CHAPTER SEVEN
“Lyd,” Beck gasped, his arms closing around me. I stared at a tapestry of Arawn that hung on the wall behind him, my arms leaden at my sides. My entire family was with him now. And I would never see them again. I barely felt the weight of Beck’s embrace.
I stood hunched over the foot of the bed in my gaudy room, my fingers digging into the frame so hard my nails ached. My muscles were frozen between fishing the annuleaf from behind the wardrobe to hide again, or to pop it in my mouth and unleash myself on that arrogant prick.
The heavy thud, thud, thud of someone kicking my door resounded through the room. I slammed my eyes shut and drew a deep breath through my nose that burned like fire, after how long I’d been deep breathing in an attempt to quell my murderous temper.
“Fuck off!” I yelled, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Does your answer change if I said it’s just Laney?” her chipper voice called through the door. “And I have food?”
“Allies,” I muttered. “I need allies.” And my stomach did grumble at the word “food.” “Fuck…on?” I called.
“A little help?”
“Coming.” I dragged my hands down my face and darted in front of the mirror to knead my cheeks until I looked a little less homicidal.
I popped open the door and Laney traipsed inside, two giant plates of food in her hands.
“Speaking of fucking, that is one benefit you might enjoy with being a gargoyle,” she said brightly, dumping the plates onto the tables.
“Our mating period only comes around once a century, and we can’t get pregnant outside it.
The next time is eighty-five years from now, so that is time for a lot of good sex. ”
She procured a wine skin and a couple glasses from the deep pockets of her cloak and tossed herself into one of the chairs. A lock of her long, white-blond hair fell over her shoulder and into her food as she poured us each a glass of wine. She scowled at it and flung it back over her shoulder.
I collapsed into a chair across from her and picked at my food, despite my grumbling belly.
Beck’s honeyed eyes and easy smile popped into my head and brought with them a sweeping melancholy that burned right through my anger.
Did he think me dead? Missing? Or did he even know that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong?
“So, sex bad?” Laney asked. My head popped up to find her staring at me, her fork hovering halfway to her mouth. “Your mood just went from, ‘I want to kill someone,’ to, ‘I kind of want to die.’”
I snorted and scooped a forkful of potatoes into my mouth.
“No,” I said around the glob, “sex definitely good.” I moaned at the buttery taste, and Laney chuckled.
“Almost as good as these potatoes.” I sat back and savored the unexpected treat in my mouth.
“Mention of it made me miss someone, is all.”
“The other channeler? The sexy one with the neat brown hair that never looks like he’s just been fucked?”
I dropped my fork. “How in the Fade does everyone know so much about me?”
She pursed her lips, a clear “oops” written on her face.
“Your council keeps their thumb on the human channelers, but the Archon keeps an eye on the more powerful ones, too. She had particular interest in you, given the whole gargoyle thing.” She cocked her head.
“And the whole killing gargoyles thing, I suppose.”
My mouth plopped open. “She’s had me watched?”
Laney’s head wobbled from side to side as she considered the question. “More like casually observed. Not that I imagine you find that much better.”
“No!” I cried. “And who has done this casual observation?” My mouth snapped shut and I flung my finger toward the door. “Tell me not that asshole.”
Laney’s cringe confirmed it before she even spoke. “A few of us have taken over for him, on occasion.”
Alexei barged through the open door, lips slashed in a deep frown.
A second later, it became clear why. A stony-faced Griffon shoved his way in on his heels.
A damn flush crept up my throat, equal parts anger and embarrassment at the knowledge he had been following me around for the gods knew how long.
Alexei set his plate between me and Laney, but Griffon stalked over and jabbed another dart in my arm.
He left without saying a word. I glared daggers at his retreating back.
“Well, I came by to advocate for my kind, but I suspect he just torched my efforts.” Alexei ripped off a hunk of bread and shook his head at the door.
My hands balled into fists on the table. “Why does Davina insist on this?”
Laney shrugged and scooped a forkful of creamed corn off my plate. I shoved it toward her, no longer hungry. “Because she thinks the two of you can help each other. I tried to tell her it would only result in bloodshed.” She shrugged again. “But she insisted.”
“The only way he could help me is by dropping dead,” I spat. “And I have no interest in trying to help with whatever in the four moons is wrong with him.”
