Chapter 32
Rikard
Ahalf dozen nights after the birth, Rikard roosted in the bedroom, watching Hannalinde sleep with the baby on her chest. Both of them were dreaming, and he could observe the ebb and flow of their imaginations through the bonds, his with Hanna and Hanna’s with Rosalore.
Their dreams were much the same tonight. Hanna was dreaming of rose petals and honey on her breakfast oats, and Rosalore dreamed of a moth fluttering above her mother’s soft breast.
A knock came at the door downstairs. Reluctantly, he left his roost to answer it, as the hour was late enough that all the human servants were asleep. He hated to disturb their well-earned rest, so he descended the stairs in a hurry.
He opened the door to find a gargoyle standing uneasily on the stone steps. Probably unused to touching the ground. He was barely more than a fledgling, with small horns and sandy-brown hide, but he wore the Tower insignia on his harness.
His eyes moved over Rikard with quick assessment, cataloging his scars and bound wings to confirm his identity. “Nadir. I’m here on the Zenith’s authority regarding a serious matter in the hunting lands. May I ask you a few questions?”
It had to be about Drogan. Knot in his stomach, Rikard held the door wide, inviting him in. “Of course. Though fair warning, the servants are asleep, so I have nothing to offer in the way of refreshment.”
“Not necessary.”
They sat in the receiving parlor. The guard produced a folded dispatch from the case at his hip and held it out, Zenith’s seal visible.
Rikard took it and slid a claw under the seal, breaking it so he could skim the document inside.
It was what he expected. A report about Drogan’s body being found, his identity confirmed.
His throat convulsed. “Drogan,” he said, and his voice contained all the shock of a gargoyle learning his childhood friend was dead. “When did it happen?”
“The body was discovered in a ravine two days ago by a returning hunting party. I understand you knew him well.”
He nodded. “We’ve been friends since we were hatchlings.”
The guard shifted on the human-scaled chair to relieve the pinch of his wings behind him.
“The Zenith has ordered a formal inquiry. I’m speaking to everyone in Drogan’s circle.
A formality in your case, Nadir, given your personal circumstances”—his eyes drifted to Rikard’s bound wings and tactfully away again—“but the record requires it.”
“Ask your questions.”
“Where were you six nights ago?”
“Here. My wife went into labor that evening. The birth was difficult.”
The guard nodded, scratching notes onto a wax tablet with a bone stylus. “And the nights preceding?”
“The Nadir’s office, tending to business. Home, tending to my mate.” The lies were comfortable. “If you need further confirmation of my alibi, I haven’t flown in five years. The masons can attest to my inability, should you doubt it.”
“Understood. As I said, this is only a formality.” The guard adjusted his harness and stood. “My condolences for the loss of your friend, Nadir. Drogan was a decorated veteran. The Tower mourns him.”
“As do I,” Rikard said heavily, and showed the guard out.
In the following days, the Zenith’s investigation moved swiftly.
Lucan was questioned next. He’d been camped with Drogan, alone.
He’d been the last to see Drogan alive. He hadn’t reported Drogan missing when he’d returned to camp and found it empty.
Rumors flew on moth wings and Lucan was arrested and thrown in the gaol to stand trial for his friend’s murder.
Rikard visited Lucan in a holding cell in one of the subterranean levels of the Tower, a windowless stone room with an iron-grated door and a roost that looked like it had never been scraped. Lucan perched on it, his curly hair unkempt and a wild look in his eyes.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said before anything else.
“I know.” Rikard sat on a stool the guards had provided, the bars between them. He’d asked for privacy, and the guards had granted it, because the Nadir’s authority carried some weight. “Why did you not report Drogan missing?”
Lucan gave a frustrated growl, tail lashing against the roost. “I thought he was off whoring! He didn’t report me missing while I was fucking my way through the brothel, did he?”
“What do the investigators say to that?”
“They don’t believe me. The moths have been carrying some mixed-up story of our last few meetings at the tavern.
My relationship with Carlijn. His distaste for humans.
