“Gabriel!” I shouted, and flung myself into his arms as he ran forward to catch me.

Chapter Two

“I knew you’d find a way to get me out of Abaddon,” I said in between pressing kisses to Gabriel’s face. He was warm and solid, and the wonderful woodsy scent that seemed to cling to him wrapped itself around me, sinking into my pores like rain on a parched desert. “I knew you would understand what I couldn’t say in front of Magoth. I didn’t think it would take you quite this long to get me out, but given that I didn’t manage to extricate myself from Magoth’s grip, I can’t complain. Not when we’re together again.”

Gabriel’s bright silver eyes seemed to see through me to the depths of my soul, lighting up all the little dark corners, shining into me with a white-hot heat that immediately set my body alight. “Little bird, I am . . . why is your face green?”

“Oh.” I touched my cheek, picking off a piece of dried clay. “It’s a facial mask.”

“I see. I’m—”

Before he could finish the sentence, I was summarily yanked from his arms and spun through a sickening miasma of blackness that blossomed into red pain when I was dropped on a cold marble floor.

“Ow. What the—” I looked up from the floor, rubbing the part of my forehead where it had struck the marble. A little circle of green clay dust marked the spot. My heart shriveled into a minuscule ball of misery when I beheld the sight of a frowning Magoth, with Sally peering out from behind him.

“Who summoned you, May?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but Magoth was no fool. His gaze turned even blacker as I got to my feet and dusted off my pants. “You can stop looking daggers at me—or whatever hideous torture device you’d like to use—I don’t know who summoned me.” That was strictly the truth; I had no idea who the woman was who Gabriel had hired to summon me, but whoever she was, I wanted to sing her praises.

Magoth was not amused by my attempts at prevarication. “It was your dragon!”

“Gabriel was there, yes. But he didn’t summon me. Dragons can’t summon either minions or servants of dark lords, and since I’m considered one of the latter grou—”

Before the word left my lips, I was jerked back through the fabric of time and being, and deposited back in a familiar room.

“Mayling!”

“Hello again. Um . . . am I here to stay this time?” I asked as Gabriel pulled me into his arms. “I sure hope I am, because that look in your eyes really makes me want to . . .”

A gentle cough alerted me to the fact that we had an audience.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, May, facial mask and all,” a woman said, and I turned in Gabriel’s arms to smile at Aisling. She stood leaning against her husband, a dark-haired, green-eyed wyvern named Drake.