“I still have my heart?”

“Yes. It was pierced, but it’s healed now.”

“The dragon shard?” I touched my chest, worried.

“Is still in you. For now.”

“Magoth?”

“Successfully banished.”

I relaxed. “And my silver-eyed wyvern?”

“Still madly in love with you. How do you feel?”

“All right. A bit woozy.” I let him help me up into a sitting position on the dining table that had served, I gathered, as a makeshift operating table. I glanced down at the ruined tunic, gently fingering the gaping hole on the front where the embroidered dragon’s head had been. “He ruined my dragon.”

“That dragon can be replaced,” Gabriel said with pointed emphasis as I got to my feet. He had an arm around my waist, holding on to me while I waited to see if my legs were going to cooperate. “You lost quite a bit of blood, but we got the dagger out and the wound sealed as quickly as possible.”

I swayed into him, and whispered very quietly,“I know I was taken from you, but if you had plans to sweep me off my feet and take me up to the bedroom—”

He stopped me with a quick, hot kiss, his eyes twinkling and his dimples blaring as he said just as softly, “The standard rules do not apply when the mate in question has been injured. At least, not for an hour or two.”

“Deal,” I said, warming up nicely by the look in his eyes.

“May, I cannot believe that you didn’t tell Magoth I had his powers,” Cyrene said, her hands on her hips as Gabriel escorted me over to a chair.

Aisling murmured something about juice and cookies, but thankfully, the glass Gabriel handed me was filled with the spicy red dragon’s-blood wine that I knew would do more to restore me than juice ever could.

“I didn’t tell him because I knew he would have exactly the same reaction as he did, and I wanted to avoid being forced to banish him to the Akasha,” I said when I could speak again. I eyed the glass of wine. It had coursed through me with the subtlety of a bulldozer, filling me with fire. I waited until the scorched feeling in my esophagus faded before adding, “Luckily, he can only do so once every half-year. Besides, I thought you’d have enough sense to keep from mentioning it in front of him.”

“Sense,” Kostya said, snorting. “She has no sense.”

Cyrene turned on him. “I’m not done with you! You still have to say it!”

“Sit down,” Kostya growled, and his two models closed in on Cy. She spun around and gave them such a warning look they backed off a couple of steps.

“Are they still at it?” I asked Gabriel, rubbing my face on his tunic for a moment as I breathed in the wonderfully woodsy scent of him.

His hand was warm on the back of my neck. “They haven’t stopped.”

“We did so,” Cyrene said, interrupting herself to snap at Gabriel. “We stopped while Nora summoned May, and then while you pulled the dagger out of her chest. But we have unfinished business, and I insist that it be taken care of before the meeting is started.”

“Our business has nothing to do with the weyr,” Kostya growled.

“It does, and you know it. You’re just in denial, but I’m done humoring you. I know you were tormented and tortured and held prisoner for decades, but you’re free now, and it’s time to move on, emotionally speaking. It’s time to admit your feelings.” Cyrene looked mean enough to arm-wrestle a grizzly. “If you don’t say it now, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what?” he asked, nose to nose with her now, and honestly, I didn’t know what to think. “You’ll smite me?”

Cyrene straightened up, her back as stiff as a broom handle. “I will leave you.”

Kostya began to turn away, obviously dismissing her threat.

“Really leave you. Forever.”

He froze, and I knew then that it wasn’t what she said that stopped him, but the way she said it. The pain in her voice came from her heart. I was a bit surprised—Cyrene had fallen in and out of love with regularity over the century I’d known her, but her heart had never really been touched. Until now, it seemed . . . and with Kostya of all people.

Kostya’s expression grew blacker and blacker until I thought he was going to burst. And then he did. “Fine! You want me to admit it? You want me to bare my soul to you? I love you, you deranged water twit! I accept you as my mate! Are you happy now?”

The echoes of Kostya’s declaration faded softly away as we all stared in disbelief at the two people standing in the center of the room.

“Can he do that?” I whispered to Gabriel. “Accept her as a mate if she’s not one?”

“Yes,” he said, taking me by surprise again. “She is not a dragon’s mate, but he has accepted her as a substitute. It is binding. I am curious that he has chosen to do so in front of so many witnesses, however. That gives your twin status in the eyes of the weyr.”

“That’s not really the action of a man who is so intent on destroying the sept or weyr,” I pointed out, eyeing Cyrene as she flung herself on Kostya and started kissing him all over his face.

“On the contrary,” he said, gesturing to Tipene, who pulled a chair next to his at the table. He helped me back up to my feet—a gesture I found oddly touching—and took my hand to lead me to the table. “It could be a very clever strategy, given the power she bears.”

“Cy would no more use the dark power against anyone than I would,” I said gently, rubbing his hand against my cheek for a moment. Although the memory of my few minutes spent in the Akasha was fading, a few tendrils of despair still remained, making me infinitely thankful for Gabriel. “Less, really, since she doesn’t have a dragon shard trying to make her do all sorts of inciting things.”

He said nothing to that, but I knew he wasn’t convinced, nor was he entirely easy with the idea of Cyrene now being given formal status.

As for Kostya, he suffered Cyrene’s enthusiastic embrace for a few seconds, then said something in her ear that had her standing at his side in a reasonable facsimile of a person in control of her wild emotions.

The room was cleared of nondragons, with the exception of mates, mate substitutes, and demons in shaggy-dog form. Aisling evidently felt sorry for silencing Jim.