“No? You sure take orders from him as if he was. Just what is your connection with him, Fiat? Do you think he’ll help you retake control of the blue dragons?” I inched my way down the long room, away from Cyrene.

“I have no need for another sept,” Fiat answered, taking the bait. His eyes burned with blue intensity as he searched the shadows for me, slowly following. “I am wyvern of the red dragons.”

“I think you’ll find Chuan Ren will disagree with that. She’s back, you know. Oh, but you must know—Gabriel said you were hiding from her.” I said the last with deliberation, knowing Fiat would not take such a blow to his ego without revenge.

He snarled and leaped forward, suddenly not more than a foot away from me, his fingers digging deep into my throat. I gasped and grabbed his hand with both of mine, trying to ease the intense pressure on my throat.

“If Baltic did not want you alive, I would kill you right here for that insult,” he growled, his tail sliding around my legs to hold them in a vise. I couldn’t reach my dagger, couldn’t get enough of a purchase on the floor to fight him, couldn’t even draw a breath. Spots danced lazily in front of my eyes as I stared silently into his.

Shift! the dragon shard demanded, and with no other choice, I did so. I tried to shove him off me, tearing desperately at the fingers so deep in the flesh of my neck they must surely be touching, but despite my being in dragon form, his strength was just too much for me.

“Then again, the pleasure it would give me to kill you would far outweigh Baltic’s displeasure at the act,” Fiat hissed, his face shoved into mine. There was madness in his eyes, madness and a bloodlust that scared me to death. His face was beginning to go gray, to lose focus, and I realized with a shock that he was killing me, cutting off blood and oxygen to my brain, and that I would never see Gabriel again.

“Love sport without me? This will never do. I must insist on having the premiere role in it, although if you beg nicely, perhaps we’ll allow you to join in, as well.”

The voice that spoke beyond Fiat was cool, but a bit ragged about the edges. It had the desired effect, however—Fiat jerked his head to see who was behind him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Magoth swung a huge andiron shaped like a peacock in full display at Fiat’s head, connecting with a horrible smashed-melon sound.

Fiat stared at him in surprise for a moment before he crumpled to the ground, blood spraying in a fine arc on the wood tiles beneath him.

The last thing my brain registered before the blackness enveloped me was Magoth’s smile.

Chapter Twelve

“The shadow world is not really so much a whole different world as it is simply an extension of what we know as reality. It goes by many names, and can be accessed by a number of methods—fae folk are particularly comfortable there, although they refer to it as the beyond, which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good description of what it is. It is beyond. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

The voice that spoke was male, deep, smooth as silk on water, and just hearing it made me smile. It took a few minutes before the meaning of what the voice said filtered through the bemusement that held me so tightly. Slowly, inch by inch, my body ceased floating on an infinitely soft bed of oblivion, and returned to the domain of my mind. I realized with an odd start that the first voice that had spoken was mine.

My eyes popped open to behold a face leaning over me, watching me with a mixture of amusement, desire, and relief. “Gabriel?”

“Your wits have returned. I was concerned that you had suffered some trauma.”

There was a certain translucent quality to the face that had my spirits dropping. “We’re in the shadow world, aren’t we?”

The amusement left his eyes. “Yes. You were unconscious. What happened?”

Images flashed in my mind, of a house so perfect, so astoundingly desirable, it left me salivating. “The house. I want the house. Agathos daimon, how I want the house. You’d like it, too, Gabriel. There is a lawn so smooth it could be made of satin, and trees and flowers and what looked like it was a maze where we could run and hide and make love out in the open. We wouldn’t have to swim in the lake if you didn’t want to. But you would like the maze.”

“Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “I would like a maze. I would like to make love to you outside, with the sun shining down on your lovely flesh. I would allow you to make love to me under the stars, with the cool night air caressing your delicious little breasts as you arched above me, riding me, your hips moving in that way that drives me insane, and when you shadowed with your climax, I would know that you really were my little night bird, my wintiki.”

“I want to make love to you right now,” I said, my fingers twitching impotently, desperately wanting to touch him, to pull him down onto me. I needed to feel his mouth on mine, to catch his breath as I touched him, to taste him as he entered my body. The need for the house was tangled up somehow with my need for him, but he was only a projection into the shadow world, not really here. “I want to touch you, Gabriel. I want to slide myself across your chest, tasting you, stroking your lovely warm flesh. I want to have foreplay. I want to take you in my mouth like we’ve talked about, but never seem to be able to do because you drive me totally and completely witless the second you touch me. I want you buried so deep inside me, I can feel your heart beat.”

Gabriel groaned and closed his eyes for a moment, his hands fists as he knelt next to me. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me? I’m not near you, May. I’m not even in the same country as you, and yet I’m hard and burning for your heat.”

I was silent for a moment as the last shreds of my wits that had been scattered by Fiat’s attempt to kill me gathered up and coalesced into my normal reason. “Where are you?”

“France. I will be home soon. I will be in your arms sooner. What happened to you?” He reached for me, as if he were going to stroke the hair from my cheek, his hand fisting again as he dropped his arm to his side.

“Fiat tried to kill me.”

He was so still that for a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me.

“Then he will die for that folly.”

I smiled, warmed to the tips of my toes by the cold, icy threat in his voice. “He didn’t succeed.”