CHAPTER SIX #2
I couldn’t help the wide smile that spread across my face. “Wasn’t deemed worthy of flames, I see. Only their waste?”
A shadow passed over his face, but just as quickly slid into bored indifference. “If worthiness had anything to do with magic, you’d be as barren as a wasteland.”
The truth in those words wiped the smile clean off my face.
The solid tendril writhed for a heartbeat before dissolving into a gossamer cloud that shimmered, then faded to nothing. The glass tumbled to the ground and shattered, showering my boots with tiny shards of glass.
“Well, that’s just great,” I muttered as I sent them skittering across the floor.
“Let’s go.” He turned to stalk out of the room, but I made no move to follow. A few seconds later, he reappeared around the corner, his jaw clenched and eyes flashing.
“Where?”
“A training room.”
“Why?” I ground out.
He raked a hand through his hair, sending loose curls tumbling over his forehead. “The Archon wishes for me to teach you Lakesh.”
I crossed my arms. “If you’re trying to make me beg for every answer you’re shit out of luck. I don’t care about any of this.”
His jaw clenched hard enough I might’ve heard a tooth crack. “Lakesh is a technique to use in Stone so you can try not to kill anyone in the first years after the shift.”
“You did not just say years,” I said, emphasizing the s. It took them years to learn control? I took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. I was not a Fade-cursed gargoyle.
“You can walk or I’ll drag you.” Threads of charcoal smoke snaked across the floor toward my ankles. “Mock my magic all you want, but it’s far better than what you currently have.” He leaned toward me, a smirk tipping his lips. “Which isn’t shit.”
I smiled sweetly at him. “Touch me with those dirty strings and I’ll carve your eyes out.” I stalked past him and into the hall, but not before I saw a challenge spark in said eyes.
“Wrong way,” he called from the opposite direction.
I sucked in a deep breath and swiveled around to follow him the other direction. I tried to note the turns he took, but damn if I didn’t end up hopelessly lost again by the time he finally veered into a room midway down a corridor I had no idea if I’d been down.
I stopped in the doorway of a dimly lit room, this one sparce even by the gargoyles’ standards. Its only trappings were a small table against the right wall and a thick mat laid out in the middle of the room.
Griffon stopped beside the mat and turned to me, a thin shirt clinging to the sculpted torso I pointedly ignored.
The soft winter sun painted him bronze and gilded every muscle that was tensed by his rigid posture as he stared me down.
Arawn’s statue, indeed. I matched every ounce of vitriol, my lip curling with distaste.
“The gargoyle mind is wild in the beginning,” he said. “Not logical or calculating, as Archon Davina mentioned, but instinctive and difficult to control. You’re already fucking feral, so practicing Lakesh now should be close enough.”
I pushed off the doorway and stalked into the room. “You haven’t seen half of fucking feral.”
A challenge still smoldered in his gaze, like he was daring me to try and make good on all my threats. “I think watching you flail around in those trees was close enough.” A thread of his power snaked past me and snicked the door shut.
My anger simmered hot enough to ignore the implications of that. “I suppose I should be grateful your archon has your petrified balls in a stranglehold,” I hissed.
His eyes narrowed.
“Had the roles been reversed, I would have ‘oopsed’ my way into being too late to save you.”
That cocky, infuriating grin stretched across his face. “I wouldn’t have needed saving.”
My teeth snapped together and I glared at him as he meandered over to the window on the far side of the room.
“Lakesh is a way to remember the human side of yourself. Until controlling the wildness of Stone becomes second nature, it will keep you in check.”
I ground my teeth to dust. “I did not come here to be instructed by you. And there isn’t a damned thing you could ever teach me. So how about we ignore each other for the next hour and call it good.”
He turned from the window, his jaw tight. “Most gargoyles spend years preparing for their first shift. You have days.”
“I’m not a godsdamned gargoyle.”
“I hope you’re right. Because in ten days it will be my pleasure to execute you.” There was a glint in his eyes as he strolled back toward me.
