Chapter 21
Rikard
He claimed his usual spot at the end of the usual table, back against the tavern wall, and waited for his friends.
It had been weeks since the four of them had gathered here. He’d seen plenty of Lucan when he visited Carlijn, and occasionally met with Bastien and Drogan as their duties intersected. But they had not had a night all together in some time, and he was looking forward to it.
Lucan arrived first, dropping onto the bench opposite Rikard. His horns were polished to a gleam and capped in silver, and there was a semicircular mark on his neck.
Rikard squinted at it in disbelief. “Is that a mating bite?”
Lucan scoffed. “I’m not the mating type.”
“Sure looks like you let someone bite you.”
Lucan signaled the barkeep to bring them some wine, using the same motion to wave away Rikard’s concern. “Human teeth can’t break the skin. There’s no risk of forming a mate bond.”
“Carlijn?” He could not hide his surprise. “You know she’s betrothed to some human.”
Lucan laughed. “Perhaps you should remind her of that.”
Rikard frowned at him, but before he could deliver a lecture, Bastien arrived, ducking through the doorway. His long hair was tied back in the practical knot he wore for duty and he still wore his harness with the king’s crest, so he must have come straight from his post at the palace.
He sank onto his stool with a groan just as the barkeep arrived with their wineskin and goblets.
“Long shift?” Lucan asked, pouring cups for them all. It reflected well on Lucan, the wealthiest of their little group, that he could offer that kind of sympathy to Bastien, the lowest-ranking.
Bastien nodded, tugging the tie out of his hair so it fell loose around his shoulders. “The king held a banquet to celebrate the fae delegation’s arrival. Seventeen courses. I’ve been watching humans eat and drink for hours and hours.”
“Sounds diverting.” Lucan grimaced. Of course, he could not imagine doing something tedious for that long. Rikard, on the other hand, was more than familiar.
“How did you keep your eyes open?” he asked.
Bastien chuckled around the rim of his goblet. “It wasn’t that bad. I was stationed behind the queen, and she has a quick wit. The fae king sat beside her. He spent the entire banquet complimenting her, but every word had a double meaning. Most were meant for the king’s ears, not hers.”
Lucan leaned forward, interested in the gossip. “Like what?”
Bastien hummed as he tried to recall. “He admired her slender figure, saying it was unmarred by the rigors of childbearing. I know from overhearing other conversations that the queen very much wants a child, and the king is disappointed in her inability to provide him with an heir. The compliment was designed to damage her in the king’s eyes, but of course she had to accept it graciously. ”
A little worm of anger twisted in Rikard’s belly. He understood very well how that would feel. “How does the king know she is at fault and not him?”
“What king is ever at fault?” Bastien said wryly. Lucan laughed, but Rikard didn’t think it was funny.
“How could he let the fae king speak to her that way, knowing her private pain? I would never let someone treat Hanna that way.”
“She carries your child,” Lucan objected. “You might feel differently if she did not.”
He leveled his gaze at Lucan. “I assure you, I would not.”
Bastien sighed. “It’s complex. The king needs an heir and his queen is no longer young.
He fears for the future, and the fae king knows it.
He hopes to drive a wedge between them. It won’t work, though.
She’s too quick to fall for his trap. I hope the king values her wisdom too much to set her aside. ”
“Careful talking about a human like that around Drogan,” Lucan said, amused. “You’re starting to sound impressed.”
Bastien shrugged. “I am impressed. Last week, she devised a way to fund the southern wall repairs without raising taxes on the lower rings, when none of the king’s councilors could. It was some elegant accounting. Even the Zenith admired the strategy.”
Rikard raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Bastien to take so much interest in the humans he guarded. The guardian instinct ran deep in him, solidified by heartstone vow, but it had always been impersonal. This human queen had made quite an impression on him.
Before he could probe further, Drogan arrived. His long, straight horns scraped the low ceiling before he took his seat, nodding to all of them.
“You came,” Rikard said. His own bitterness surprised him. He was still resentful that Drogan hadn’t attended the wedding and had turned down all his invitations to visit the eyrie since. Of course, he knew why, but it still rankled.
Drogan’s lip curled as he poured his own wine and tossed it back, then refilled it. “I said I would.”
“I didn’t know if our company could keep your interest. It seems you often have more important things on your mind.”
Drogan’s jaw tightened. “Perhaps it’s that you have less important ones on yours. The moths say you now have two pet humans in your nest.”
Lucan guffawed, and even Rikard snorted. “Since when do you listen to moths?”
“Since they warned me of your depravity so I could avoid it.”
“You are the only one too high-tier to meet my mate.”
“You’re the only one low-tier enough to take a human to your bed,” Drogan shot back.
Rikard laughed, the wine loosening his tongue. “Look again at Lucan. Those aren’t a gargoyle’s teeth marking his neck.”
Lucan tugged his collar aside, laughing when Drogan’s eyes bugged out.
“Fallen gods, I didn’t mate her. It’s just a bit of fun.
