CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I almost snorted at the absurdity of the question. Like five years could ever be enough to forget. Like I’d trained and schooled myself into a blank slate for nothing. “I do,” was my only response.
Bellan nodded. “I have spent the past years unraveling who played a role in the massacres, both here and Cyprian. Unfortunately, the stonetalons had human help. A lot of it. I have confirmed a few of the traitors beyond doubt. They are yours to deal with, if you wish.”
Griffon’s room was tucked away at the end of an unused corridor in the humans’ wing, the hall cold and utterly devoid of life. I glanced around the barren space, a chill coaxing gooseflesh to my arms. “Why is this not surprising,” I muttered.
I shook my head and pounded on the door, my foot tapping a staccato rhythm against the stone floor.
I absently rubbed my hands down my pants as I waited, still feeling the blood I hadn’t noticed until Griffon deposited me back in my room.
His blood. It hadn’t registered as I clung to him that the back of his shirt was soaked with it.
He cracked the door open. My demand that he follow me to the training room died on my lips. The kind of night he’d had was scrawled in the tightness around his lips and eyes. The horrors that danced just behind that lovely brown.
And he wasn’t wearing a shirt, a fact my too-quick glance downward still managed to burn into my awareness.
“Are you here to talk about it all?” His voice was wary. Guarded.
I cleared my throat. “Absolutely not. I’m here to do something about it.” I kept my eyes pinned on his equally alluring face.
His brow cocked. “Such as?”
“Train. You saved Bellan’s ass last night because, oddly, I don’t actually want to kill you anymore. But he’s dead, Griffon. Show me how to control this thing in me so I can kill him.”
Griffon’s jaw clenched, his eyes darkening as he stared at me. “Have you talked to him?”
I jerked back a step. “No. Do you want me to?” Stupid, stupid, stupid the way my heart clenched, thinking that he did.
“Hell no. I want him out of Falcos. But…” His throat bobbed like he was choking on his next words, and I couldn’t help the smile that tipped my lips. “He’s important to you. And you probably should.”
“Train first. Talk later.” I’d mulled over a hundred different things to say to Beck while pacing my room this morning, but none of them said, “I’m sorry for giving my mortal enemy the very thing you’d gotten on your knees and begged me for,” in quite the right way.
We’d fought plenty over the years—mostly rehashing the same shit over and over—but never like last night.
We’d never put that much distance between each other.
Distance I didn’t know how to wrestle back together, given the things I still hadn’t told him.
The smile that broke across Griffon’s face was brilliant. “That’s my girl.” He ducked back into the room and left me a little drunk on the threshold.
I peeked through the crack to find a room that was messy without being disgusting, his clothes thrown over the furniture and weapons littered across the floor.
He didn’t do it. Those four little words flooded my head and swept away every coherent thought for the thousandth time. My toes curled in my boots and I couldn’t keep a stupid grin from stretching my face.
Griffon’s bulk consumed the doorway and my attention. My eyes roved his bronzed skin and honed physique, fingers itching to follow. He didn’t do it. That infernal heat he stoked pooled in my belly, and I basked in the pleasure of what he did to my body.
His biceps tensed, the fabric of the shirt he had regrettably donned tightening around deliciously sculpted arms. Arms that had been wrapped around me multiple times in the past day. I bit my bottom lip.
He leaned into the doorframe, his forearm resting over my head. “Keep looking at me like that, and our next activity won’t be training.”
I managed to peel my eyes off the swell of his bicep and offer him an innocent smile.
“Perhaps you would just be the one getting a lesson.” He wouldn’t—anyone this gorgeous would have had a million opportunities.
And the gods knew how many years to practice.
“Wait.” My delinquent gaze snapped back to his face. “How old are you?”
He snorted. “Concerned about how old the cock you’re fantasizing about is?”
I neither confirmed nor denied.
A lazy smirk slid across his face. “A hundred and fifteen.”
I let out a little sigh of relief, but would it have mattered if he’d said a thousand and fifteen? My gaze slid to the hard lines of his chest, just visible through his shirt. No. No, it probably wouldn’t have. “And Laney and Alexei?”
“Two-fifteen.”
“Why do you and Laney seem to have so much sway with the Archon? You’re both so young.” Young. I almost laughed.