My instincts recognized that look. I tensed.
Cold steel kissed my neck. I glanced down at the blade that was one flippant thought from ending my miserable existence.
The flawless blade reflected my flushed skin, its hilt wrapped in a fist of writhing midnight.
I swallowed hard. The razor-thin edge bit, sending a trickle of blood trailing down my throat and into the neckline of my shirt.
My empty hands pumped open and closed at my sides.
“But when you are invariably wrong,” Griffon continued, his lazy strides carrying him in a wide circle around me and out of my sight, “your shift will be uncontrollable with no preparation. So, you’re going to stand there until I am satisfied you’ve given Lakesh your full attention.”
My stomach clenched at having him behind me, but I kept my eyes trained on a random stone in the wall and refused to give him the satisfaction of trying to look. Rage clogged my throat enough that I said nothing.
The tendril of smoke holding the dagger snaked around my neck until a thick band of his magic pressed against my skin. “Fight as long as you’d like. I can wait.”
He strolled back into view and leaned against the wall in front of me. His arms crossed over his chest, hiking the sleeve of his shirt up around the bicep that now blocked the stone I’d been staring at. I dragged my attention to his face.
My nails dug into my palms as I glared at him. As much as submitting made me want to scream, the satisfaction smeared all over his face at me standing like a trussed-up chicken set me on a course for eruption.
“Another second in this room with you is too long,” I ground out. “So just tell me how to get the hell out of it.”
A smidge of the pleasure slid off his face.
“Shame. I was rather enjoying the view.” He pushed off the wall and resumed his slow trek around me.
“Lakesh is the art of holding a memory in your mind, to the exclusion of all else. It will be your anchor when your entire being is flung into the middle of a storm-tossed sea.”
I snorted. “The gargoyles’ great secret to calm is thinking about a memory?”
“If anyone should know the power of a memory, human, it’s you.” His voice grew tight and as sharp as the blade he still held at my throat. “Your entire life has been defined by one.”
My nostrils flared. “You know nothing about me.”
“I know more than you think.” He stopped in front of me, his mahogany eyes boring into mine. “Pick a memory,” he demanded. “A positive one. Anything negative will only fuel the turmoil you’ll feel in Stone.”
“I don’t have any.” The thought of dredging up memories from before had bile shooting up the back of my throat.
“Bullshit. No one with no good memories of their family would dedicate their life to avenging them.”
“They’ve all been tainted,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “By the memory of you standing over their corpses!”
His eyes narrowed. “Then find a way to separate the two. Because this exercise is the only thing standing between you and madness!”
I leaned into the blade hard enough that a thick glob of hot blood seared a path down my neck. His magic peeled it out of my flesh.
“There is only one memory I will ever need.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Tell me, what was your dear mother—sorry, dead mother—like?”
I lunged for him, but the damned collar around my neck punched into my windpipe. “How dare you speak of her!” I screamed. “How dare you!” The sound that clawed up my throat as I lunged for him again wasn’t human. I tore at his magic but gained absolutely nothing.
“This is exactly why you need Lakesh!” he roared back. “What are you going to do when Stone takes over? How are you going to ground yourself when you can’t remember your own name!”
“I’m not a fucking stonetalon! And if I am, then all the better to slaughter every last one of you!”
His chest heaved as violently as mine, the fury that twisted his features a mirror to my own scorching-hot face. My magic screamed at me for not shoving annuleaf in my mouth before following him out of that room.
The door thudded against the wall and my head whipped toward the sound. The manacle vanished from around my neck, the dagger back in a sheath at Griffon’s side before I could even blink.
Laney and Alexei stood framed in the doorway, their gazes darting between the two of us.
“Uhhhh,” Laney said, her pretty face painted with concern. “We heard screaming. And decided to make sure you hadn’t killed each other.”
“Not yet,” I snapped. “I’m done with this shit.” I shouldered between them and stormed down the hall.