CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
My eyes darted to Beck’s face. “What the hell does that mean?”
He swallowed hard, his hand weaving through my hair. “Just that I miss you. Who you were before. I want her back.”
My eyes hardened. “She died in that house.”
The temple is dark.
At my back, a hellish staircase carved into the side of the mountain leads down to the floor of the pass.
In front of me lies the silent temple, its weathered oak doors closed and stained-glass windows lifeless in the night.
Its peaked, clay-tiled roof is blanketed in heavy snow, only the sapphire moon at its apex peeking through the pristine white.
I take a slow, quiet breath. The back of my neck prickles.
I strain my ears, but the only sound is the soft whistle of a breeze dancing among the scattered shrubs.
Stray snowflakes from my sloppy landing settle on my shoulders and thighs as I kneel in the snow, melting against my warm leathers. Nothing else dares to move.
A pair of boots strike the ground behind me. I glance up and over my shoulder. Griffon stares back, his face set in grim determination but his eyes dulled by something heavier. Darker. Laney lands to my right a moment later.
I return my attention to the temple; to the single set of footprints leading to its front.
“This has always been my fate. But neither of you has to be here,” I say, my words the barest whisper.
My magic beats against my skin as I stare at those prints, eager, greedy, desperate to burn their maker out of existence.
Not even his memory will remain when I’m done.
Griffon’s soft growl is his only response. Laney’s hand squeezes my shoulder, then hovers in front of me in silent offering. I take it and let her pull me to my feet.
She turns to face the temple, her shoulder brushing mine as we stare at it together. “You’re right, we don’t,” she whispers. “But we choose to be.”
Griffon steps to my side. My fingers brush against the back of his hand. For a moment, he’s as cold and stiff as a statue. I don’t—can’t—breathe as I stare ahead. Not until he thaws. Until his fingers close over mine. I grasp Laney’s hand with my other and squeeze hard before releasing them.
My footfalls are silent as I trace Bellan’s path to the temple, my dagger a phantom’s cry as I slide it from its sheath.
Griffon and Laney flank me, their gazes scouring the snow-swept plateau around us.
I stand to one side of the door and prod it open with the tip of my dagger.
I’m greeted by darkness and stagnant air—a crypt, not a temple. I push the door wider and slip inside.
I flare my palms at my sides. Fire dances along my fingertips, my magic clinging to freedom and demanding more. I yank on its leash and focus on the torches lining the walls. They burst to life.
A cavernous room yawns open before us. A golden carpet runs its length, trailing between four massive statues that stand in a square at the center of the room.
Each depicts one of the gods. Their hands rise up to support the ceiling far above, their feet forever planted in the corner of the quadrant dedicated to their worship.
Arawn’s is all bare stone and black curtains that hang by worship alcoves carved with unforgiving lines, the space cold and lifeless in honor of the winter god.
The god of death. Diagonally and to my right, Malva’s summer oozes abundance.
Tables sag beneath heaps of untouched food and drink, the alcoves overflow with cushions and blankets, and a thick carpet of ivy clings to the walls.
To my left, Gideon stares down at an explosion of color with a faint smile on his lips.
Handcrafted leaves of yellow, orange, and red are scattered across the floor, while piles of gourds and cornucopias crowd the alcove entrances.
But it is the back right quadrant that snags my attention, for crouched within Etain’s domain of spring, of birth, of life, is Bellan.
My lip curls, his presence an affront to the pots brimming with bright flowers and sprawling plants.
An insult to the butterflies that flutter from plant to plant.
A parody of life, this bringer of death and misery.
“She sure as hell isn’t going to save you,” I say from across the room.
I stalk down the golden carpet, my keen gaze marking every wrinkle that now mars his once-handsome face.
His graying hair and hunched back. The sallow skin that hangs off a frame neglected by decades of scheming and lies.
Gone is the man who had seized a drowning girl and dragged her high enough to survive.