“She has an advisory council with a representative from every generation. Laney and I are both on it.” The mirth on his face sank like a rock. “At least for a little longer.”
I flung my finger toward a dagger half-concealed behind his back. “What is that for?” I asked, blurting the first change of subject that came to my lips. “I figured we’d go straight to messing with my head.”
He twirled the blade in his fingers and held it out to me hilt-first. Tears sprang to my eyes as my hand closed around my father’s dagger. I turned it over in my hands, marveling the polished hilt and sharpened blade.
“I would have given it back sooner, but with everything that’s happened…I forgot. I thought you might prefer to start with fighting before your head.”
He edged past me and started off down the hall. I hurried to keep up, but he slowed until I was walking a comfortable pace at his side.
I smiled into my boots. “I never thought I would see this again. Thank you.” My brows creased. “But I already know how to fight.”
“No,” he said, his tone measured. “You’re quick and scrappy as hell. But that damned fire has made it so you’ve never needed to know how to really fight. If you get hit with ironweb again, you need more than quick and scrappy.”
The image of me flailing through the woods at Dray’s flashed through my head and I groaned.
“Fair enough.” I studied his face, my thumbs itching to smooth away the dark circles beneath his eyes.
He looked so tired. Drained even, to a profound degree.
“Or maybe you should rest instead. I don’t want—”
“Don’t you dare start babying me, Little Ember,” he growled. “I’m no different than I was yesterday.”
“But everything is different,” I said quietly. “Now I know.”
“I don’t want your pity. It’s my own damned fault. I’ve accepted it.” I cocked my brow and he groaned. “Fine. I rage against it every day. Happy?”
“Not really,” I mumbled.
We turned into a gigantic training room, the floor covered in mats and walls peppered with an array of practice weapons. A couple dozen gargoyles were paired off, their grunts and groans rippling in a constant echo through the cavernous room.
They stopped sparring in a wave, every set of eyes turning to stare us down. A stream of muttering bounced back at me a hundred times over.
My jaw clenched. “That’s the frostiest reception I’ve had.”
Griffon’s attention bounced around the room before settling back on me.
“Yes well, gathered before you are the scum of gargoyle kind, so don’t be too disappointed,” he said, pitching his voice in a not-at-all-whisper that garnered us even more glares.
They collectively began to gather their things.
“And it isn’t just you they hate.” He gave a particularly gigantic gargoyle a shit-eating grin and rude gesture as he passed.
“We’re particularly not fond of that one.
” His tone was light, but I had a feeling Davina’s order was the only thing keeping that male’s knife out of my back.
I studied his thick stature and bald head. The sharp, cunning gaze that raked over us with an ocean of malice. “He doesn’t seem like someone willing to lay his life down for a measly human.”
A wry smile twisted Griffon’s lips. “Falcos isn’t as united in that as we’ve made people believe.”
Before I could press him on whatever the hell that meant, the lack of flailing bodies revealed Laney and Alexei still beating the fire out of each other in the far corner of the room, along with Charlise and a female I didn’t recognize.
Griffon cleared his throat, and Alexei glanced at him a split second before taking a shot straight to the face. I winced.
“Fucking Oath,” he hissed, and doubled over.
The look on Laney’s face was almost sorry. “Oh, it was just a little tap,” she said, fighting a smile. She gathered their bags and dragged her twin over to us. Charlise and her friend followed, both drenched with sweat but smiling.
Griffon prodded Alexei’s already-bruised cheek and followed him to a bench against the wall. I tore my gaze off his back and forced my attention to Laney.
She swept me up in a hug before I could protest. “You know everything?”
She set me back on my feet. I swallowed hard and nodded.
Her eyes swung toward Griffon. “And him?”
“He told me. All of it.”
Her mouth plopped open. “I don’t think he’s ever even talked about it. To tell you…” One of her brows pointedly cocked.
Something warm and fuzzy took up root in my heart and blossomed into a monstrosity in the space of one beat.
Laney nodded to the two women beside her. “You know Charlise. And this is Mirren.”
I waved to Mirren and offered her a small smile before giving Charlise a quick hug. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for fixing me after the battle. Everything hurt—and then it hurt more after you broke me—but then it didn’t.” I winked at her. “So, thank you.”
She chuckled. “Be more careful next time, yeah?”
“Not likely,” Laney muttered beside me.
