CHAPTER TWENTY
I sat beside Beck, holding a fireball in my palm. It had taken a year to gain this paltry control. “Do you like living with Bellan?” I asked.
He didn’t answer and I looked over in time to see his shrug. The fireball vanished with my broken concentration.
“He comes home every night,” was Beck’s only reply.
“Ow.” I flinched as the tape measure dragged across a particularly tender spot. My bones had mostly healed overnight, with the help of Charlise’s magic. The wounds that littered my body, though, were still deep and tender.
Brynn gently patted a small patch of skin that had managed to escape the ordeal. “Sorry dear. They’re a bit hard to miss.”
I snorted. “Can’t argue that.”
Light flooded the seamstress’s bright and cluttered room, so unlike the rest of Falcos.
The flimsy shirt I wore while she took my measurements set my battered body on full display.
But it wasn’t the injuries I couldn’t stop glancing at in my reflection—it was the slightly elongated pupils that cleaved through my green irises like an inky scar.
Or the delicately pointed canines that poked just past my lips when I spoke.
Virtually unnoticeable, I knew, but the tiny flashes of white snagged my attention every time my lips parted.
Together, they were the inescapable proof of what I was. Even in Flesh, I couldn’t hide from it.
I dragged my eyes off my reflection and focused on the couch over my shoulder. “Laney?”
“Hmm?” she asked, glancing up from the book she was reading.
“How many gargoyles can channel? There was certainly magic being flung around in the courtyard during the battle, but not like I would have expected.”
She tilted her head to the ceiling. “I think most generations come out to something like one in ten or so? And most powers aren’t something that can kill a da’kai.”
My jaw plopped open at the paltry number. “Has that always been the case?”
She cringed and nodded.
“So, when that spell went wrong all those years ago…?”
“We lost ninety percent,” she confirmed. “There wasn’t a gargoyle who survived that didn’t lose most of their family to that damned curse. They either had to watch them lose their minds, or slowly begin to age and die.”
My eyes grew unfocused while Brynn bustled around me, wrapping the tape measure around my waist, then my hips and each thigh. I couldn’t imagine, watching someone I loved go mad…
“Is magic why you and that other channeler became friends? It is rare enough for a human to have magic, let alone two in the same city.”
A sad smile touched my lips at the mention of Beck. “No. We were friends long before our magic manifested.”
Laney sighed dramatically behind me. “Well, go on then, let’s hear the story of how two little kids grew into lovers.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes, but my lips still quirked at the memory of how awkward we had been.
“We were both just lonely, I guess. Lynnix wasn’t born yet, and Beck was an only child.
His parents were Councilman Thayer’s favorite diplomats and were always on a ship to one of the continents or the other.
He was seven and I was five when he wandered into my yard while I was playing with my dad. ”
Laney tucked her legs beneath her and set the book on a side table. “Didn’t either of you have other friends?”
My lips pursed at that. “Not really. He was…just a sad kid. Looking back now, I guess I’d say he was looking for direction and didn’t know where to find it, with his parents always gone. And I…” I snorted and shook my head. “I was not well liked by the other kids.”
She tried and failed to fully bury the quirk to her lips that screamed, “Why does that not surprise me?” I scowled at her reflection.
She held up her hands and cleared her throat. “Sorry. Why was that?” She almost got the words out with a straight face.
“Ugh,” I spat. “Not for any of the reasons you’re imagining, I’m sure.”
She cocked her brow and waited.
I cringed and covered my face with my hands.
“I was a little tyrant,” I said through my fingers, my voice muffled.
Brynn swatted my hands and I dropped them back to my sides and straightened my spine.
“I used to walk around with a handwritten rule book and reprimand other kids when I saw them break the rules.” I waggled my finger at the mirror and pitched my voice to a squeak.
“Hey! You’re not supposed to be doing that! ”
Laney burst out laughing. “Tell me you didn’t.”
I nodded and sighed. “I suppose Beck and I were inevitable. He needed someone to tell him what to do, and I was more than happy to oblige.”
Her nose crinkled. “Is he still like that?”
I shrugged. “He still follows Bellan around like a bit of a lost puppy, but he is better than he used to be. Found some confidence in his own moral compass and abilities.”
Laney again failed to hide the disgust that flashed across her too-open face.
“What does that look mean?” I said, a little sharper than intended.
“Nothing. Just that he seems a bit severe, your leader. And not the best mentor.”
My jaw clenched. “Can’t really blame him, given what put him in power to begin with.”
I was spared whatever bullshit answer she might have concocted by Griffon and Alexei trailing through the open door. Griffon had been gone when Laney woke me up and dragged me here but he must have slept, given the smooth skin under his eyes that no longer looked bruised by exhaustion.