The Zenith’s investigators think I killed him over a female.
” Lucan laughed, but the sound was hollow, scraped clean of its usual music.
“Over a human. The irony is exquisite. Drogan would never touch one, and I just rid myself of one.” He gave a bitter laugh, and Rikard had to grit his teeth not to say anything about what Drogan had done to Hanna.
“I can provide you an alibi,” he offered instead.
Lucan looked up sharply. “You weren’t there. You couldn’t have been.”
“No. But I can say I sent you on a confidential errand for the Nadir’s office, and that is why you do not have an alibi for the time of Drogan’s death.” He held Lucan’s gaze. “But I have a condition.”
“Of course you do.” Lucan rolled his eyes. “Fine. What do you want from me? Coin?”
“Claim Carlijn as your mate. Acknowledge the child as yours.”
Lucan’s expression grew cold. “You’re blackmailing me?”
“I’m offering you a gift. Your freedom and your honor. One of them you’ve lost. The other is trapped in a cell. You can have both back, if you want them.”
“If I claim Carlijn, my parents will disown me. I’d lose everything. My family. My roost. My name.”
“You’ve already lost your name. The moths are calling you a murderer. Which reputation would you prefer: the gargoyle who killed his friend, or the gargoyle who loved a human woman enough to take her as a mate? Who loved his child enough to give it his name?”
Lucan rose from the roost. His wings flared in the confined space, the tips brushing both walls. For a moment, the old Lucan surfaced, the gargoyle who’d stood on tavern benches and sung ballads and charmed every female in a hundred-league radius with nothing but a grin and a well-timed compliment.
“No,” he said. “Find another way to save me, or don’t. But I won’t be blackmailed into a bond.”
Rikard stood, too. “If that is your choice.”
“No, it’s your choice. I didn’t kill Drogan. It’s an injustice that I’m imprisoned, and yet you dangle freedom like a prize instead of my right.”
“What about the right of your child to know its father?” Rikard pressed. “What about the injustice to its mother, who must now face life without a mate because of your reckless promises to her?”
Lucan turned his back on the door. It was answer enough.
The short trial concluded without a conviction. The evidence against Lucan was merely circumstantial. A broken neck could have come from a fall, from a hunting accident in rough terrain. Without a witness or a confession, murder could not be proven.
But suspicion was its own sentence. The moths talked, invitations were withdrawn, and Lucan’s family sent him away until they were certain the Tower’s attention had moved to the next scandal.
The tavern was quiet without him. Rikard sat at their old table with Bastien, two cups of mead between them and empty seats on either side.
“Perhaps we should have chosen better friends,” Bastien said after they’d been drinking in silence for some time. The bluntness was like him. No preamble, no diplomacy, just the observation laid flat on the table.
Rikard shrugged, feeling numb. “We were barely fledglings. So much has happened since then. We are all changed, for better or for worse.”
“I’m not.” Bastien grinned and tipped back his mead. “I’m the same old lump of stone I’ve always been. And Lucan…he has always been the way he is, too. He gets away with a lot of bad behavior because of his charm. I’m not surprised it finally caught up with him.”
Rikard raised his brow. “You think he killed Drogan?”
“Who knows. Drogan was so volatile that he could drive anyone to madness.”
The words landed close to home.
“We can’t unmake our choices,” Rikard said grimly. “Right or wrong.”
“We should speak of happier things. The moths say your child is thriving.”
“The moths are correct for once. And Hanna is thriving as a mother.” All her warnings that she might not love the child had proved needless, because she was as devoted a mother as any.
Bastien grinned at him. “How do you like fatherhood?”
Rikard couldn’t help the smile that cracked his face, pulled up at one corner by his scar. “It is…the best thing I’ve ever done. You should come meet Rosalore and introduce her to Uncle Bastien. You know I have no other brothers.”
“I would like that.” The earnestness in his voice was the same earnestness that had been there since they were hatchlings, the quality that made him the best of them. Bastien raised his cup. “To family.”
Rikard raised his. “To family.”