“Alright,” Griffon called before I could answer.
I turned toward him and choked on air. He had swapped his shirt for training leathers that hugged his torso like a glove. The leather ended abruptly at his shoulders, leaving the rippling expanse of his arms bare.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
I snorted and folded my arms over my chest to keep my innards in all the right spots. What in the four moons was happening to me? “You know what I’ve got. And already deemed it a grand total of jack shit.”
He smirked. “I haven’t seen you fight without death hovering over our shoulders.” He curled a finger towards me, his eyes alight. “Get over here.”
My eyes narrowed at the challenge. I shucked off my cloak and prowled toward him, not bothering to hide my brazen exploration of his body, or the lust that hooded my eyes and slackened my lips. Once I was a few feet away from him, I dropped into a high crouch. My hands twitched at my sides.
“Perhaps I should shed some more clothes,” I said, my eyes tracking his hands and feet, waiting for the slightest twitch of his muscles. “So much skin is…distracting.”
His eyes darkened as he watched me. “Careful,” he said, so quietly that the others’ freakishly honed hearing wouldn’t pick it up. “I have a nasty habit of losing control of myself.” His smile was sinful. “I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions if you started undressing.”
“Perhaps I find your lack of control a bit…thrilling,” I drawled. I was playing with fire. Unfortunately for me, I’d always been a bit of a pyro. “And that flaming dagger is looking like the much less appealing option these days.” I glanced toward his breeches, then slowly drew my gaze up his body.
The fire in his eyes called to my own and a wave of heat fanned along my flesh, my breath hitching and mind latching onto every thread of this game we were playing.
His lips parted, but I remembered why we were on this mat in the first place.
I darted into his space and rammed my elbow into his gut.
His swinging arm soared over my head as I ducked under it and danced away.
He doubled over and groaned.
A smile stretched my face. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” I clicked my tongue. “The first rule of any fight is to not let your guard down,” I taunted him.
His head slowly pivoted to me. My pulse spiked and my stomach dropped at the look playing in his eyes.
“No,” he rumbled. He kicked his leg out and swept my legs out from under me. He followed me to the ground, his arm slipping under my back just before it hit the mat. He set me down. “The first rule is to never pick a fight you have no chance of winning.”
His face was mere inches above mine, his body pressed into all the right places.
I was already on fire, but I let enough heat escape that he could feel it through all the layers that separated us. “I could win this fight in a heartbeat. Soot.” The way it fell off my lips was anything but the challenge I’d intended.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, and I tugged my bottom lip between my teeth. His gaze grew even hotter.
“Uh, should we leave?” Laney’s voice sliced through those meager inches that separated us.
“No,” Griffon called back. “Just imparting an important lesson.”
“That I just have to get naked to bring you to your knees?” I whispered up at him.
“Oh, you would bring me to far more than just my knees.” He pushed himself up and grabbed my hands.
My head tipped back as he hauled me upright, my eyes falling back into my skull as I went.
“Go spar with Laney,” he said, taking a step back and raking his hand through his hair. “So I can evaluate from a…safer distance.”
I closed the paltry space he had put between us. “Afraid you’ll get burned?” I taunted.
His soft growl caressed my ears. “More like far too eager to.”
My words to Beck before I’d left Vircann echoed through my head. “I think I might have found something that burns hotter than hatred.” He didn’t do it. I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. Those four simple words liberated the lust I’d buried at Dray’s. The tidal wave of it was going to drown me.
I didn’t breathe as his fingers rose and twirled a loose strand of my hair between his fingers. “Are you trying to make me lay you out on this mat and fuck you?”
Every muscle clenched at those words. “And if I am?”
“Okay, really? We’re going to leave!”
Griffon’s head jerked to the side once, like he was trying to clear it, and his eyes finally left me. A tiny smidge of the heat burning me up dissipated as they did. I ran my sweaty hands down my pants and sucked in a wild breath.
Laney joined me on the mat, a shit-eating smirk stretched across her face. “I don’t know what the hell happened on that ice last night,” she said, “but damn do I want some of it.”
A laugh burst past my lips.
“Ready?” she asked.
Alexei and Mirren paired off beside us, a distinct smirk on both their lips. I took Griffon’s lead and shook out my lust-addled brain.
“Let’s go.” I dropped into a crouch.