CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I stared into the fireplace in Beck’s room, seeing a different blaze that had raged and smoldered long into the night. My clothes were strewn across his room, as tangled up with his as we had just been.
His fingers brushed my cheek. “Are you okay?”
The shouts of “Surprise!” and “Happy Birthday!” barely reached me through the growing horror that smothered my mind.
I whipped to Griffon. “I wasn’t celebrated on my birthday because I was out killing people,” I hissed at him. “I don’t deserve this!”
He just shrugged. “Disagree.”
“So that line about gargoyles taking birthdays from humans?”
“Absolute bullshit,” he confirmed. “Gargoyles have never taken a damned thing from humans.” He set his hand on my lower back and prodded me into the room.
Laney met me first, but it was the tiny human bounding at her side that snared my attention. My eyes shot wide, then darted up to Laney’s face. Only the tiniest bit of tightness pinched her brow.
She trusted me. She finally trusted me enough to meet Brie.
The little girl was wearing a far more modest version of my own dress, the flames on her shoulders catching in a wild mass of bobbing brown curls. Her eyes were deepest brown and completely blown as she took in the spectacle that was me.
I cleared the emotion that clogged my throat and begged the moisture in my eyes to not muss my dolled-up face as I gasped at Brie.
“Are you the great fire channeler from Vircann? It is an honor to meet you, my lady.” I curtsied to her, and her high-pitched giggle sent another round of suffocating emotion up my throat.
Lynnix. She sounded so much like Lynnix I almost hit my knees.
“No, silly!” she said, still giggling behind her hand. “You are!”
“Oh!” I gasped. “Well, you look like you could channel fire, too!”
She raised her chin. “I asked Aunt Laney if I could dress up like you for the party!” Her tiny brow creased. “At first she said I’d have to pretend to be homeless. I didn’t understand that at all because your home is here with us now, but then she said she would have Brynn make me a dress too!”
I shot Laney a glare and she smiled behind her hand.
“I like yours better but mine is okay too, I guess.” Brie’s sigh was heavy and carried the vast weight of her ten-year-old troubles.
I barely managed to contained my laugh and held out my hand. “I am so happy to meet you.”
She placed her small hand in mine, her soft brown skin warm against my pale complexion.
“Thank you for helping Aunt Laney get my medicine. She said you burned a path right through the mountains so she doesn’t have to fight the da’kai like she used to.”
Laney gave me a helpless little shrug, but she didn’t have to. I understood. How could you possibly explain to a kid that a murdering tyrant hoarded her medicine because rich men used it to get high? I supposed you just didn’t.
“It was truly my pleasure.” Happiness too big for the bodice clamped around me swelled in my chest. I ignored the darker emotions that stirred in Brie’s presence, swirling like a storm cloud beneath the joy.
“Alright,” Laney said, “I think we’ve taken up enough of Lydia’s time. We can talk to her again later.”
“Okay. Bye!” Brie bounded off toward a table laden with food and drink.
Laney winked at me and chased after her, her singsong voice and goading fingers dragging a squeal out of Brie.
Griffon stepped beside me.
“I’d die for her,” I said without looking at him, my eyes trained on Brie as Laney chased her around the table.
So much like that day in the kitchen, when I’d chased Lynnix and she had tripped over my mother’s skirt.
Brie’s peals of laughter dredged memory after memory out of the abyss I’d buried them in years ago.
“Just toss my immortality into a burn pit and die.”
His hand found my back again and he leaned close. “I’m forbidding her from ever leaving Falcos.” A shiver feathered down my spine as softly as his lips brushed my ear.
Beck watched us from the small cluster of people but didn’t come over.
His eyes raked over me in much the same way Griffon’s had, but the shudder it sent down my back hit more like a stampede of creepy-crawly things than a sensuous caress.
Davina blocked my view of him and, for the first time, I was happy to see her, if only so I didn’t have to think about what my reaction meant.
Her dress was a russet orange, the V-shaped plunge down the front almost as deep as mine. Her hair was unbound, the springy black curls framing her head like the crown she didn’t need to wear; every fiber of her oozed authority.
Her cunning gaze slipped between Griffon and I, a faint smile on her lips. “Am I to assume you’ve come to see things our way, then?”
My snarky, knee-jerk response died on my lips as I realized the scope of what she had done for me. How much grace she had extended.
I dipped my chin. “Thank you. For giving me a chance to. You didn’t have to.” I looked at her more intently. “I’m not really sure why you did?”
“Because you deserved to know the truth. And I owed you whatever time it took to believe it.” Her eyes twinkled with an unfathomable trove of knowledge.
“Beyond that, my vision held a second truth. You will play a pivotal role in our survival, Lydia. I don’t know how, or when.
Only that it will come to pass.” She turned her attention to Griffon.
“Seeing a little life in this room has been a welcome distraction. Well done.”
She started to walk away, but I lurched toward her when I remembered the gargoyles who had shown up in the courtyard. “What happened this morning? Was there an attack?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Two. One on Bardon’s Landing, the other at Bellvey. Both brief. Both deadly. The da’kai behaved similarly to the attack here. They were coordinated. Strategic.” She glanced between us. “I fear it has begun.”
