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Kostya stared at him for a second, then sharpened his gaze into a glare and pointed it at his brother. “You told them where I was going?”

Drake shrugged one shoulder. “It concerns them.”

“They are not black dragons! The location of Baltic’s lair does not concern them!”

Kostya shook off Cyrene’s hand on his arm, and stormed over to his brother, clearly about to launch into yet another diatribe, but he remembered in time that he was watching his p’s and q’s. With an effort, he bit back what he was about to say, forcing a smile to his lips as he looked at Gabriel and me.

“It’s killing you to be nice to us, isn’t it?” I asked, leaning into Gabriel.

“Yes.”

Cyrene punched him in the arm.

His strained smile grew larger until I could see each and every one of his teeth. “No, of course it isn’t. I have realized the error of my intention to re-form the sept to its original glory, and have resigned myself to the fact that the si-silv—that you are happy on your own.”

“He can’t say it,” Jim said to me in a volume that was not at all sotto voce. “He was practicing last week, and he couldn’t actually get the words out.”

“Sil-ver,” Cyrene coached Kostya, giving his arm a squeeze. “Come on, punky, you said it on the plane. You can say it now. Sil-ver dragons.”

A shudder shook his body.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “If the comedy hour is over, perhaps Kostya could give us a few minutes to discuss the issue of the Modana Phylactery.”

“What is there to discuss?” Kostya asked, his eyes narrowing. “I agreed to let your mate use the shard to re-form the dragon heart if you supported my sept within the weyr. That was our agreement. You gave me your word. You cannot change the terms now.”

“I do not intend to do so. But I am curious as to whether or not you found the phylactery when you found the lair. Do you have it?” Gabriel asked, his lovely voice as smooth as oiled silk.

Kostya’s gaze slid to his brother for a second. “Not yet. But I will.”

“Which means you, too, found Dauva.”

Silence filled the room for a moment as Kostya absorbed Gabriel’s words. Smoke wisped out of Kostya’s nose as he took a step toward us. “I might have known you would try to violate the agreement.”

“I’ve done nothing of the kind,” Gabriel answered, his expression and voice pleasant, but beneath my hand, his muscles were tense. “I’m simply ensuring that we don’t have to wait years for you to get around to bringing the shard to May.”

Kostya looked like he was about to burst, but evidently he was more in control of his emotions than he had been in months past. “So you found the lair, as well?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“We know of its location, yes,” Gabriel said.

I decided a little defusing wouldn’t hurt the situation. “Gabriel’s agent didn’t enter the lair. He couldn’t. So if you’re worried about us running off with all sorts of black dragon goodies, you can relax. Not that Gabriel would, anyway. I assume there’s some sort of rule about wyverns stealing from other wyverns.”

Silence filled the room as Gabriel, Drake, and Kostya all looked away.

“You’re kidding me,” I said, noting that no one bothered to agree with me. “You guys steal from each other?”

Once again, they avoided my eye.

I raised an eyebrow at Drake. “Are you telling me that if you had the chance, you would take stuff from Gabriel’s lair?”

“The green dragons are particularly adept at . . . liberating . . . items,” Drake said, somewhat defensively, I thought.

I turned to Gabriel. “You’d steal something from Drake?”

“Drake is one of my oldest friends,” he said smoothly, taking my hand so he could rub his thumb over my knuckles. “Of course I wouldn’t steal from my friend.”

“Nor would I steal from him,” Drake said quickly, not to be outdone on the altruism front.

“I value his friendship over anything,” Gabriel said.

“It is unthinkable to imagine I could steal from him,” Drake agreed.

“Completely unthinkable.”

“Utterly out of the question.”

I eyed the two of them.

“Unless it was gold,” Drake admitted.

“Yes, of course. Gold is another thing entirely,” Gabriel said, nodding.