CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
My back straightened. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”
I sank lower into the tub, the hot water gods-sent for my sore muscles. If only I could drown my brain in something as soothing. After four sessions of Lakuro in just over twenty-four hours, there was no end of misery for it to dwell on.
I sucked in a breath and flipped over, my hair splayed across the water’s surface like a halo as I floated. Fourteen minutes. Three more sessions and I’d only shaved off a minute.
Maybe if I stayed under water for fourteen minutes it would be enough to flush the crimson stains out of my mind. My lungs began to burn, but I stayed floating, my fingers itching to shove myself back toward the air.
Hands clamped over my shoulders. I gasped and sucked a mouthful of water straight into my lungs before they dragged me above the surface. I sputtered through the hair plastered over my nose and mouth and all but hacked a lung at Beck’s feet.
“What the—” I devolved into another coughing fit that felt like it relocated something important. “What the fuck!” I finally managed.
Beck took two quick steps to the side, his hands clamped behind his neck, then pivoted and stomped back the other way. “I came to talk to you and I saw…I thought…” He slumped to his knees at the side of the tub. “Gods, Lydia.”
“Why does everyone in this damned place think I’m suicidal?” I demanded. I crossed my arms over my bare breasts. “I’ve got shit to do before I die, Beck! What do you want?” It came out exactly as short as my temper was.
He leaned toward me, his hands braced on the tub’s edge. “I’m so sorry, Lyd. The things I said…” He shook his head. “I was shocked. I didn’t even know a human could be a gargoyle.”
I leveled a withering glare at him. “Happens every handful of centuries, I’m told. I love being judged and promptly condemned for being the lucky one.” Fuck his excuses.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m so damned sorry.
I’ll try to make it up to you. I hate myself for what I said.
” He smacked his fist against the porcelain.
“Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered, each word punctuated with a dull thump.
When he raised his eyes back to mine, they dripped sincerity.
“There’s nothing you could ever do that would make me hate you, Lyd.
Nothing. I’d follow you to the ends of this planet.
And the next one. You have to know that. ”
I did. But my mind was abraded and my heart was raw, and I was a petty bitch on a good day. I kept my expression carefully blank as I stared at him. “I’m not finding that fact in the old archives, Beckham. Perhaps you wishing I’d died at Dray’s torched it.”
He flinched, his fists white-knuckled on the edge of the tub. “Forgive me. Please. I don’t want to live in this world without you. I won’t.”
My eyes popped wide. “Gods, you’re so dramatic!
” I snapped, but I reached out and raised his chin.
“Your life is worth more than that. Okay? And of course I forgive you.” I swallowed an overflowing bucket of pride and added, “I’m sorry, too.
I haven’t exactly been the best friend since you got here. ”
“It’s been a mess,” he agreed.
I held out my arms, and he scooped me out of the water.
I clung to his neck as he held me, sopping wet, against his chest. His face burrowed into my wet hair and I drew in his familiar scent, though only a faint note of ink and parchment still lingered on his clothes.
The tips of my toes grazed the tops of his boots and I propped them on the sturdy edge.
He chuckled into my neck, the sound breathless and so relieved my eyes prickled.
He squeezed the air out of my lungs, then set me down gently. His eyes only lingered for the briefest moment before he turned around and plucked a towel off the counter. He passed it back to me, keeping his gaze carefully averted from the mirror.
I smiled into the fluffy material and wrapped it around me. “Okay.”
He turned back to me and my heart lurched. Damn, I’d missed him.
“I’m not sure why, after how I reacted, but Laney brought me some books to keep me occupied.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Want to raid the kitchen tomorrow and hide away from all this weird shit? Just us and some books?”
My gaze fell to the tiled floor. “I need to be alone tomorrow, Beck. I still haven’t come to terms with what Bellan did. I’ve been avoiding it because—well, it’s awful. But I won’t be able to avoid it on solstice.”
His face fell, but he nodded. “I’ve got some reconciliations to do myself.”
“Train with me? The day after? Or lunch or dinner or something? I miss you.”
“Sure. I miss us.”
“Me, too.”
