CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Flames burst from my palms and scorched the stones beneath me. Bellan glanced pointedly at my feet.
“And that is why. You may have learned to control your magic, Lydia, but you have no control over yourself. A sloppy channeler is of no use to me.” His gaze dropped to the paper in his hands. Dismissal.
“Training?” Beck demanded. “Training for what?”
Not a word! I mouthed at Griffon, then crossed my arms and leaned against the opposite side of the frame. “You’ve got to be joking. You were just whipped, you fool.”
He shrugged, the barest hint of a wince twisting his lips at the movement. “I’ve had worse.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know from experience you’ve got to be dying for a bath,” I aimed over my shoulder at Beck, but kept my gaze pinned on Griffon. “Which room is his?”
Griffon glared at Beck. “Preferably none of them. Otherwise, I don’t give a shit.”
I snatched Beck’s hand and dragged him into the hall. His expression was utter bewilderment as I all but shoved him into the room beside mine. “I have to take care of this. Just rest. I’ll be back later and I’ll explain everything. Okay?”
Beck’s eyes grew wary as he glanced between me and the gargoyle I could feel looming at my back. There was so much fear—an ocean of it—stirring in his eyes. “Sure. Yeah, of course.” He scratched the tip of his nose with his left hand. Are you okay?
I fiddled with my left earlobe. Yes. “I’ll see you later.”
He folded his arms across his chest, then rubbed his thumb over his chin. Liar. “Okay. I’ll be waiting for you.” As he closed the door he mumbled, “Not like I’ve got a godsdamned choice anymore.”
I whipped back to Griffon. “You and your bitch archon could knock it off with the thinly veiled bullshit!” I hissed.
He shrugged and stalked off down the hall. “He seems—”
I stepped back into my room and slammed the door in his face, my fingers fiddling with the annuleaf as I glanced around. “It doesn’t have to be novel,” I muttered. “They trust me. Enough.”
After another sweep of the room, I shrugged and tossed it into the back of a drawer in the bathroom. Griffon was fuming in the hall when I tugged the door back open, his hands braced on the frame.
“You were saying?” I asked sweetly.
His dark eyes slid to mine. “Particularly weak,” he ground out. “Even for a human.” He pushed off the door and vanished.
I scoffed and darted after him. “Beck is not weak. Trust me.” It was with no small amount of ire that I had to jog to keep pace with his long strides.
Griffon glanced back. “I meant up here.” He tapped his forehead.
I glared at him. “Interesting accusation, coming from a male who tried to kill me when I said the same exact thing about his mind.” He stopped abruptly and I darted to the side to keep from running into him.
“I’m sure that had nothing to do with the fact that I struck a nerve.
” I raised my brows, daring him to deny it. Or assault me again.
He leaned into my space, but I crossed my arms and held my ground. “I had a momentary, minuscule loss of control.” He held his fingers a fraction of an inch apart. “From not sleeping. Because of you. Not what I assume to be a chronic personality flaw.” He jerked upright and marched down the hall.
“Hey! You know nothing about him!” I yelled, my temper lengthening my strides enough to keep up with him. “You met him all of thirty minutes ago! What in the four moons gives you a right to judge him?”
“Because when you ask a male where his loyalties lie and he doesn’t have an answer, that is a problem. That is weakness.”
“He did answer! And he pledged his loyalty to me! That is fu—”
Griffon rounded on me again. “He should have immediately pledged his loyalty to you!” His eyes darkened, his shoulders tense as he stared me down.
“I’ve watched that boy place himself as the man in your life for years.
” He jabbed a finger back down the hall.
“And that makes his allegiance to you. There should have only been one possible answer to the Archon’s question! ”
My insides stumbled into a circus routine.
I seized my anger and stoked it into a wildfire to blot out my visceral reaction to his words.
“Beck has no responsibility to me,” I growled.
“He is not my husband. We are not together. He is my friend, and friends do not owe one another a godsdamned oath of fealty!”
Griffon’s brows shot into the waves that had fallen over his forehead. His shoulders bobbed with a chuckle. “Friends. Right.”
I gritted my teeth. “Friends who benefit from mutual attraction and no romantic attachments, sure, but still just friends.”
A corner of his lip tugged up. “You are even stupider than I thought if you think he only views you as a friend. And that makes his hesitation unacceptable.”
“That is just damned ridiculous.” I stalked around the corner and into the training room at the end of the hall. A cold sweat broke out across my brow at the memory of the last time I’d been in this room.
I pivoted once I reached the middle and folded my arms, my foot rapping against the stone as I waited.
My heart skipped a beat as he strutted inside and kicked the door shut behind him.
Communication between my head and heart was so muddled I wasn’t sure if it trembled out of fear or something else entirely.
“Do you have any more stupid shit to spew, or can we just get this over with?” I demanded.
“My point was made.”
“My ass, it was,” I muttered.
Griffon locked the door and tucked the key into his pocket.
“Aren’t we past locking the damned door?”
“I don’t need you rampaging through Falcos if you lose your mind, Little Ember.”
My eyes narrowed to slits. “If you insist on calling me that, you’re Soot. You know, the sludge that’s left after the fire is gone?” I cocked my hip and a brow.
He burst out laughing and I openly stared as light flooded his features. “That is the most tragically accurate thing anyone has ever called me.” He was still chuckling as he meandered to the table across the room.
My anger evaporated, but my own laugh died in my throat. I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the box of Lakuro he fiddled with as I watched him, his brutalized back twitching beneath his shirt with every movement of his arms.
I chewed my bottom lip. “I’m not sure why you did it, but thank you for taking my lashes.”
