I turned away from it, trying to pull Drake’s fire to give me strength. I was a professional, dammit! I was a Guardian, not a prince, no matter what fate insisted. I was inherently a good person, and I would not walk the path of evil!

“I’ve told you before, Fiat,” Drake said slowly, his voice deep and rough with emotion. “Both Aisling and the sept are mine. I do not give up what I hold.”

“No? Perhaps this will help change your mind.”

Before I could blink, before I could draw in a breath, Fiat shoved the needle into me. Burning warmth filled my neck as he pushed down the plunger, injecting the fugu poison into my blood.

“No!” Drake roared, a horrible noise that broke two of the nearest windows. He leaped forward, but Dmitri was evidently expecting Fiat’s attack on me, for he threw himself at Drake, knocking both of them down at my feet. The green dragons swarmed forward but stopped when Fiat’s men hauled Drake to his feet, their guns pointing directly at his heart.

Fiat released me. I staggered a step, then collapsed, my mind numb with terror.

Use me, the dark power suggested.

I was tempted. Oh, so tempted. I didn’t want to be a vegetable. I didn’t want to lose Drake and Jim and Nora and everything life had to offer me. But before I could make a decision that would damn my soul for eternity, Fiat jerked me upward again. Drake snarled and lunged forward, hauling Fiat’s three men and Dmitri with him.

“Stop! Gabriel can draw out the poison!” Fiat yelled above Drake’s continued roars of fury. “But he will not do so unless you yield.”

I turned slowly to look at Gabriel. He stood a few feet away, his arms crossed, his face guarded.

“So much for being a mediator, eh, Gabriel?” I asked him.

His gaze held mine for a moment, then dropped. “There are things you do not understand, Aisling. If it helps, I genuinely regret you are caught up in this.”

“How easily the lies slip off your tongue.” I turned away from him, my stomach roiling at the thought that I had ever considered him a friend. No doubt it was Gabriel who had tried to kill me in Paris. Or perhaps it was a plan worked up between him and Fiat.

My breath caught short in my chest as I realized the sickness I felt was more than just Gabriel’s betrayal. I was physically sick as well... . The poison was beginning to work.

“There is still time,” Fiat said calmly, glancing at his watch.

He held me back with one hand, while it took three of Fiat’s men and Dmitri to keep Drake subdued. I glanced beyond them to where the green dragons had stopped. They were huddled together, clearly unwilling to risk their wyvern’s life. Tears pricked in my eyes at the thought that I wouldn’t get to know them.

“Gabriel can save her. All you need do is yield.”

Nausea hit me in the gut with the subtleness of a mule kick. I fell to my knees, dry heaving as my body racked with the need to purge itself.

“See how she suffers. The paralysis will begin to take effect on her lungs soon. She will struggle to breathe, but it will be no use. Her muscles will not allow her to draw in the so desperately needed oxygen. You have”—Fiat looked at his watch again—”approximately fifteen seconds before even Gabriel’s skills as a healer will be useless.”

Another wave of nausea hit me. My stomach cramped so bad, I thought I would pass out from the pain. I wiped my mouth and looked up to where Drake was held, tears blurring my eyes. I was having difficulty breathing, my lungs not seeming to hold any oxygen. I panted, trying desperately to get some air.

Drake’s green-eyed gaze held mine for a second.

“I love you,” I told him, jerking with the attempt to bring air into my lungs. “I always will. Dead or alive or in a coma, I will continue to love you.”

Drake’s hands fisted, his jaw tight. Fire burst up in a ring around him, but it didn’t faze any of the dragons present. I willed Drake to say the words I needed to hear, begged him with my eyes to acknowledge what was between us. He stared back at me, mute, and a little piece of my heart shattered.

I doubled over again, caught in an agony of vomiting, gasping painfully for air in between retches. This was it. My brain would die, but my body would go on, which meant Drake would continue to live.

Without me, my heart cried.

It doesn’t have to be that way, the dark power answered, and to my horror, I started to pull on it for strength.

“I yield.” Drake’s voice was hard and filled with agony of his own. “Gabriel, help her!”

Thick, fetid power flowed up from the ground, wrapping itself around my tortured form.

“Get her on her side. I will draw the poison before it disperses any further.” I was aware of Gabriel’s voice, of hands helping me, of the sharp sting on my neck and subsequent hot flow of blood, but it was the dark power that caught my attention and held it. I pulled harder on it, focusing it to push the poison back, keeping it from spreading. I knew there would be a price to pay for using it, but at that moment, closer to death than I ever had been, I was willing to take that chance.

My soul wept.

23

“She will survive. The poison hadn’t dissipated too much,” Gabriel’s voice said above my head.

I heard it but didn’t pay much attention to his words. I was too busy being stunned. There was no other word to describe my emotions but stunned, although stupefied, disbelieving, and flabbergasted weren’t far behind. As I lay on the ground, supported by Drake, my body gasping in great lungfuls of air, my brain stopped battling for a moment with the realization that I’d used dark power to save myself and pointed out the momentous event that had just happened.

Drake had given up his sept for me.

“Why?” The word croaked from my throat as I twisted my head to look up at him.

His eyes glittered hotly at me. “Why do you think?”

“Is this some sort of weird political move?” I couldn’t think of any other reason for Drake to willingly give up the sept. I knew he was attracted to me, I knew he would honor me as his mate for the rest of our lives together, and while I suspected his feelings for me were deeper than he was comfortable with, I was under no delusions as far as love went. I wasn’t absolutely certain Drake could love— as committed to the sept as he was, it was quite possible that it just wasn’t in his chemical makeup to be able to love both it and me.

“You are crying,” he said, touching my face. His fingertip was smeared red.