The tightness around Alexei’s eyes and mouth evaporated at the sight of his sister. “Always happy to see you aren’t dead after going to that cursed place.”
She tipped an imaginary hat to him. “Tavin doesn’t stand a chance.” Her bright eyes slid to Griffon. “And I told you that coming with me is unnecessary.”
Griffon stared at the ground. His hands were in his pockets, but fisted so hard I could see them shaking through the fabric of his trousers.
Laney’s brow quirked. “Griff?” He didn’t even twitch. “Griffon!” she snapped.
His head jerked up. Unfocused eyes slid between the three of us, all staring at him. They sharpened as they settled on my see-through shirt. I raised my own brows and met his brazen stare.
“Hmm?” He ripped his attention to Laney.
“I said, Jezzie may have let slip that she was dying for an invitation to your bed.”
Griffon barked a laugh. “That I doubt.”
I snorted. “Why?” Three pairs of eyes shifted to me. I waggled my finger up and down his reflection. “Again. Not blind.”
Brynn slapped my hand down and started measuring from the base of my neck to midway down my shoulder blade.
“Again?” Alexei glanced between the two of us, a smirk spreading across his open, too-expressive face. “So, you’ve had this conversation before, then.”
Griffon’s full lips slid into a lazy grin. “Think flaming dagger,” he said to me, fully ignoring his friend. “Except somehow more…intense.”
I caught Laney’s gaping expression in the mirror. My lips pursed. “Smart girl,” I said, refusing to let my gaze drift back to Griffon’s reflection.
Brynn patted my shoulder. “I’m finished. I will have armor sent to your room first thing tomorrow. Give me a few days for the rest.”
“I don’t need to…you know, shift?” I cringed. “For you to measure where my wings are at?” My and wings were still two very strange words to string together.
“No. I’ve done this enough times to know where they will be.” Her ever-so-slightly wrinkled skin crinkled around her eyes as she smiled at me. I figured wrinkles meant she was pushing ten thousand.
My heavy sigh fluttered a piece of hair that had fallen in my face.
The future was endless. A yawning black pit with no bottom.
No promise of escape from the horrors life meted out like candies.
So many years and centuries stretched before me that I couldn’t comprehend their end.
A wave of dizziness dragged at my mind, and I stumbled off the little platform Brynn had measured me on.
Laney lurched for me, but I was on my ass before she could get off hers. I groaned and waved her off. My efforts to find my feet ceased at the sight of boots that weren’t by the door anymore. My gaze trailed upward.
Griffon smirked from where he stood halfway between me and Alexei, his hands sliding smoothly into his pockets. My stomach did something funny at his reaction.
“It appears you retained the floundering grace of a human,” he drawled.
I pointedly ignored my reaction. “Well, you embody the insufferable arrogance of a raging dick, but I refrained from announcing it to the room.”
Alexei choked on his own spit and devolved into a coughing fit in the doorway. That inexplicable spark that always lit Griffon’s eyes at our verbal sparring matches ignited. I couldn’t help but notice how it swept away the melancholy that’d had him in its grip when he walked in.
A wave of exhaustion washed over me, but I managed to toss him an obscene gesture and finish shoving my way upright. “I’m going to go sleep for another twenty-four hours.”
I picked up my worn cuirass that I’d brought with me.
Brynn had taken one look at the lowly, human-made gear I’d brought for her reference and crinkled her nose.
I couldn’t really blame her. The leather was flaking, the straps ragged and permanently curled up at the ends.
The buckles had once brought the armor to life when my fire danced on the polished silver.
Now, they were so dull and scratched they couldn’t toss the light of a bonfire, let alone a single flame.
I glanced between Brynn and the armor, then offered the potentially ancient seamstress a tired smile. “Thank you.”
A wastebin by the door caught my attention as I turned to leave. I dangled the armor over it, but my fingers spasmed as I tried to drop the relic and all its bad memories in the trash. I signed and trudged out the door.
I made it back to my room with only one wrong turn, my burning eyes cracked just wide enough to see where I was going. Something jangled as I opened the door.
A silver chain was looped around the knob.
My breaths were shallow as I plucked it up and dangled it in front of my face.
The bright-blue eyes of a phoenix stared back at me, dredging up more memories from the night before.
Of this bracelet resting in Griffon’s palm, just beside my head.
His intoxicating voice as he talked to me and led me back to myself.
I swallowed hard and drifted into the room.
My gaze fell to my hands, one clutching my past, the other…
what? My head jerked up. I stormed to the wardrobe and flung the armor into the back.
My gaze lingered on the phoenix for another shallow breath before I tossed it into the nightstand.
The sound of the drawer slamming shut was deafening in the silence.