“That was the first time, when she tried to use the heart for her own purposes. The dragon heart is immensely powerful,” she answered, her dark eyes serious as she considered me. “It has the ability to destroy entire septs, child, possibly the entire weyr itself. The shards themselves contain much power, but they are nothing compared to the sum total. To wield such a thing is beyond most beings, dragon or otherwise. Ysolde meant well, but she did not have the ability to control the heart, and it recognized that fact, causing the first failure. But when she sought to re-form it for the purpose of ensuring the safety of all the shards—for by that time, the weyr was in disarray, with many septs close to complete annihilation—it allowed her to do so.”

“So you’re saying we need to repeat that? To bring together all the shards, re-form the dragon heart, then break it back up again into the individual shards and put them in nonhuman vessels?”

“It is the only way to separate the shard from your being,” she said, nodding.

I glanced at Gabriel, filled with hopeless dismay. “How am I supposed to do that? Ysolde was a dragon, wasn’t she? Is this dragon heart going to allow me to re-form it when I’m only your mate?”

“We have to try, Mayling,” he answered, his jaw tightening.

I nodded but said nothing. There was nothing else to say—either we succeeded in re-forming the dragon heart and separating it back into shards, or I’d be stuck being a vessel for the remainder of my days. There was Magoth to think about—he hadn’t been able to access any of my abilities thus far, but who knew whether the dragon shard would be accessible by him? I couldn’t risk giving him any more power than he had.

Given Magoth and the number of dragons out there who would literally kill to gain power over others, there was simply no other option.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

“Gabriel is nervous,” Maata said out of the blue the following day.

I stopped pacing back and forth across the small room to which we’d been shown. Outside the room, thousands of people passed through the Auckland airport, but inside it, noise was muffled to the point of being almost inaudible, as was the conversation I could see Gabriel holding with a couple of customs officials, one of whom had reservations about my (admittedly hastily forged) passport.

“I don’t blame him. I wish he’d just let me shadow to get through customs. There’s going to be hell to pay if they discover the passport isn’t genuine.”