CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I saw his face when I dreamed. A ceaseless and brutal reminder of what he’d taken. Of what I now fought for. Of every last thing I would avenge, even if I had to burn the world to ash to do it.
My fingers slapped into a thick, warm puddle of gore as the broken bone settled back into my shoulder.
I bucked and choked on my scream at the line of agony that seared through my back.
Griffon crouched over me, his gaze tracking the tunnels that led off around us.
I twined my oily fingers around his ankle and dragged myself onto my stomach.
I braced my forehead against the stone and inched my knees up under me. The five bodies strewn around us swam in my vision once I was upright. I swallowed the bile that surged up my throat and cradled my arm.
Griffon squeezed his eyes shut, a growl snaking past his clenched teeth before he fell into Flesh. He shuffled to the wall and collapsed against it, his hands laying limp at his sides.
“I am not having a good week,” I muttered and rubbed my temples as I tried to piece together the past minutes. My cheeks heated at the memory of straddling him. “How many times did I attack you?”
His chuckle was drenched with exhaustion. “Only a few.” He dragged a finger off the ground and pointed at my shoulder. “It’s good you were able to shift. It will heal much faster.”
I all but crawled over and crumpled beside him, my teeth clenched to keep from screaming. “What?” I managed. “The almighty gargoyles heal faster as insignificant, temporary humans?” I cringed and bit my lip, not meaning to hurl those particular words at him.
Another wave of agony rolled through my shoulder, and my skull connected with the wall. Once it passed, I rotated my head to find him staring at my neck.
“Stone is too rigid to heal well,” he said quietly. “Its unwillingness to bend is the very thing that keeps it broken.”
I wasn’t sure we were talking about my shoulder anymore. I cleared my throat. “If there’s more, I think I’m done for.” My eyes fell shut. “I’m so tired.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Haven’t slept much the last few days, either.”
“Too busy throttling people?” Shit. Why did I keep bringing that up?
I opened my eyes to his hand falling into his lap, like those fingers had been aiming for my throat before he thought better of it. His eyes were still glued to it, though.
“I’d hoped it was an awful, vivid nightmare. I wasn’t myself that night. Most of it is a blur.” His eyes rose to mine and his fingers brushed his own throat. “But not this. This, I remember with disturbing clarity.” He shook his head and his fingers fell away. “Forgive me.”
I swallowed hard, his admission lodging a brick in my throat. I forced a half-strangled snort. “Seemed perfectly in character to me.” But I couldn’t force a shred of conviction into the words. Or keep my eyes from slipping to that horrific burn on his chest again.
Griffon ignored me and laid his hand flat against his thigh.
Smoke cavorted in his palm until the twisting strands carved a lily out of the darkness.
The petals shifted and writhed in a hypnotic dance that sucked at my mind like a moth to flame.
I ran my fingers over a petal, expecting it to be solid like his whips, but they sank through the ethereal image and trailed along his open palm.
I jerked my hand back, but not before I felt the shudder that ran up his arm.
“My smoke used to be flames,” he said, the words barely above a whisper. “Like yours.”
My gaze darted from the flower up to his face. His expression was guarded, exhaustion bracketing his drooping eyes and tight lips. “What happened?”
He met my stare and snapped his palm shut, the lily evaporating in a cloud of black mist. “Really, really terrible fucking decisions is what happened.” He shoved off the ground and offered me his hand.
I stared at it for a second, then took it with my good one.
He hauled me to my feet. “You good?” His voice was rough, his eyes trailing over my body.
I wasn’t sure I was, but it wasn’t because of my shoulder anymore; that had dulled to an awful-but-manageable ache. I nodded anyways and rubbed at my burning eyes. “Give me a dagger.”
His narrowed. “Why?”
I cocked a hip and tried to cross my arms, but pain speared through my back.
I settled for one slung across my abdomen.
“Ever use up enough magic to piss off your entire body? It’s like making your lungs go without air.
” I rolled my eyes at the smug look on his face.
“You might be graced with unlimited smoke to blow up everyone’s ass, but my magic has a limit before it starts hurting.
And everything already hurts bad enough as it is. So, give me a damned blade.”
“Already burnt out?” he teased.
“No,” I huffed. “Not even close. But I’m exhausted, and I’d prefer to conserve as much magic as possible since we don’t know what’s waiting for us up there.
