CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“You sent for me?” I asked Bellan. For once, I was grateful my latest attempt to drown myself in booze—this time for my twentieth birthday—had been as ineffective as all the others. The last thing I needed was to show up to his summons hung over.
He glanced up at me. “Do you still wish to help deal with the Solstice mess?”
I leapt out of Griffon’s arms the second his feet touched the ground and sprinted up the steps. My hands were steady as I flung the doors wide. “Davina!” I screamed, my voice shredding the silence that blanketed Falcos. “Davina!”
Seconds trickled by, what felt like a dozen beats of my flailing heart marking the passage of each. My gaze was pinned on the branched staircase, my fingernails tearing into my palms.
After an eternity, the ancient female appeared at the top of the stairs, the hem of a deep-emerald nightgown pooled around her feet. I could feel other pairs of eyes lurking in the darkness around the hall, my cry summoning them like rats to a corpse.
“What happened on Solstice?” I demanded.
Davina’s gaze hardened but I plowed on, taking an involuntary step toward her.
“Griffon didn’t kill my family.” The words tasted like honey, coating my tongue in a sweetness that made my belly clench.
But lurking beneath it was something bitter; a deep, soul-crushing dread of what she was about to say.
I swallowed hard. “I need you to tell me who did.”
“Are you certain you are ready to hear the truth?” she asked. “There will be no going back, once you know.”
“Yes,” I gasped. That dread uncoiled and crushed my gut with an iron grip. “I have to know.”
The Archon studied me for a long moment, then sighed.
She suddenly looked tired, a hint of her ancient age seeping through her carefully crafted mask.
“It was Omri Bellan. He had your family killed. He had Beckham’s family killed.
He murdered everyone on the council who was loyal to Thayer and he made us look responsible before he slaughtered us. ”
Dread gave way to horror and my knees struck the cold, dark stone. “No,” I moaned, the word a pathetic mewl. I searched her face, but found only sincerity. “The accounts say that every gargoyle shifted the moment that arrow struck Thayer. Like you all knew it was coming.”
Davina shook her head. “To everyone watching, we killed your leader, shifted to fight, and fought to kill. But to us…?” She started down the stairs toward me.
Her gown trailed behind her, the emerald stark against the black runner.
“We watched that arrow strike and knew we weren’t responsible.
We shifted to protect ourselves, and we fought to survive. ”
“But Bellan was shot!” I countered. “I remember the hole in his shoulder when he finally found me in that house!”
“Yes. In his shoulder. Care to wager how many arrows missed gargoyle hearts in the split second after Thayer went down? Arrows tipped with our own steel?”
“What about Cyprian?” I scrambled for a familiar truth—any truth—to grasp.
But the Archon just glanced over my shoulder and shook her head. “Cyprian is not my story to tell.”
“Fine,” I ground out, my hands curling into fists at her evasion. “Are you certain? Absolutely certain it was…” My eyes popped wide. “His family,” I gasped. “His wife and baby were killed by da’kai. Years and years ago.”
She stopped in front of me, a pair of black slippers poking out from beneath the gown. Her chin dipped. “And we failed to save them. Only one of the reasons logic dictates it was him. But I do not have proof.”
She reached out a hand and I stared at it, the offering holding far more significance than a boost to my feet. Do you believe me? it asked. Do you accept that your entire life has been a lie?
I hesitated, but every fiber recognized the truth my soul had been seeking for fifteen years. I slipped my ghostly pale hand into her warm, onyx one.
She hauled me to my feet. “No one gained more,” she continued.
“He was Thayer’s chosen successor and gained control of your council.
He gained control of you, Privalt’s deadliest channeler, and a shrewd negotiator in Beckham.
What I have never been able to determine is how he first gained control of the da’kai. Such a thing should not be possible.”
Her eyes grew distant as I stared at her, my breath frozen in my lungs.
“I tried to find out, once. But that only ended in disaster.” She shook her head and shifted her gaze to mine. “We are bound by an oath to protect humans. And it is awfully difficult to win a war when you cannot fight back.”
“I know about the Pact,” I managed. “Griffon told me.” I swayed on my feet. “What the fuck has Bellan been doing the past fifteen years?”
Davina’s jaw set, her eyes flashing. “Waiting. Like us, the da’kai reproduce once a century.
But their young mature in half the time.
” Her mask slipped. “We largely missed our mating period. Bellan made sure of it. The da’kai did not.
We are at the greatest disadvantage we have been at since the creation of the Aegis Oath.
I don’t know what Bellan is planning, but we’re all about to find out.
The da’kai young are close enough to maturity that he could act at any moment.
” Her nostrils flared. “We aren’t ready for them. ”
The turmoil in my head coalesced into blinding hot rage. It flooded my system, Bellan’s betrayal latching its claws into my gut and twisting. He took me in after Solstice. Gave me a place to live after I’d burned mine to the ground. Gave my best friend a home. Instruction. A future.
Not out of generosity, as I’d always believed but to—to use us?