Only a monster remains. And I can almost see the layers of blood that coat his hands as easily as I feel them weighing on my own.
I stop just short of Etain’s feet, mine still touching the carpet. I have no place in her realm, either. I glance to my sides. The carpet trails off to my left and right, ending in two closed doors on either side of the temple.
Bellan sighs dramatically, his gaze flicking up to me. “Life would have been much simpler had you just died when you were supposed to.” He rises from where he supplicates at Etain’s feet, surprisingly calm in the shadow of his death-bringer.
I snort. “Dain Carthwright would have preferred that, too, I think.”
Bellan’s smile is slow and vicious, his eyes alight with the kind of knowing, arrogant glee that comes from hoarding secrets.
That never-ending dread that lives in my gut opens a slumbering eye.
“Oh, you were meant to die long before Dray’s,” he says, his eyes flicking to Griffon, then Laney, before settling back on me.
Unconcerned. Dismissive. “Alongside the rest of your kin. But our dear Beck just had to drag you to that ghastly festival with him.”
I shrug, Stone muting the blow of this new betrayal.
“Pity for you.” I stare at him, battling the magic that begs and fights to burn him, kill him.
I clench my fists and shove it down. Soon.
But he still has something I need. I raise the dagger and level it with his fleshy throat.
“Who killed them.” It comes out a demand, not a question.
Bellan throws his arms up. “You are relentless, girl!”
“Who. Killed. Them.” The words barely make it past my mashed-together teeth.
“The minutiae of it all wasn’t exactly my purview that night, I’m afraid.” His tone is mocking.
My patience dangles by a thin and ever-fraying thread, magic fighting to rip from my grasp. “Then whose was it?”
Another wicked grin snakes across his face.
“Dain Carthwright’s, of course. Who else but his Shadows could have pulled off such a spectacular ploy and not been caught?
But by the sounds of it, he’s no longer around to ask which of them dealt with your ilk.
Pity for you,” he says, throwing my words back at me.
A dueling tempest lashes through me as the image of my family cowering before a masked Shadow wars with the knowledge that I torched the only man who could have unveiled him.
I bury the first, unbearable thought and inwardly growl at this form I’m inhabiting, cursing its untimely intervention with Dane.
“No bother,” I say, my voice dripping with a flippancy even I am proud of. “I’ll just have to pay Bardon’s Landing another visit then.” The Shadows don’t know they’re at war. I’ll enlighten them soon enough.
Laney steps up beside me, but her icy-blue eyes are pinned on Bellan, brow drawn together in a deep crease.
“Why?” That one word is infused with fifteen years’ worth of grief and confusion over his betrayal.
“We were allies. Friends. My people bled for yours for centuries, you fickle little shit!” Her tone morphs from hurt to angry with every word. “Why?”
He turns that smug expression on my friend. His pleasure only deepens as he looks at her. “Don’t blame me. You have one of your own kind to thank for it.”
“What the hell does that mean?” she demands.
“It means that a stonetalon who had grown as sick of dying for humans as we were of them lording over us came to m—”
“‘Lording over’?” The words slip off my lips so quietly they hang like phantoms in the vast chamber. “All gargoyles have ever done is die for humans. They have never ‘lorded’ a damned thing over you, even though they could have!”
“Exactly!” Spittle flies off his lips, and he takes a step toward me in his fervor. “For centuries, humans have lived in fear that gargoyles will grow tired of bleeding for us and decide to rule us instead. But no more! When I am done, humanity will be free of both da’kai and gargoyles!”
My thoughts run in circles as I try to process this grand scheme of his and pick apart everything he isn’t saying. “How the fuck did Solstice set you up to become humanity’s savior?”
Bellan sighs heavily. “Because weaking the ones who would resist”—he flings his arms at Griffon and Laney—“was the stonetalon’s price for our freedom, Lydia.” He tilts his head to the side. “Though I admit, I took the opportunity to get rid of Thayer and everyone loyal to him while I was at it.”