” I tossed a finger up the tunnel and rubbed at my eyes again.
They just wanted to close. “I really have to turn up the heat to kill these damned things. It takes more out of me than normal.”
“I recall. And not unlimited, for the record. Only a fraction of my power is left.” His voice was tight, but he unsheathed a dagger and held it up by its tip.
“This isn’t like that toothpick you had at Dray’s.
This is gargoyle steel that is specifically made to kill da’kai.
” He leaned into me, his face only inches away.
“Stick it in my back, and you and I are going to have problems.”
I plucked it out of his grasp. “We already have problems. But don’t you think if I had immediate plans to kill you, I’d have done it already?” I flicked a tiny glob of fire at his scabbed-over chest. He watched as it bounced off and plopped to the ground, where it sputtered and died.
“I’m not sure I’d burn as easily as you think, Little Ember.” His tone darkened in a way that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Don’t call me that.”
He tapped his chin. “Perhaps Wildfire, instead?”
“How about you stick with the formerly descriptive ‘human,’ and stop giving me stupid fucking nicknames.”
“No, you’re right. Little Ember is definitely better.”
I pointed in the general direction we’d been headed for the past hour. “Go. Before I change my mind about torching you.”
He didn’t budge. “Can you shift? If we run into more?” Worry crept into his gaze and a crease formed between his brows.
“Sure.”
The crease deepened. “We’re not invincible, Lydia. It has probably always seemed that way because human weapons can’t hurt us in Stone, but the da’kai are made of the same stuff we are. A direct blow will still go straight through you.”
“Why do you care?” I snapped. “Just go!”
His jaw clenched, but he mercifully left. I sucked in a long, slow breath, and ran to catch him.
He led me through another convoluted series of passages. The shrieks and moans we’d heard from the forest slowly suffused the cavern until they echoed off the walls. We rounded a corner and came upon a narrow passage that ended in an archway. Its doors were thrown wide.
“Shit,” Griffon spat. He shifted, his wings stretching the length of the passage before they tucked in tight to his back.
He turned back to me. “Shift if you can. Hide if you can’t.
” His stare bored into me. “I know you said you don’t hide behind anyone.
But you won’t last a minute if you don’t. Okay?”
I nodded, a sheen of sweat breaking out on my palms. He lingered for a few beats of my raging heart, and then he was gone.
I raked my palms down my pants and reached for the monster that had taken up residence in my mind. It opened a slumbering eye.
I recoiled as every instinct screamed that, if I embraced that beast again, I would lose myself in a maze with no exit.
I shoved it back into the corner it had claimed.
“Well, I’ll be damned if I just hide,” I muttered.
I gripped Griffon’s dagger so hard my knuckles turned white and darted through the doors.
The courtyard was an uncoordinated melee of steel and magic that illuminated slashing claws and teeth. A gargoyle slammed into a pillar beside me and I threw up my arms against a shower of chipped rock and dust. A da’kai pounced and sunk its spurred fingers into the male’s abdomen.
He howled and I darted forward, driving the dagger into that soft spot beneath the da’kai’s chin that Griffon favored. The beast didn’t even have time to screech. I tugged the dagger free before I lost it in its toppling body.
My fingers shook as I jammed the blade in the waistband of my pants and gripped the gargoyle under his arms. I dragged him back into the shadows of the covered walkway.
He shifted and curled into himself, his moan swallowed by the utter chaos surrounding us.
I spared him one last glance; either he’d live or he wouldn’t, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
I tucked behind another pillar and drank in the carnage as I tried to make sense of it. Griffon’s voice pierced the mayhem in my head—If there’s more, and they somehow get the portcullis up and the gate open? Falcos will fall.
My perception shifted and the battle raging before me slipped into a coordinated dance.
Every gargoyle who wasn’t firing arrow after arrow into the horde trying to scale the walls outside had their back to the gate.
Every hunk of obsidian fought towards it, gaining inch by bloody inch on those painting the field crimson to keep them at bay.
The low roars of the da’kai rumbled through my boots, the cries of dying gargoyles raking over my ears like those brutal spurs that tore through flesh and bone.
My darting gaze landed on the gate and a shadow that peeled away from the melee. “Godsdamnit,” I cursed, and sprinted down the walkway.
The da’kai reached the gatehouse and a second joined it. Together, they rammed their shoulders into the heavy iron door. It shuddered beneath the force of the blow.