CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Yes. Yes, I could keep learning how to control my magic. I could learn and use it to make things right. Perhaps the councilman had words worth considering, too. I nodded.
“Stop!” Griffon called from behind me. “Lydia, stop!”
I kept running, down the road and into the waiting darkness, every slice of pain through my lungs burning the raging thoughts out of my skull.
I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t think. Wouldn’t surrender an inch to the horrible truth that loomed at my back, claws out and fangs poised to feast on whatever shred of me was left in its wake.
Griffon’s hand closed over my shoulder and he spun me around.
I sucked down buckets of air, my vision turning black at the edges.
He grunted as I wildly flung my fists into any part of him I could reach.
I needed to move. Flee. Couldn’t stand here and talk or listen to his bullshit. But he didn’t let me go.
“Lydia, stop.” His grip tightened. “Just stop!”
The sharpness in his tone finally snagged my attention.
I caught my fist a hairsbreadth before it slammed into the brutal wound I’d given him.
The fresh blood smeared over the side of my hand said enough about where I’d been hitting him.
The fight left me with a sharp exhale, and I stood panting in his grasp.
His hands fell back to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so damned sorry I was too late to stop you. This is why we train for years. But you didn’t have years. Do you understand what I’m saying? You didn’t have years.”
“No, but I had a choice,” I choked out. “And I chose to believe Davina was lying. I chose to run!”
The agony in his gaze ran deeper than the physical pain that still had his body drawn taut as a bowstring.
“You can’t undo it,” he spat, his hands fisting at his sides.
Even through the wild stampede that trampled my mind to dust, I registered that the anger in his voice wasn’t directed at me.
“You can never undo the shit that hurts the worst.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I could still try. Still had time to set the thousand fuck-ups of the past fifteen years right. I would make this right. Somehow.
Griffon’s coarse fingers slipped around my wrist, and I let him pull me into the trees.
When we reached a small break between the towering trunks, he gently pushed down on my shoulder, and I sank to the ground.
I stared at a rock jutting from the ground in front of me, counting the pebbled grains on its surface in the dim light.
A horde of insects screamed at the heavens.
My eye twitched at the constant drone, so loud it was like the entirety of insect hell rested on my shoulders.
I clamped my shaking hands over my ears. “Why are the bugs so loud?” I ground out.
He glanced up at me from where he gathered wood, wincing as he leaned over to snatch up a stick.
“Because your first shift unlocked your birthright. Sharper senses, even in Flesh. The ability to heal. You’re faster.
Stronger. Have more endurance. You’ll get used to it.
” He dumped his armload of kindling and sticks in front of me and toed them into a pile.
His gaze slid to mine, one of his brows cocking.
Are you stable enough to light it, or are you going to make me do that, too?
I glowered at him and flicked my finger. “Fire is easy. And it never betrays me.” I pursed my lips. “Except with Dane. He was on the wrong end of a mutiny.”
I could have sworn there was a smile somewhere under all that pain. “Who was he?”
“The leader of the Shadows.”
Griffon settled across from me and slung the bag from his back. He tossed me my clothes and armor, and all I could do was stare at them. “I left all the shit you bought, but figured you’d want those.”
Two words I never thought I’d say to him hovered on the tip of my tongue. They suffered a swift death on my lips when I looked up at him.
He peeled his ruined cloak and tunic off his body and dropped them at the edge of the fire, laying his torso bare. “So, what did you learn from him? Dane?” His muscles rippled under his bronzed skin, the fire throwing shadows over the hard ridges and sculpted valleys of his body.
But it was what I’d done to him that I couldn’t tear my eyes from. “Why are you here? Did Davina order you to find me?”
He slowly shook his head. “No. I left Falcos before she could.”
“Then why?” I flung my hand toward his wrecked body. “You could have left me to suffer the consequences of whatever I did.” My gaze rose to his, my brow knitting together. “But you didn’t.”
He’d been staring at me, but his focus shifted to the hole in his arm the moment my eyes met his. Mine followed. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for all the humans you would have left in shreds.”
My gaze jumped to my lap. Right. Because why else? I wouldn’t have bothered to piss on him if he were on fire, let alone actually help. Why would he?
“Fucking fate,” he muttered.
I peeked up as his hand raked through his hair.
He once again dragged his gaze over and pinned me with dark, guarded eyes. His jaw ticked as he stared at me. “And because I know what it’s like to lose myself to Stone,” he ground out. “And the oath-cursed regret that comes with it.”
And damn if that wasn’t even worse than his utter dismissal.
I cleared my throat and busied my hands with folding my clothes in my lap. “Dane told me he thought the job came from someone on the council,” I said, answering his earlier question. “Midnight chose an inconvenient moment to strike. I didn’t get to ask who.”
He only nodded, not so much as a flicker of surprise crossing his face. Silence descended on our hasty camp.
The barmaid’s smiling face hovered in my mind. She had served me lunch. I was certain she had been the one to deliver the gown. Perhaps she had even picked it out.
That sweet smile morphed into terror, and shifted again until it was Jamie Tablor’s blank face staring back at me. What had been my excuse for killing her? I hadn’t been a raging beast with no control over my own mind then. Or wa—
“What memory do you use?” I blurted. “To anchor?”
Griffon’s breath hitched.
“I’m not trying to pry. I just need to hear something happy.” I slammed a wall up against the panic hovering at the fringes of my mind.
Griffon was still as a statue as he stared at me, the dark-brown starbursts in his eyes gobbled up by his blown pupils. “It’s simple, really.”
For a second I thought that was all he would say. But the tightness in his jaw vanished, and his shoulders relaxed a fraction.
“It’s just me and my mother.”
I closed my eyes and drank in the sound of his deep voice.
“Talking, by the hearth in my room. It was a few weeks before she died.”
“What were you talking about?”
A pause. “Love.”
My eyes popped open. “What about it?”
A small smile softened the hard lines of his face.
The stubble that shadowed his cheeks was almost enough to distract from the dark circles smudged beneath his eyes.
“I was arguing all the ways it can break you. She defended it as the pinnacle of happiness.” He toyed with a rip in the knee of his trousers.
“But mostly, she wanted me to know how much she hoped I would find what she never did.”
I cocked my head at that. “So, she and your father…?”
He shrugged. “He was wild and unpredictable. She was a gentle pragmatist. I think in the beginning, it was how different they were that drew them together. She brought him back when he or his ideas got out of hand. He made her feel alive. But after decades…?” That careless, lopsided shrug again.
“Well, he was too aggressive and she was just too soft.”
I took a deep, steadying breath, and finally said those two words. “Thank you. For sharing.” I cleared my throat. “And for—everything else.” They didn’t taste quite as bitter as I’d expected.
He jerked his chin. “I’m sorry. Again. For being too late.” His attention darted all over but carefully danced around me. “Your path was…” He huffed out a breath and shook his head. “Erratic. And I lost your trail once it reached the town.”
I glanced skyward, blinking to keep rogue tears trapped behind my lids.
“That little drunken trek and a fucking trove of other shit are your fault. But everything that happened here wasn’t.
” After a moment, I whispered, “I’m not looking forward to what awaits in my dreams.” I hated how flimsy my voice sounded.
“We can keep going. If you want.”
All I could do was nod.
Griffon dug another shirt and cloak out of his bag and stood from his little patch of forest. A swift kick flung dirt over the fire and threw us into darkness. “It’s always worst at night.”