How many innocents had I murdered for him? How much worse had I made the gargoyles’ position, with the few he’d managed to capture and had me kill over the years?
And how much easier will I have made it for him, when he unleashed the da’kai horde to stain our land in endless night?
A wordless scream tore out of my throat. I whipped around and stalked to the door before the cry had finished echoing through the barren halls. Griffon leaned against the frame, his eyes plastered to me as I ran out into the night.
“Stop her.” Davina’s tone was conversational, but the order was clear.
I fled down the steps, searching for that monster that lived in me.
Griffon landed in front of me, his wings spanning the width of the staircase before he tucked them to his back.
I shouldered past him, barely breaking my stride.
The crunch of his boots in the snow behind me thundered through my skull, scattering my chaotic thoughts and concentration on the other. I spun toward him.
“Don’t make me stop you,” he pleaded. His eyes were drenched with a pity so thick it choked me. “You can’t.”
The tears cascading down my cheeks evaporated as my body ignited. The flames at my back coalesced into wings, the moons casting a gargoyle-shaped shadow at Griffon’s feet. “Yes, I can.”
He stepped toward me, his shaking hands held out. “And how many innocents would die? How many would you have to kill to get to him? His guards would protect him with their lives!”
“Then they deserve to die!” I yelled. “Bellan’s death would justify—”
“Bullshit,” he spat. “Getting revenge is never worth murdering innocents.”
“You can’t—”
“I can because I’ve done it!” he roared. He stood just beyond the flickering circle of light that surrounded me, his chest heaving and face contorted with a pain that stole my breath.
My flames sputtered and died. Another horrible truth fell over my mind, blanketing it like a fresh winter’s snow. Griffon squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to shift, his frame shuddering with the effort. His shoulders slumped, as though a thousand pounds rested there.
“You helped destroy Cyprian,” I breathed.
“I didn’t help,” he spat. “And I sure as fuck didn’t need any.”
I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth. “But the few who made it out—they said it was a dozen gargoyles.”
“No.” The word fell off his lips like ash. “I controlled an inferno every bit as devastating as yours. More so. And I used it to raze Cyprian to the ground after what humans did on Solstice.”
He raked his hand through his hair and roared, his cry tearing through the valley with the weight of every life he’d taken.
When he looked at me again his eyes were tortured, his skin rippling as his body tried to drag him back into Stone.
“I told you the consequence I suffered for breaking the Pact was losing my magic.”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“It was so much worse than that, Lydia. I lost everything. The full protection of the Pact. I’m just like those first gargoyles, fighting a curse that is slowly eating away at my mind.”
Fresh tears spilled down my cheeks. “When you shift,” I choked. “Stone is effortless, but Flesh…” It was painfully obvious, now, how much he struggled. My fingers brushed my neck, my mind spiraling back to that night he’d nearly choked me. “I’d thought your control over the shift was impeccable.”
He barked a cold, dead laugh that tore through my chest like a blizzard.
“No. I was fighting with everything I had just to stay in Flesh. It is getting harder and harder. Stone calls to me. And it cries out for blood.” His voice broke and he staggered forward a step.
“I lose a little more of myself every day. Soon, I’ll be no better than the most feral da’kai. ”
I stumbled across the remaining distance between us, my heart tugging me to him. His hands closed around mine and I gripped them like he was falling. Like I was the anchor that could keep him from being swept away.
“So, you see?” he asked, voice barely a whisper.
His breath stirred the hair that had fallen in my face.
“We are two sides of the exact same coin. We both lost everything that oath-cursed day. Both so unable to breathe through the rage that it consumed us. The difference is, my fate is sealed with a city’s worth of blood, and the consequences of my rage will destroy me. But you still have a chance.”
“Lydia!”
Another voice lanced my consciousness, and my eyes tore off Griffon’s broken expression. Beck raced towards us, slipping on the ice as he ran for me.
“Lydia,” he gasped as he finally reached us.
“I went to your room. To tell you I’d…” He trailed off as his gaze swept over us, pausing on our interlocked fingers.
“I’d changed my…mind?” His accusing stare rose to my face.
He tried to push his way to me, but Griffon planted a palm on his chest and shoved him back. He hit the ice.
“Get away from her. You fucking knew for all I know,” Griffon snarled.
He put himself between me and Beck, blocking my view of him.
“Lydia, listen to me. You might not have a curse eating away at your mind, but your guilt is. I can see it, and it kills me because I know exactly how deep it cuts. If you do this—if you go slaughter innocents—you won’t survive it.
You will lose yourself as surely as I will.
And I can’t let you do that. You’ll have to kill me before I let you leave here. ”
My knees buckled under the mountain of grief that smothered me and I collapsed. He caught me and followed me to the ground, his hand stroking down the back of my head.
I buried my face in his chest and bellowed my sorrow into the windswept valley around us. I raged at Bellan’s betrayal, and wept for my slain family, and shattered under the weight of Griffon’s curse.
When I finally lifted my face from his tear-stained cloak, untold minutes or hours later, Beck was gone.