He shrugged. “It was my doing. You didn’t deserve to suffer for it.”
He snicked the lid of the box shut and I grasped for anything to stall him. The too-crisp memory of the cracking whip brought forth images of his own smoky tendrils.
“What happened to your fire, anyways?” I blurted. “‘Really bad decisions,’ you said?”
His fingers stilled and he slowly glanced at me over his shoulder. His jaw flexed, working on words I wasn’t sure he would say. I’d definitely crossed a line.
“You know the story Archon Davina told you about the Rift?” he finally asked. “How even those gifted with magic didn’t ‘escape the curse totally unscathed,’ as she so lightly put it?”
My brows scrunched. “That was thousands of years ago. What could it possibly have to do with you?” Curiosity exploded in my chest despite myself.
“Everything.” He said it so quietly I nearly missed it.
He fully pivoted and leaned back against the table, his arms folding across his chest and eyes cast toward his boots.
“They didn’t escape at all. Not really. They could still shift, yes, but Stone’s pull was relentless.
They fought it for a time, but it took constant effort.
Eventually, they could barely resist it at all. It drove them to something desperate.”
I stood rooted, barely daring to breathe for fear he would stop talking.
His eyes found mine. “I don’t know if it’s god, fate, or something I can’t even fathom, but there is a force in this world.
One that has a say in what happens with us mortals and deigns to intervene, on occasion.
And above all, it wants balance.” He huffed out a heavy sigh.
“There was no balance in what happened. Once the gargoyles trapped in Stone went mad, they began to massacre the ones stuck in Flesh. And there was absolutely nothing they could do to fight back. So, those who retained their ability to shift somehow…bargained with it? They would protect the humans, in exchange for protection against the curse. That was acceptable, and the Aegis Oath was born. We just call it the Oath, or the Pact.”
Sorrow had slowly strangled that flash of joy as he spoke, and I couldn’t look away from his bowed shoulders and drooping eyes. “Alexei said that harming a human has terrible consequences,” I breathed.
He cleared his throat and turned his back on me. “Right. I broke the Pact and lost my magic.” He snorted. “Ended up with soot instead. End of story.”
Every instinct roared that that was absolutely not the end of the story, but louder was every broken and confused piece of me that needed to know why he’d done what he had on Solstice.
It just didn’t make sense anymore. I had watched him sacrifice himself and be kind.
Had caught glimpses of a male who was godsdamned heroic, for fuck’s sake.
I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what was going to come out of it, but he asked, “What about you?”
I snapped my mouth shut. “What do you mean, what about me? I’m not bound by the Oath.” I froze, my eyes popping wide. “Oh gods. Or am I?” I’d killed that girl. In the alley. Every other thought fled my mind.
I flung my hands out in front of me. Pure, orange fire licked across my palms and up my wrists. A pent-up breath punched out of my lungs and I sagged with relief. Days, I reminded myself. That had been days ago. My gaze darted back to Griffon.
He glanced at me over his shoulder, a sad smile tugging at the corner of his lips, before returning to whatever he was fiddling with on the table. “I don’t think you are. You were born to humans, not gargoyles. Somehow, that makes a difference. I meant, tell me something about you. It’s only fair.”
Jamie Tablor’s face cavorted behind my lids, shifting between the innocent girl I’d killed and the vengeful spirit from Lakuro. My fire guttered, my empty palms falling back to my sides.
“I killed a teenage girl.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. My gaze plummeted to the ground.
He twisted back toward me. “You don’t mean the girl from the tavern,” he said, the words measured.
I snorted and dropped my face into my palms. That was what I’d become.
Someone with more than one such death on her ledger.
“No. Another. I used her to get information out of her parents—about you, actually. Someone told Bellan that they were working with you and knew where you were. When they wouldn’t talk, I dragged a blade across her throat like I was opening a fucking letter, instead of some girl’s jugular. ”
I lowered my hands and stared at them. So much blood stained these hands.
Layer after layer, until they were buried under a coating so thick they would never come clean.
“And then I killed the wife. And then the father.” I forced my gaze back to him.
“And the worst part? They literally couldn’t have told me where you were.
It was all a lie. Just a setup to force me to Dray’s.
” I slammed my eyes shut and tilted my head back.
“I’m surprised you didn’t already know. What with the stalking. ”
His chuckle released a bit of the tension in my shoulders.
“It was more keeping tabs on. Though I did stalk you to Dray’s, out of curiosity.
For what it’s worth, I’m glad I did.” He fell quiet, and I dropped my chin to find him staring at me, those enchanting eyes seeing way more than they should. “Do you enjoy killing?”
I swallowed hard. “No.”
“Do you need it to feel like you have some power? Or that you’re in control of something?”
“No!”
He pinned me with his scorching gaze and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t escape. Couldn’t protect myself from the truth he saw in me.
“Then why do you keep doing it?”
Something inside me snapped. “Because I have to make that fucking day right!” I yelled. “And the only way I can do that is if I slaughter everyone responsible for it!” My heart rate went from calm to a firestorm in the space of a breath and I dropped into a crouch, shoving my head between my knees.
I surged to my feet just as quickly and darted for the door.
The knob didn’t so much as budge beneath my shaking hand.
Panic blossomed in my chest as I raised burning eyes to Griffon.
“I know I need to practice controlling this thing inside me. I’m not shirking my duty, or whatever the fuck you’re going to accuse me of. But I can’t do it right now.”
“Lydia—”
“Let me out Griffon! Or I’ll burn it down!”
He held up his hands. “Alright. Here.”
He tossed me the key and I jammed it toward the lock, but my shaking fingers missed. I steadied my wrist enough to guide it in, then threw the door wide and fled.