“And what did you surmise?” I asked cautiously. “We’re both wyvern’s mates!” She giggled. “Mayling, you’re breathing like a bulldog. Stop hackling up like I know you are; I’m not going to take your wyvern away from you. That’s the beauty of the situation—I have my own! I am clearly meant to be Kostya’s mate just like you’re meant to be Gabriel’s.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, Gabriel stood before me, a quizzical look on his face. “Problems?” he asked.

“Just Cyrene being Cyrene,” I said, putting my hand over the mouthpiece. “Can you give me a couple of minutes to try and talk some sense into her?”

He nodded. “Maata’s birthday is in two weeks. I’ll tell her she may have carte blanche in the store as her present.”

I glanced over to where his two guards stood leaning against a wall near the entrance, and nodded. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“I’ll tell Maata she has an hour, then,” he said with wink before wandering off.

Cyrene, who had continued with an lengthy line of reasoning why she was obviously the best person to be Kostya’s mate, drew up short when I interrupted her. “We can talk about the situation with Kostya later. I assume the trouble you referred to earlier is something to do with him? Have the other dragon septs said anything to you?”

“Oh.” Her voice, which had been its usual light, burbling self, flattened to a whisper. “No, that’s something else. May, it’s . . . oh, it’s horrible!”

“What?” I asked, my stomach tightening despite long decades of familiarity with the sort of trouble into which she could get herself. “Stop hemming and hawing, and just tell me. You know it’s always worse if you try to prepare me for it ahead of time.”

“I know, but this time it’s especially tricky. It’s . . . it’s Neptune.”

“Who?” I asked, startled.

“Neptune. You know, the head of all us water beings. He rules the sisterhood, not that we like to admit it, because, well, you know how some of the sisters are—they don’t like men very much, and Neptune has always been rather condescending toward us naiads, like we’re not valuable to the planet or something. As if! We do more work than any of the other elemental beings put together. Anyway.” She took a deep breath, her words having slowed down from their initial tumbling rush. “Neptune called me before him, and, May, it wasn’t pretty at all.”

“I have no doubt of that. How bad is it?”

“Bad. He stripped me!”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“You and your dirty mind. He stripped me of my title,” she wailed. “It was horrible!”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “For the love of all that’s . . . what exactly happened?”

Ten seconds of silence followed my question. “It’s my spring.”

“What about it?”

“I’ve been so busy with Kostya the last month, the spring . . . He was so very needy, you understand, I mean, seriously needy, and he took up vast amounts of my time and attention . . . and the spring . . . well, it just sort of . . . became tainted.”