CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #2
His lips parted and his soft inhale drifted to me from across the room. Every carefully crafted mask slipped away and left me him. I saw his guilt, and fear, and the desire that burned in his gaze.
“You’re so far away,” I breathed.
“Tell me not to be.” His voice was husky. Rough. And it called to me.
“Don’t be.”
I tracked him as he rose, his biceps flexing beneath the short sleeves of his loose shirt. His steps were hesitant and utterly devoid of the predatory edge that always saturated his gait. He sank onto the bench, his thigh so close to mine I could feel the heat radiating off him.
He set his long fingers on the keys and teased out a piece of each of the melodies I had poured into the room. My breath lodged in my throat as I drank in the echo of my song.
“I understand now, how you can create something so beautiful and complex.” His eyes searched mine, tugging two more fat tears down my cheeks.
His palms rose to either side of my face, his thumbs brushing aside the wetness.
“It was stupid, really, that I couldn’t see it’s because you are so damned beautiful and so complex you make my head spin. ”
My breath hitched and his words infused my skull with a heady weight as I stared at him, every shred of me yearning to trail my fingers down his cheek and along that perfectly chiseled jaw.
I popped up off the bench and paced beside the piano, my heart stampeding through my chest. I stopped and planted my palms on its slick lid, my flushed skin a deep red against the black. “I think shallow and cold was more accurate,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Did we kill your mom?” I had no idea why those were the words that tumbled out of my mouth.
His jaw clenched, his eyes retreating behind that veil again. My heart lurched and I silently begged the mask to crack. To fall away and give me him again.
“That’s why you hate me, isn’t it?” I pressed. “Humans killed her on Solstice?”
His gaze softened and the knot in my chest unraveled. “Hated. I think it’s clear that I absolutely do not hate you, anymore.”
I hoped he couldn’t hear my heart, fluttering against my ribs like a caged bird.
He sighed. “She was one of the Archon’s closest advisors and was level-headed and calm, even in Stone.
She always saw the best in everyone, but that trusting nature ended her life.
Most of the arrows on Solstice were tipped in gargoyle steel.
The one they shot at her was a normal arrow, but she hesitated before she shifted. ”
Did he know, when he’d come to find me, that his mother was dead? Or had he not learned that horrible truth until afterward?
“And your dad?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“He died a couple years before. At a da’kai attack on Cresson.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “So your dad died trying to save humans. And then we murdered your mom.” I swallowed hard.
“And you believed I killed your entire family. For so long. The fact that we’re here together is a twist I doubt even fate foretold.”
Silence enveloped us, the only sound our quiet breaths. But a torrent of words bubbled up my throat as I stared at him. I tried to swallow them back down, but they were relentless. I was going to explode with the force of them.
“You said it was your fault they died the other night,” I blurted. “Because you went to the wrong house. But it wasn’t. It was mine.” My voice broke on the last word, and I choked on the sob that fought to punch its way out of my chest.
He watched me, his chest scarcely moving beneath his shirt.
I swallowed the grief long enough to tell him my greatest shame.
“The festivities had taken on a distinctly sexual edge, with it being the gargoyle mating year. It was the only one I’d live to see, and I didn’t want to miss it.
But I was only fifteen. Entirely too na?ve and poised to fall victim to something I was old enough to crave, but too young to really understand. My parents forbade me to go.”
A sharp laugh darted past my lips. “It is probably hard to believe, but I used to be so damned principled. Obsessed with following the rules and doing the right thing. I was terrified of messing up. But I wanted to go to the festival so bad. So, when Beck snuck into my room and begged me to go with him, I did.” I sucked down air that felt like daggers.
“And they died. Because I wasn’t there.” My chest ripped open with the sheer truth of the words.
“I had the power to save them. I could have saved them.”
The sob hovering at the back of my throat burst out of me and I crumpled onto the bench. It was the first time I had ever said those words out loud. And they broke me.
Griffon tugged me against his chest, and I buried my face in his shirt.
“You were a child. It wasn’t your fault.
It wasn’t your fault.” He said it over and over again, his deep, steady voice soothing my soul.
But his words were meaningless. It was my fault, and nothing he could say would ever change that. “Their deaths are not yours to bear.”
Griffon’s chin came to rest against the top of my head, and his arms tightened as he held me against his chest. My heart pulsed in response and I gasped, not from pain but the pleasant warmth that wrapped around it.
I closed my eyes and imagined that a piece of Griffon’s magic had cleaved from him and moored itself in the deepest harbor of my being. Protecting. Always protecting.
My sobs calmed to silent tears and I slumped against him. My soft pants slid on the glossy bench, and I let myself sink until my head was resting in his lap. His fingers swept along my temple, behind my ear and through my hair in a steady rhythm.
“Will you play for me?” I asked.
I shriveled a little when his fingers left my skin, but the melody he teased out flooded me with warmth.
It started slow, almost sad, but I could hear something else in the notes he played.
Something that dragged my heart out of the depths of despair and pinned a pair of shaky, half-broken wings to its sides.
“What are you thinking of?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer. I tilted my head to look up at him.
He was staring at me, his eyes shining brighter than normal in the faint moonlight that filtered through the window.
“Hope.” One of his hands drifted off the keys to run through my hair again.
“We were never meant to find each other, Lydia. But we did. I understand your darkness and promise I’ll never let you get lost in it. ”
My hand bunched in the fabric of his trousers and my eyes fluttered shut, his words stuffing my throat with so much emotion I couldn’t respond.
His hand drifted back to the keys. “Promise me something, too?”
“Hmm?”
“Promise me you won’t let me lose myself, either. Promise me you’ll kill me before you let me turn into one of those things.”
A deep dread coiled in my gut, poised to devour the little kernel of hope he had planted. I mashed my lids tighter, drinking in every note he played for me. Feast, I begged that little seed. Feast.
“I promise.” The words tasted like ash.