“I don’t have to explain anything to you,” he said, his brows lowering. He took a menacing step toward me. I raised my chin a smidgen and gave him my blandest look.

“It can’t be the dragon shard. You wouldn’t kidnap Cyrene and Jim to get that—you’d just lop off my head and take the shard. Therefore, you must want us all for a specific purpose, and the only one I can think of is that it’s a trap of some sort, and we’re the bait.”

“Clever little witch,” he said, moving close enough to me that I could feel his breath on me. I felt something else, too, something familiar, some sense of déjà vu that I couldn’t pinpoint. “Too clever for your own good, as the saying goes.”

“Gabriel isn’t stupid,” I told him, clamping down on the sense of familiarity. I didn’t want to be familiar with Baltic. I didn’t want a repeat of that kiss or, more important, of the sense of kinship that I had felt with him when he talked about the house and Ysolde. I didn’t want her memories of him; I wanted him at arm’s length, back to the status of an evil, despised foe, not of a man who loved a woman so much he was willing to give her everything he had. “He’s not going to walk blindly into any trap you set, no matter if you use me as bait or not.”

Baltic looked at me long and hard, as if he could see my thoughts. At length he merely asked, “What makes you think I want Gabriel?”

I stared at him in incomprehension. If he didn’t want to trap Gabriel, why kidnap me?

Fiat’s bodyguards staggered into the house with Magoth. Baltic, once again on his way out of the room, hesitated as he looked at the demon lord, then spun around to give me a questioning look.

“Surely you know by now that I never travel anywhere without my little posse,” I said, nodding toward Magoth.

He didn’t appreciate my joke, which was fine, as I didn’t appreciate his kidnapping us.

“Let us see if you are still laughing tomorrow,” was all he said before leaving the room.

“Tomorrow? You never answered me about what you have planned for us. Baltic! Damn him.” I called after him, moving toward the door to follow him. His men blocked my way, both of them large enough that it gave me pause. I eyed them for a second, trying to decide if I could take them both on in dragon form, and what repercussions such an act might have, when Fiat exploded.

“Che cazzo stai dicendo?” he snarled, making me glad for a moment I didn’t speak the language. He pushed past me to fling open the side door that Baltic had just used to leave, and screamed after the other dragon, “Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!”

Jim looked shocked.

“On a profanity scale of one to ten, how bad was what Fiat just said?” I asked the demon softly.

“Fifteen.”

“Ouch.” I grabbed Cyrene and pulled her out of the way when Fiat spun around, his face black with anger as he stormed past us. Only he didn’t pass us—he veered off and grabbed me by the arm, instead.

“I will not tolerate this! You are my prize, not his! If he thinks he can treat me as a minion, he will soon see just what a force I am,” he growled as he half dragged me across the room.

“Ack!” Cyrene yelled, ducking behind me despite the fact that Fiat wasn’t even touching her. “It’s started! He’s trying to steal me! He thinks you are me!”

“Fanculo,” Fiat spat at her, backhanding her at the same time, sending her reeling backwards into the wall.

The dragon shard would have burst into action, but my own temper won out. Before Cyrene even hit the wall, I had my dagger out and was pressing the tip of it into his throat, right where his jugular vein pulsed. “No one,” I said in a voice hoarse with anger, “no one hurts my twin.”

Fiat shifted, the flesh beneath my blade going from beige to blue in an instant. He swung a heavy scaled arm at my head, but I ducked, instinctively shadowing. The room was well lit, but not so bright that I was entirely obvious when shadowed. “Jim, protect Cy,” I ordered, flattening myself on the floor for a few seconds when Fiat spun around searching for me, his tail whipping over my head by the barest of inches.

With identical shouts of anger, Fiat’s two bodyguards dropped Magoth’s unconscious body and shifted into dragon form, as well. I scurried out of their way, trying to stick to the less-lit areas of the room, but that idea went to hell in a handbasket when Baltic’s two attendants, who had been ordered to take us downstairs, also shifted. I made a mental note that they were black in color, not white like Baltic.

“It’s a dragonpalooza,” Jim said, standing guard over Cyrene as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, shaking her head.

“Mayling?” she called, searching for me, squeaking in horror when one of the black dragon guards lunged toward her. He was heading for Fiat’s men, however, leaping on the back of the one named Renaldo. The two of them went down in a flurry of scales, claws, dragon fire, and screams that echoed down the length of the long hall. The second black dragon tackled the other blue bodyguard when he went to save his buddy, the former yelling something in what I assumed was Zilant.

The dragon shard demanded I shift and confront Fiat, who was standing in the center of the room, peering around for me. I pressed myself deeper into the shadow cast by a huge sideboard, knowing that he would see me if he spent any time examining the area.

“Come out here, cara,” he called, his voice almost normal—almost. “I told you what would happen if you were to hide from me.”

The lights in the room suddenly dimmed. Cyrene stood at a panel near the entrance, punching off a row of lights as fast as she could. Jim was at one of the huge windows, hauling closed heavy dark blue draperies. Bless them, they were trying to give me an even playing ground.

“And let you take out on me the fact that you’re pissed at your boss?” I called to Fiat as he spun around, starting toward Cyrene. I had to get his attention back on myself. “I’m not that stupid, Fiat.”

He turned back toward me, lashing out with his tail as Renaldo and one of the black dragons rolled past him, blood staining the floor with smeared, inky streaks. I used the opportunity provided by the distraction to race across to the other side of the room, deep in the shadows now, thanks to Jim.

“He is not my boss,” Fiat snarled, his head sweeping back and forth as he searched for me. “Open those drapes so I can see her,” he snapped at his men, but they were too involved to do as he commanded.