Gabriel looked startled for an instant as well, but that expression vanished when he returned to his human form. He snatched up the dagger I’d dropped when I transformed, stalking toward Baltic, his head down, one side of his body held higher than the other, his eyes burning with mercurial fire. “She . . . is . . . mine,” he growled, and Baltic, staggering slightly, shook his head as if in disbelief.

“How can you know? It cannot be, and yet, this shadow blade is real. This is not over.”

The roar that followed shook the shadow world. “She is mine!”

Baltic said nothing in response to that, just backed into the shadows and disappeared.

Gabriel stood for a moment, panting with the effort that I knew it took him merely to keep conscious, before turning toward me.

“Little bird,” he said, and dropped to his knees.

I crawled over to him, noting with the same abstracted interest that my hands were no longer silver, but the normal freckled beige I expected.

“He’ll be back,” Gabriel said, gasping for air as I peeled back his shirt. “We have to get out of here.”

He held his left wrist with his right hand, pulling it close to his body to keep the limb from dropping off altogether. I gritted my teeth against the gruesome sight that was his shoulder, ripping off my shirt to bind his arm to his torso, ignoring the little sounds of pain that escaped him. “We must leave, mate.”

“We will,” I said, cradling him to me as the loss of blood caught up with him. His head lolled back against my shoulder. I held him tight, weeping hot, silent tears from the lingering emotions left by the dragon shard.

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-five

“How’s he feeling—good lord, May!”

A female voice pierced the haze that so often accompanies exhausted sleep. I pushed myself out of it, sitting upright, momentarily confused about where I was.

Aisling stood on the other side of the bed upon which I was lying, a startled expression on her face.

I followed her gaze to my hand, which had been resting on Gabriel’s chest. It was covered in silver scales, the scarlet claws in stark relief against his skin.

“Wow. Half dragon, half girl. That’s gotta be a moneymaker if you set up a webcam,” Jim said, peering over the bed at me.

Panic gripped me as I tried to force the dragon part of me back. If I was starting to shift while sleeping, could it be long before the dragon shard took me over completely?

“Do not distress yourself,” Gabriel said softly to me. “Relax, little bird. Take your time. Do not force the change.”