He gave me one last, sad smile and left. The bathroom grew cold with his absence. I drew the towel tighter around me, wishing I’d asked him to stay—to distract me for long enough to even make it to tomorrow. But I had made a very, very lonely bed, and it was time to sleep in it.
I paced in front of the cold, lifeless hearth. Light had no right to enter this kind of darkness.
“Bad things happen to good people, and we’ll never be able to understand why.” I ground my teeth to nubs. “You’re safe now, and we will find and punish those responsible.” Bellan’s words after he’d found me in that burnt-out husk had always tasted so sweet. Now, they were acid.
I bent over and screamed, my hands threading into my hair. “There was a reason why!” I yelled. “Because you murdered them!”
I seized a vase off a table and hurled it at the wall. It shattered, the water staining the stone in a dark splash that looked too much like blood. I stared at the shards, littered like tombstones among the limp flowers. Stared at all those tiny pieces that could never be put back together.
Had using me been part of Bellan’s plan all along?
Had he always intended to stoke my rage and forge it into a weapon?
Why send me to die? Had I not done his dirty work like a good little minion?
How many innocents had he sent me to kill, with a promise that each death brought me one step closer to vengeance?
The questions pelted my mind and there was no relief. No escape from the madness. No end to the what ifs and the is that whys. Just more questions, one following the last in a relentless parade that marched through my skull without pause.
I tore my eyes off the shards and stormed out the door, unable to stand the confines of the room for another second.
I fled down the hall and past the guards.
My feet carried me to the piano. To the shelter that music had always offered my battered soul.
I fell onto the bench, the ivory keys blurring though my tears.
I closed my eyes and memories of Bellan flooded my mind, his face crinkling with smiles that had always meant solidarity, but now conveyed nothing but his underlying contempt for me.
My fingers found the lower octaves and I struck a discordant duo, the jarring sound my rage manifest. My fingers surged over the keys as I infused the room with an anthem of death and betrayal.
My thoughts whipped to my family. I kept my fingers on the lower octaves, but my furious pace slowed.
I craved my father’s endless wisdom and gentle guidance, and would give anything to fold myself into the comfort of my mother’s side.
I longed to know if Lynnix’s fascination with the stars would have led her down a path of wonder and joy and hated that Jackson’s passions would remain untold, buried alongside him and a thousand firsts he would never know.
The mournful notes suffocated the room with the sorrow that always—always—seized my heart and mind when I thought of them.
I remembered barging through the front door on Solstice.
But it was Griffon’s face, not their broken bodies, that flooded my mind.
He didn’t do it. The starbursts I could never ignore exploded behind my lids, so perfectly framed by a strong brow and high cheekbones.
One of his rare smiles tipped his lips, a lazy curl flopping over his forehead like he didn’t know my fingers always itched to brush it back.
My protector. My beautiful guardian, as scarred and broken as I was. My fingers drifted to the higher octaves and flooded the oppressive gloom with a melody that sounded a lot like joy. This light—Griffon’s light—could shred the darkness.
The last of my overwhelming emotions flooded out of me, and my hands drifted to opposite ends of the keys. The last note that carried through the room was a little of both darkness and light, sorrow and hope, but it was the lower note that faded last. The darkness that strangled me on this night.
“I’ve always loved listening to you play.” Griffon’s voice sliced through the silence and straight to my core.
I whirled on the bench. He was lounged in the doorway, his legs sprawled on either side of the frame like he’d been there for a while.
“I used to sit on the roof of your flat and listen to you pour your heart into those keys. And I could never understand how something so beautiful and complex could come out of someone I thought was so shallow and cold.”
“Should I be flattered or creeped the hell out?” My voice shook and I cleared my throat, turning enough to wipe the tears off my cheeks.
He snorted. “Probably both.” When I turned back, he was staring at me, an odd expression on his face. “I know what you were thinking about for the first two parts. But I cannot fathom what was floating through your head for the last. Not tonight.”
I swallowed hard. There was a reason I always wanted to be alone on solstice.
This day had a way of flaying my heart and laying it bare, stretched so thin I had nowhere to hide.
Nowhere to shove the things I didn’t want to feel—didn’t want anyone else to see.
And I couldn’t keep the longing from my face when I looked at him.
Couldn’t keep the truth from falling off my lips.
“You.”