CHAPTER FORTY
For Them. For Them. For Them.
Pounding roused me the next morning and I grumbled at the obnoxious sound, burrowing deeper into the pillows and blankets. Griffon rolled over and pulled me against his chest, like we could somehow just lose ourselves in each other instead of facing whatever was outside the door.
“Go away,” he called, his voice groggy with sleep.
I smiled into his chest. “You’re in Flesh again,” I said quietly.
The pounding grew louder. “Get up!” Alexei called. “The Archon needs you both.”
Griffon nuzzled into my hair. “I think all the sex might be lulling the beast to sleep.”
I could feel his smile as he kissed my temple, the side of my face, beneath my ear. “I take my duty to look after your well-being very seriously,” I said, my breathing already quick and shallow. “Therefore, I am henceforth available for fucking at your every whim.”
I reached down between us and wrapped my hand around his hard length, dragging a moan out of us both.
Alexei started kicking the door. “Get up and put some damned clothes on! Bellan just made a move, and the Archon needs you both now!”
We went taut as bow strings and stared at each other, sleepy satisfaction and lust morphing into fear on his perfect face.
“I should have known I wouldn’t get time with you,” he breathed. “Not even the little bit I had left.”
“I’m coming in if you don’t. Get. Up!”
“We hear you!” Griffon yelled back. “Give us a minute.”
I clutched his face. “We will get time,” I said firmly. “Keep fighting, Griffon. Fight for me, and I will find some way to save you. I promise.” It was a fool’s promise, and we both knew it.
He pressed a quick, desperate kiss to my lips. “I’ll never stop fighting for you.”
He threw the blankets back and launched out of bed, his muscles flexing beneath his scarred and branded back that he turned toward me without hesitation.
I scrambled out the other side and rifled through our pile of clothes, flinging his shirt across the bed to have my pants and a sock land beside me in return.
My heart pounded as I lurched to my feet and grabbed my pants. I hopped around and tried to pull them up, but my foot caught and my shaking fingers fumbled the waistband.
A graceless stumble carried me halfway around, and I thumped against Griffon’s hard chest. He grasped my hips and pushed me down onto the bed, somehow already dressed.
His deft fingers worked my pants over my feet and up to my knees.
I yanked them up and shimmied into the rest of my clothes before snatching the citrine pin off the side table and tucking it into the apex of my sloppy braid.
He caught my hand on the way to the door. “No matter what happens or—”
I clamped my hand over his lips. “Tell me after.” And then we were running.
We burst into the throne room. Laney already stood at Davina’s back, amongst who I guessed were the Archon’s other advisors. General Sorrell and Commander Aris stood at each of her sides. Had the leaders remained at Falcos in anticipation of this very moment?
A human knelt at Davina’s feet, head bowed and body quivering. She waved us forward and we hurried to the foot of the dais. Alexei disappeared into the clump of gargoyles crowded into the room.
Davina’s uncompromising stare pinned the terrified man to the floor. “Repeat what you’ve just told us, human,” she demanded.
His frantic gaze darted between the Archon and Griffon and I, his hands fidgeting with the buttons on his cloak.
“Quickly,” she snapped.
“C—Councilman Bellan sent me here to request aid,” he sputtered, swallowing so hard a lump traversed his throat. “His message is this: ‘I’m losing control. Vircann will fall.’ I don’t know what that means, I swear it. He was in a crazed state when he ordered me here. That is all I know.”
“You’re dismissed,” Davina said, waving her hand toward the wing-shaped doors.
“What should I—”
“Leave!” Davina snapped. I had never heard her be so short.
The man scrambled to his feet and fled the room. One guard followed after him, and two others closed the doors behind him.
The Archon’s midnight stare landed on me. “Is this real?” she demanded.
I floundered, my jaw unhinged and mind reeling. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Did you overhear anything? Any snippet about how he is controlling the da’kai or what his plan is? I need you to think, Lydia.”
I wracked my brain, trying to remember if I’d ever walked in on a strange or tense conversation. But there was nothing. “No,” I breathed. “No one ever told me shit, and I never bothered to ask for anything beyond my next target. Beck was always the one—”
“Bring me Beckham,” Davina ordered a male beside the throne.
He bowed and left. I fidgeted at Griffon’s side, my stomach a twisted knot. How was it only a few minutes ago that we’d been tangled up in bed?
I was a nervous wreck by the time the male and Cade herded Beck through the door. On the surface, he just looked pissed about the early morning summons. But buried beneath the anger was fear. His eyes were pinned on me as Cade led him toward Davina, a deep, horrified question burning in them.
There was only one thing that desperate look could be asking: Do they know?
My brow furrowed, but I shook my head an imperceptible amount.
“Tell me what your master is planning, Beckham,” Davina demanded once he stood at the foot of the dais.
“I have no idea what that means.” His tone was clipped. Angry. But I could hear the fear that still had his shoulders tensed, his hands trembling a fraction at his sides. But why was he afraid?
