“Why shouldn’t I?” He ignored my last question to address my statement, offering me his hand. I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

“Because you’re not a vindictive person,” I said, looking around for anything I might use as a covering. He picked me up in his arms.

“Shadow. I will carry you home.”

“That’s going to look a little odd,” I pointed out as he started off to the gate.

“It can’t be helped.”

He was silent as he strode through the streets, keeping out of the streetlights as much as possible. He did, in fact, garner a few odd looks from passersby as he carried an apparently invisible burden, but the street was dark enough that I doubted if anyone saw my naked form.

István opened the door to Drake’s house. Gabriel had set me down, standing in front of me as the light spilled out of the house onto the front steps.

“May we borrow your shirt?” Gabriel asked István.

The green dragon blinked a few times, but obediently peeled off his shirt and handed it over to Gabriel, who shoved it behind his back. I took it, pulling it on over my head, shivering with the cold now that I didn’t have Gabriel to warm me.

István said nothing as Gabriel stepped aside and I entered the house clad in only the shirt.

“It’s a long story,” I told István.

He just grinned, closing the door behind us.

“Is Magoth still unconscious?” I asked as we headed for the stairs.

“No.” He made a face. “He is with Catalina.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows.

“You don’t want to know,” I told him. “Neither, for that matter, do I. I’m going to bed.”

Gabriel didn’t join me for an hour, and then he had only just fallen asleep before it was time to wake him up for the sárkány.

“I hate to do it,” I told Kaawa as we walked slowly up the stairs from the breakfast room. “He only got to sleep an hour and a half ago, since he insisted on dragging Fiat from his bed.”

“Is that what all that yelling was about?” Kaawa asked as we rounded the landing and started on the second flight. “I wondered about that when I heard his voice raised in anger, but since there was no general outcry, I assumed it was some dragon business.”

“He evidently went in to scare the crap out of Fiat, but you know how hotheaded Fiat is. He threatened to dismember me, or something along those lines, and Gabriel snapped. I was going to stay out of it, since the sight of me seems to enrage Fiat, but when I heard Gabriel bellow, I decided a calmer mind might be needed. I got there just as Gabriel tried to decapitate Fiat, but luckily, Drake was there ahead of me, and he and his men, and Tipene and Maata, managed to pull Gabriel off Fiat before he could do anything more than slice him up a bit.”

“I can’t think of the last time Gabriel truly lost his temper,” Kaawa said as we reached the top of the stairs. We paused outside the door to my room. “How very unusual of him.”

I said nothing for a moment, remembering how Gabriel wielded a shadow sword against Baltic. “He really needs his sleep, but I guess there’s nothing for it but to wake him up.”

I had my hand on the door when Pál emerged at the far end of the hall. “There you are,” he said, coming up to us. “Drake wishes to see you.”

“Now?” I glanced at Kaawa’s watch. “I have to get Gabriel up for the sárkány. How’s Fiat, speaking of that?”

He made a face. “He healed.”

“Figures.”

“Drake said it was most urgent,” Pál urged.

I followed him down a flight of stairs to Aisling’s bedroom.

“—the most unreasonable, arrogant, stubborn dragon in the whole entire history of dragons—oh, May, thank god. A voice of sanity. Will you please tell this deranged wyvern I’ve married that it’s perfectly safe for me to ride in a car?”

Pál melted away, closing the door quietly after having delivered me to the room. I looked from an obviously distraught Aisling to Drake, standing stoic and silent in the middle of the room, his arms crossed, and over to Jim, who lay on a large dog bed set against the window, evidently playing with a handheld game device.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay out of Aisling’s way?” I asked it.

“Yeah, but she said I could stay in here so we could play our PSPs together. Ah, damn. You made me crash into Darth Vader. Now I have to start this level over again.”

A look in Drake’s eyes warned against the flip comment I was going to make about dragons being overprotective. Perhaps there was a reason he wanted Aisling at home other than general stubbornness. “I assume you’re peeved because he’s insisted you can’t go to the sárkány?”

“Bingo,” Jim said, looking up from its game console. “Give the girl a cigar.”

“I’m his damned mate,” she said, glaring at Drake, her hands on her hips. “He’s made sure I am dragged off to every other dragon event, but now he is being totally and completely unreasonable!”

“Bean said the baby had turned. You could go into labor at any moment,” Drake said, his eyes somewhat wary.

I bit back a smile. “Bean the midwife?”

Aisling nodded. “She’s a lovely person, really, but she’s admitted herself that she’s never dealt with a human having a dragon baby, and that the timeline is a bit off because of that. So there is no reason whatsoever I should not go to the sárkány.”

“You are not leaving the house,” Drake said firmly. She took a deep breath, obviously about ready to yell. He held up a hand to stop her, adding quickly, “Since it means so much to you to be there, and more importantly, since I am unwilling to leave you at this time, we will bring the sárkány to us.”

Aisling blinked at him a couple of times, her mouth ajar slightly. “You’re having it here?” she asked, clearly astounded.

I knew how she felt. A sárkány, so Gabriel had told me, was a formal meeting of wyverns, used to address issues of the gravest importance. They were sometimes volatile meetings, ones that could have deadly repercussions, such as the one that had been held when Baltic stormed in, his guns literally blazing.

“I thought it would please you,” Drake said smoothly.