Her words sank like a rock in my gut as she walked away. It had begun—and my place in it all was predetermined.
“We’ll worry about it later,” Griffon said quietly. “Tonight is for joy.”
I nodded and tore my gaze off Davina’s retreating back. “Right.” I shoved the ominous news to the back of my mind and followed Griffon to a table set up along one of the walls.
He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and motioned for me to sit. Beck fell into the seat to my left a moment before Laney pulled out the two to my right.
“Brie insisted we sit by you,” she said, tossing an apologetic glance in Griffon’s direction.
Charlise and Evander sat beside Laney. Evander’s deep-brown complexion was beautifully contrasted with the crisp white suit he wore, his newly shaved head accentuating his square jaw.
I winked at Charlise and she shot me one right back, fully aware that the male beside her cut as striking a figure as she did in her forest-green dress and sweeping updo.
Alexei and Mirren, resplendent in a powder-blue dress that was perfection against her tawny skin and sleek black hair, greeted me and claimed the seats beside Beck.
I wiggled my brows at Alexei, and he returned a rakish grin that had me giggling.
Davina took the seat at the other end of the table, and Griffon sat beside her.
My heart swelled at the sight of these nine people, every one of them a piece to a newfound and wholly unexpected family of sorts.
One I was excited to know better, and grow with, and navigate the coming challenges beside.
I smiled at the thought. We ate and talked and laughed, and the suffocating weight of the past few days melted away.
My very distracted eyes kept finding Griffon’s loaded glances throughout the meal.
Dessert was delivered and I leaned back in my chair, soaking in the peace of the moment. I had a sickening feeling it would be the last one we got for a while. I would miss that lazy smile on Griffon’s face, when everything went to shit.
“You like him, don’t you?” Beck asked.
I jerked and rammed my knee into the table. I tore my attention from the very male in question for what had to be the hundredth time.
“I mean, really like.”
“Hmm? Who?” I asked stupidly, digging into the piece of cake on my plate.
Beck rolled his eyes and tossed his chin down the table.
“No,” I said quickly. Too quickly. I cleared my throat. “No.” It came out a little more firmly.
Beck aimed a pointed stare at me.
“Okay. Maybe. I don’t know.” My eyes fell on him again. “I mean, he drives me absolutely insane. But he’s actually really thoughtful. And brave. He makes me laugh, and—” I snapped my mouth shut and glanced at Beck. “Does that make you angry?”
Beck snorted. “Because of who he is? Absolutely. He’s an ass, regardless of whether he had anything to do with Solstice. But for personal reasons? No. It was never like that with us.”
“Right!” I flung a piece of cake off my fork with the force of my agreement. It landed in the middle of Laney’s plate and she leveled a “really?” glare on me. Oops, I mouthed at her, before turning back to Beck. “I tried to tell him that, but he just called me an idiot.”
Beck’s gaze jumped to his plate and his knuckles turned white around his fork. My stomach hollowed out. Oh gods—was I a blind fool? Before I could fully contemplate the depth of my stupidity, a shadow fell over my plate.
I glanced up to Griffon’s devastatingly handsome face and his waiting hand. “Dance with me?”
I snorted. “There is no way you dance.”
“I do with you.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “I don’t think I remember how.” It had been so long. So long since my mom showed me the steps in our living room. So long since I’d trampled her feet and we’d laughed ourselves silly.
“You don’t have to.” He looked pointedly at his hand still hovering in front of me.
“Your toes are about to disagree,” I muttered, but slipped my hand in his. He tugged me out of my chair and against his chest. Before I could even half remember what to do with my feet, we were dancing.
Or, well, he was dancing. I didn’t even try—three graceful steps were all it took for me to cling to his neck and pick up my feet.
He folded his arms around my waist and held me tightly against him as he twirled me around the room, my giggles lost in the thrumming music that commandeered the rhythm of my heart.
The evening passed in a blur of dancing and drinking. The magic pumping with my blood burned the alcohol out of my system before I could find anything more than a tingling buzz. Of all the times I’d tried to drown myself in booze, it was the first time I didn’t mind.
I danced with Beck and Alexei, and Laney and Brie, the three of us laughing as we sashayed across the room to a quick number that flew off the musicians’ fingers at such a furious pace we could barely keep up.
Davina’s feline grace unsurprisingly lent to nimble dancing as she floated across the floor with Laney or Evander—and once with Griffon.
I even caught Beck dancing with Laney and Brie a couple times, when I wasn’t crushing his feet.
A quick jig came to an end and Brie ran to Laney, leaving me breathless at the edge of the dance floor. A featherlight touch kissed my elbow. I didn’t need to turn to know who it belonged to.
“I’ve shared you for long enough,” he whispered in my ear, his voice low and husky. His fingers brushed against mine. Questioning.
Something deep inside me opened a slumbering eye as I slipped my hand in his. He led me through the doors and to a part of Falcos I hadn’t yet seen, the corridors as cold and empty as all the rest. We rounded a corner and he stopped beside a heavy iron door.
“Laney showed you the gardens. But I prefer the greenhouse.” He pushed the door open and I stepped inside.