Gabriel quickly recounted the events of the last day. I shifted uncomfortably when her gaze slipped to me as he told how I had misheard him, resulting in the phylactery being broken, and I had to resort to sitting on my hands when my fingers repeatedly ignited.

“That is all very interesting,” she said slowly, her gaze searching his face. “But you have not yet mentioned the most interesting part of all.”

Gabriel’s lips thinned. His knees burst into flame.

“Sorry,” I said, and focused hard on damping down the fire. It fizzled out to nothing.

“May is feeling the effects of the dragon shard,” he said as an explanation. “Hence the mating marks. As you can see, she is still learning to control the fire.”

“Yes, yes, I understand that—it was such with Ysolde, when she became the Avignon Phylactery—but that is not what I mean, and you know it. Tell me about this dragon who could walk in the Dreaming.”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. “I believe it is as you think. I do not understand how he could survive, and yet the proof is before us.”

“Bah,” she said, making a dismissive gesture as she poured herself a cup of thick black coffee and took one of the canvas chairs. “Resurrection is not difficult. It can be done. But for a dragon to walk in the Dreaming, to be able to interact in there . . .” She shook her head. “That is truly a feat I had not thought possible. You are certain he started to take the phylactery from you, wintiki?”

I nodded.

“Then Baltic must have been resurrected by someone very special indeed,” she said thoughtfully, her gaze on the fire.

“But that’s unlikely, isn’t it?” I asked.

Gabriel’s nod was slow in coming. “The signs point to it, and yet it seems to me impossible.”

“I agree it fits with everything that’s happened lately,” I said, pausing to pick my way through my conflicting thoughts. “Or does it? I could swear that the man who was in the shadow world with me was genuinely surprised to see the phylactery, and he tried to take it from me. If you suppose it was Baltic back from the dead, as I assume you must from everything that’s happened, why would he have given Kostya the phylactery if he wanted it for himself?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel admitted. “It doesn’t seem to make sense, and yet, I have felt for the last few decades that something was not right in the weyr. There was a disturbance, a faint ripple of something that should not have been there.”