The raised dagger in my palm begins to heat. “So that’s it? You had them murdered because they liked Thayer? What about Jackson and Lynnix? Our neighbor? Or me? What were our sins?”
He waves a dismissive hand in my direction.
“Collateral damage, dear. I couldn’t have it looking like an outright assassination of half the council.
” His gaze turns serious, and he pins me with an almost pleading expression.
“Just take a moment to imagine our world without gargoyles and da’kai and their endless war.
I sacrificed a handful of people to buy the lives of thousands.
Can’t you see that it was a more than worthy exchange?
” His gaze shifts back to Griffon and the fervor burning in his eyes gives way to cruelty.
“You would find all of this to be of particular interest, I think.”
I can’t even spare Griffon a glance as something odd about this whole thing weasels past the rage that now shakes my upraised hand. “You weren’t surprised by what I am,” I grit out. “When I walked in here with fangs and a pair of wings.”
He laughs, the sound echoing through the vast chamber. “A little birdy had already informed me of your rather…” His eyes flick up and down my form and more than a hint of his disgust blooms across his face. “Unfortunate transformation.”
There isn’t even time to curse the cowardly human who squats in Falcos while reporting to Bellan before another inconsistency lances my already jumbled thoughts.
“You don’t look like you went raving mad from losing control of your demon horde.
” The words fall off my lips with the weight of a bad omen.
The disgustingly self-satisfied smile that snakes over his face is the only confirmation I need.
“You aren’t the one controlling them.”
“No.” That single word reverberates with the force of a struck gong.
“Then who does? Who did you make this bargain with?”
Bellan purses his lips. “I really should tell you that, seeing as they decided to leave me here as bait.”
My stomach hollows out. I whip back toward the door as Griffon’s and Laney’s gazes sweep through the temple. But—nothing. I return narrowed eyes to Bellan. He holds a small bell between his fingers.
Before I can stop him, he jerks it to the side.
A clear tone rings through the temple, and the doors on either side of the room slam open. Dozens of da’kai file out.
Bellan inclines the bell. “Don’t mistake this for control. I didn’t train them.”
The da’kai encircle us, a horde of them blocking the door at our backs. Bellan drifts to his right, idly strolling into Arawn’s quadrant. Into death.
He pins me with a flinty stare, his wrinkles deepening as that mirth finally slips away.
“I appreciate being betrayed and left to die as much as you undoubtedly appreciate Dray’s.
So, I will tell you this: Over the past fifteen years, I’ve sent over a thousand prisoners as slaves to an island a couple hundred miles off the coast. To build ships. ”
My head begins to spin.
“That is why you were drawn up here, to me, instead of remaining down there.” He inclines his chin toward the city. “Because if there is one thing a ship does as well as float, Lydia, it is burn.”
Jamie Tablor’s face flares behind my lids. There were da’kai. And ships! So many ships!
“Oh gods,” I gasp, unable to keep my dawning horror off my face. “That’s why you sent me to kill the Tablors. They saw.” Even Stone can’t contain the maelstrom in my head. “That’s where the da’kai have been all these years.”
He smiles, though his expression is now devoid of anything joyous. “Starting to work it out, I see.”
I fling my arm back toward Vircann. “There aren’t any ships out there!”
“Magic! You’re forgetting about magic!” A manic glint flashes in his eyes.
My gaze darts to Griffon and Laney. They both look like they’re going to vomit.
“There was a gargoyle from Alarin,” Laney breathes. “Indra. She could create illusions that made you see what she wanted you to see.”
“She died,” Griffon snaps. “Years ago.”
Bellan’s gaze slides to him. “An interesting observation. But did she die, really?” His eyes flick back to me and he shrugs. “Lovely chat, Lydia. I can’t tell you if I’d rather you finally die or wreck their plan. Either way, I really must be going.”
His words rip me out of my deepening pit of horror. He smiles, and rings that damned bell again.
“No,” I gasp. I fling my arm out as a body slams into me.