor; then I turned around and smashed the tray into his chest. “Your brother, Drake? Your brother?”

He sighed, tossed the tray onto a side table, and taking my hands in his, pulled me back up the stairs, into our bedroom. “Yes, he is my brother.”

“A real brother?” I asked, pulling my hands from his because we both knew full well that if I maintained any sort of physical contact with him, sooner or later I’d end up flinging myself on him in a wholly shameless fashion. “Not just a brother-in-arms, or a really good friend you think of as a brother, but an actual flesh-and-blood brother?”

“Yes.” He stood in front of me, his hands limp at his sides. My heart wrung at the exhaustion that was clearly gripping him despite the few hours of sleep he’d managed to snatch on the plane back to England.

He looked longingly at the bed, sighing. I poured him out a stiff belt of dragon’s blood, the spicy wine favored by dragons. He accepted it and sank with rather less grace than normal into one of the two chairs that flanked the fireplace.

“I should go downstairs. There is much to do.”

“There’s always much to do. Did Gabriel leave?”

He nodded. “He wished to discuss the situation now, but I was finally able to convince him that you needed rest.”

“Me?” I made a face. “I slept the whole way back.”

“I admit that in this instance, I used your condition as a convenient excuse to get rid of Gabriel,” he answered, his eyes haunted. “He will return in the morning.”

I glanced at the clock. It was nearing midnight, and de spite the sleep I’d had on the airplane, I was feeling as tired as Drake looked. “Yeah, well, he’s not the only one who’s been put off until then. My uncle was pretty peeved when we dropped him off at the hotel. He muttered something about having a word with me in the morning in regard to my behavior. I don’t suppose you’d like to run interference for me?”

Drake cocked a glossy black eyebrow.

I sighed. “I know, you have enough on your plate. I’d just like to point out the same goes for me. At least with Gabriel and Uncle Damian put off until morning it means you and I can have a little chat.”

He pursed his lips slightly. “You want to know about Kostya.”

“Bingo. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? His mother is Catalina? His dad was your dad?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a sec—you told me your dad died right after you were born.”

He brushed a hand through his hair, his eyes filled with so much emotion it almost hurt to look at him. “The phrase ‘right after’ is relative to the life span of a dragon, no pun intended. He died within a year of my birth. Kostya is my older brother.”

My resistance failed me, just as I knew it would. Drake sent me a look that evaporated just about all my irritation, leaving me to find myself on his lap, nuzzling his neck and breathing in the wonderfully sexy scent that never failed to make my blood steam.

He turned his head to kiss me. I caught his face in my hands and looked deep into those beautiful eyes of his. “Your brother.”

“When you accepted the fact that we were mated, I told you there would be some things I could not share with you.”

“Dragon things, I remember,” I said, nodding. “And I said I was sure there were some Guardian things I wouldn’t be able to spill to you, but this is bigger than just a dragon thing, Drake! This is your family! I thought I was a part of that!”

“You are a part of it,” he answered, his hands caressing me as he pulled me down to his mouth. “You are the most important person in my life, kincsem. But there are circumstances surrounding Kostya that go beyond family and touch weyr politics. Until you so heedlessly came to rescue us, the world believed Kostya to be dead. Now five others know of his existence. What is worse is that one of their number is Gabriel. It could very well be that this exposure could mean Kostya’s destruction.”

I let him kiss me, enjoying the taste of him as he invaded my mouth, savoring the sweetness of holding him again in my arms. But my curiosity was stronger than my desire at the moment, and I felt like I had to get a few things straight in my mind before I could concentrate on celebrating his return.

“You keep saying things like that, but I don’t understand why. Gabriel didn’t try to attack Kostya at all. Far from it, he helped us get him down off that damned mountain. He checked him over for injuries once we got back to town. He did what he could to repair the wounds he had. Those weren’t the actions of a man with murder on his mind.”