Laney sighed and pushed the plate away from her. “Maybe it’s just her hope that relations between our people can be healed. Someday. After all, if you and Griff can find a way to get along, then maybe the rest of us can, too.”
My gaze shifted between the two of them. “Your kind hates mine. I’ve never understood why you didn’t finish what you started. There are only a few of us capable of fighting back. And Solstice and Cyprian proved how easy it would be.”
Laney’s gaze dropped to her plate. “You’ve no idea what Solstice cost us, too.” She swallowed hard and looked back at me. “And we don’t want to kill humans. Even if we did, we couldn’t.”
I sat up a little straighter. “What do you mean?”
She made a noncommittal sound and shot Alexei a plea for help.
He set his fork aside and leaned back. “We just can’t,” he said. “It’s part of our history. We swore an oath to protect humans. To break it has terrible consequences.”
I slumped back into the chair. Lies. Just more lies. “Griffon said he would be the one to execute me when I fail to shift. If that’s true, why can he kill a human?”
They glanced at each other, a silent conversation passing between them.
Alexei’s gaze slid smoothly to mine. “That isn’t our story to tell. You’d have to ask him.”
“Well, that isn’t happening,” I muttered. “But I don’t have to ask, do I? It’s because he’s already killed humans.”
The glance they shared this time said it all.
My jaw clenched at the second blatant admission of what I already knew to be true.
But Laney’s words kept floating through my skull.
We don’t want to kill humans. Even if we did, we couldn’t.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t ignore the sincerity that had been scrawled across her face when she said them.
“See, look, I told you!” a high-pitched voice whispered from outside my room. “It’s her.”
“I don’t think so,” another—this one a boy— replied slowly. “She doesn’t look like a evil channeler.”
“I’m telling you, Aunt Laney said she’s the fire bitch from Vircann!”
I rolled my eyes and flipped over. Two startled gasps floated through the cracked-open door. It was an effort to bury my chuckle in the pillow.
“Your aunt didn’t actually send you here, did she?” one of my guards asked.
The girl yipped and her shoes squeaked against the stone as she spun around. “No, sir.” She sounded utterly dejected, and I had no doubt her head was hanging.
“Off with you,” the guard said.
Two sets of footsteps raced down the hall and my door quietly clicked shut.
I pushed myself upright and pivoted toward the door, my brow scrunching.
The gargoyle’s last mating period had been the same year as Solstice, making the youngest gargoyle in Falcos a bit over fourteen.
But those children had sounded much younger than that.
So…humans? Why was a human child calling Laney “aunt”?
I shoved the question aside and rubbed my eyes.
Sore spots dotted my torso from sleeping in my armor—or dozing while staring at the door, more like.
I’d considered wedging a chair under the knob, but what was the point, when Griffon’s grubby magic could snake under the door whenever he pleased?
Hell, the lock couldn’t even keep a nosy child out. I sighed and threw back the blankets.
By the time I’d tamed the frizzy mess on my head, been jabbed with ironweb by a pretty, quiet female, and gobbled down breakfast, my stomach was in knots.
I had all of eight days to find the truth of Solstice and get the hell out of Falcos.
The task was a behemoth of a thing, looming so large it blotted out what little hope I’d walked through those gates with.
No one had come for me yet. And I didn’t have time to wait for them. I tossed one, longing glance toward the portrait on the wall, sucked in a lung-full of air, and threw open the door.
The guards on the left looked slightly less like they had a collective stick shoved up their stony asses. I tucked my shoulders slightly, dropped my chin a fraction, and plastered my best approximation of “sweet and innocent” on my face.
I glided up to them and cupped my hands loosely in front of my body. “Would you two show me around? Falcos is incredible, but I’ve hardly seen any of it.”
“No,” one of the men said, his eyes brushing past me like I wasn’t there.
My jaw clenched. “Okay, look. I’ve already been stabbed.
I don’t have magic, and there are up to four of you and only one of me!
I want to see my pretty prison, not just sit here like a damned lapdog!
” And try to find someone who might let slip the details of Solstice.
Or lose my guards and find those records Davina had mentioned.
The guard’s unfriendly gaze finally settled on me. “You’re not going to sit there like a lapdog. That comparison is insulting. To the dog.”
My eyes narrowed.
“You’re going to sit there like a prisoner. As that is precisely what you are.”
“You fu—”
“Oh, come on boys.” Laney sauntered around the corner. “Let the girl have a little fun.”