“You are close to Bellan,” Davina said. “Can you truly tell me you’ve spent that much time with him and know nothing? Nothing of how he is controlling the da’kai horde? Nothing of where they have been these past fifteen years, or how he has kept them there?”
Real anger twisted his face. “What you’re really asking is if I knew he was going to murder my parents and her family.” He flung a finger at me. “If I knew he’d sent her to Dray’s to die! Because that is the only way I’d know the answers to those questions—is if I’d known everything.”
The Archon leaned forward on her throne, a devious glint in her eyes. “I am not convinced that you didn’t, Beckham.”
“He didn’t,” I blurted, taking a step toward my friend and the deceptively calm creature glaring down at him. I shook my head. “He didn’t.”
Beck’s jaw tightened. “If there is one thing you fools should have realized by now, it is that I would do anything for her. That I love her.” He jabbed his finger at me again and I dropped my gaze, because I wasn’t sure what he meant. “I would never betray her like that.”
Davina had the same idea, her gaze shifting to my hand still encased in Griffon’s. That glint shone like the sun as her attention slid back to Beck. “It would seem to me your love is unrequited. Some might consider such a thing to be motivation.”
“Not like that,” he growled. “She’s been my best friend since birth.
” He dragged his hand down his face, his chest rising and falling with a deep breath.
When he drew his hand away, he had donned his mask.
“I work for Bellan in a professional capacity. I advise him specifically on trade agreements and internal disputes within the governing class, as I can read the emotions in the room and, yes, at times, manipulate the outcome in Bellan’s favor.
I lived with him for a while after Solstice, yes.
I came to rely on him as a kind of guardian, yes.
But I was not involved with his personal affairs.
Lydia and I were useful tools, not his adopted children, for fuck’s sake. ”
My brow scrunched. I might have been a useful tool—one that had outlived its usefulness. But Beck? His affection for Beck had always run deeper than that. Did he truly not see it that way?
Davina’s stare was cool as she studied him, her eyes hard granite that gave away nothing of what lurked behind them.
“You will leave here,” she declared. “Now. I don’t know if you speak the truth.
I will stop short of having you tortured to find out.
But know, Beckham Wylder, it is not lost on me that this is happening now, after you arrived at Falcos. ”
“What is happening?” Beck’s gaze whipped to mine. “Lydia, what is happening?”
I shook my head. “Don’t go back to Vircann until you get word it is safe.” It was the only warning I could give him.
“I hope you know,” Davina continued as Cade gripped Beck’s upper arm, “how much blood—human blood—will be on your hands if you are lying.” She turned to Cade. “Give him two minutes to gather his things. Then escort him out of the gate. And do ensure he actually leaves.”
Beck didn’t object. He didn’t say anything at all. He just stared at me—at my hand in Griffon’s—until he disappeared around the corner.
Davina returned her shrewd gaze to me. “I need you to be as objective as possible. Is Bellan’s plea real, or will we be flying into a trap?”
“How can I possibly answer that?” My heart stampeded through my chest. “He lied to me for years, and I was clueless. Blind to who he really was. I don’t even know the truth about all those people he sent me to kill! My opinion shouldn’t be part of the discussion.”
“Give it anyways.”
I dropped into a crouch and cradled my head in my hands.
Griffon squeezed my shoulder, his warmth and steady presence seeping into me.
Slowly, my racing breaths calmed. I looked up at her.
“With all your knowledge, you couldn’t come up with a way he could be controlling them.
It must be something…” I struggled to find the right word.
“Just—crazy. And something like that probably isn’t stable.
With the adolescents mature now, the horde larger—it makes sense he may have lost control of it. ”
“And your argument for the opposite?”
I threw my hands up. “Gargoyles have always protected humans! He knows that.” I pushed to my feet and paced in front of Griffon.
“It could just be a ploy to draw us away from Falcos. He lost his chance to take it with that first attack. When he, and whoever else, got the da’kai into those tunnels and still failed to get the gate up.
” I stopped in front of her and swallowed hard.
“One seems about as likely as the other, to me.”
Davina nodded. “Thank you, Lydia. Advisors, Sorrell, Aris, with me. The rest of you—gather your units and prepare yourselves. Dismissed.”
Griffon’s hand closed around my wrist, and he pulled me against his chest. The sea of gargoyles parted around us, a faceless current of bodies as we stared at each other.
His hands dug into my hair, his fingers tight on the back of my neck.
“Find Alexei,” he rushed out. “Have him show you how to land. I should have—there just wasn’t time.
” His eyes searched mine, a thousand unsaid words screaming back at me.
“It is all in the base of your wings. Roll your muscles back so your feet drop and your wings catch the air. Then flap hard, two or three times before you hit the ground.”
“I’ll figure it out. Go. Help her get us out of this mess.”
His arms closed around me, and I drew in his cedar and cinnamon scent.
“You said to tell you after, but you have to know you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Even if this is all the time we get.” He drew back enough to brush my hair aside, his skin warm as his fingers trailed down the side of my face and behind my ear.
And then he was gone.