I don’t know if it’s all human women or if I’m simply that talented, but Carlijn is insatiable.
She has twice the stamina of a gargoyle.
She’s relentless. I don’t think she sleeps.
I think she naps between rounds the way guards nap between watches. ”
Drogan looked ready to erupt, and frankly, Rikard was not too happy to hear Lucan speak so freely about Carlijn, either. He was supposed to keep his hands off her, let alone his cock.
Lucan, mistaking their silence for interest, set down his cup with theatrical gravity. “Last night, she—”
“Stop,” Rikard said. “Don’t say another word.”
Lucan blinked. “I hadn’t reached the good part.”
“Jealous that he seduced your plaything?” Drogan drawled viciously.
Rikard stared at the ceiling to keep his anger in check.
A few months ago, he’d have let Lucan’s boasting and Drogan’s jibe wash over him the way tavern noise washed over him.
Predictable performances by old friends.
But a few months ago, he hadn’t seen his wife’s face crumple when she talked about what had been taken from her so casually by one of their kind.
“There is no good part. Carlijn is a guest in my eyrie, and she is not a plaything,” he said evenly.
“She moved to the Tower to help my mate through her pregnancy, and she did it at a cost to her own standing. If you only see her as a diversion, end it now, before she invests more in you than you’re willing to repay. ”
The table went very quiet. Lucan’s theatrical posture dropped. “I didn’t realize you felt this strongly about her.”
“The moths were right,” Drogan muttered into his cup, fingers tightening around the goblet stem. His shoulders bunched like he was coiling to spring. Bastien clapped a hand on his shoulder to stop him, shooting Rikard a warning look.
“Now you know,” Rikard said to Lucan, aiming to smooth things over before their friendly reunion devolved into a tavern brawl. “We don’t need to discuss it further.”
“Thank the fallen gods,” Bastien muttered. “I’m not in the mood to break up a fight.”
Lucan shot him a cheeky grin. “Too bad. I had a whole monologue prepared about the weird human sounds she makes when—”
Drogan stood, his chair scraping against the stone floor with a sound that silenced the nearest tables. “I came tonight because I wanted to see if my friends were still in there somewhere. But clearly, they’re not.”
“Sit down, Drogan,” Bastien said, sighing heavily.
“Why? So I can hear more about Lucan’s plaything and Rikard’s precious little brood mare? Dragons burn the lot of them.”
It was Bastien, predictably, who steered them toward safer ground. “If you dislike the conversation, maybe you should provide a new topic. Are there any pleasant thoughts in that granite skull of yours, or should we order another round and brace for more bad humor?”
Drogan’s head jerked in a nod. “I’m leaving Solvantis for a fortnight,” he said. “élowen of the eighth tier has invited me to join in the hunting lands.”
Rikard remembered the name. élowen was the female his mother had paraded before him months ago.
“élowen.” Lucan whistled, low and appreciative. “The wing commander’s daughter? She’s from a good line. Her family’s hunting rights cover the best thermal corridors.”
“It will be a good hunt.”
Lucan grinned wickedly. “Tell me, Drogan. Is this a courtship, or are you going to pretend it’s about the deer?”
“It’s about the deer.”
Bastien grunted. “You could use a mate. It might improve your temperament.”
Drogan’s eyes narrowed. “My temperament is fine. I’m only wound tight because my friends have lost their honor and their good sense.”
“Or perhaps,” Lucan said, still grinning, “you’ve been wound tight because you haven’t gotten laid in longer than any of us. élowen has the wingspan and the stamina to solve that particular problem for you, though.”
Drogan stared at Lucan with a flat, unblinking stare. Rikard held his breath, and he could tell Bastien was calculating whether to intervene before they resorted to blows.
But when Drogan’s lips drew back from his teeth, it was into a smile. “She’ll be the one who benefits most,” he said. “I assure you.”
Lucan howled a laugh, and the tension at the table cracked like stone at dusk, livening into the old friendship they’d always shared.
They switched from wine to mead, and the four of them drank like they were young and whole and the war was something that happened to other gargoyles. Their hard feelings were chased away.
When Drogan left, he clasped arms with each of them, even Rikard.
“Hunt well,” Rikard told him.
“I will.” Drogan ducked out of the tavern, the sound of his wings snapping open reaching them through the open door.
Bastien followed shortly after, but Lucan lingered, nursing the last of his mead and watching Rikard with shrewd assessment, a smile playing on his lips. “Hm.”
“What?” Rikard demanded, well in his cups.
“For what it’s worth, Drogan is right. Your mate has changed you. You’re still miserable, but it’s a better class of miserable.”
“Get out. And stay the fuck out of Carlijn’s window.”
Lucan grinned his old grin, the one that had launched a thousand bad decisions, and departed with a flourish. Rikard sat alone at the table, lost in thought.
They were all changing. The war broke them in different places, and the breaks were healing in different ways.
The bond that had held them together since they were hatchlings was developing cracks as a result.
He truly wished his friends happiness, but it could no longer come at the expense of his own.