30. Aurelio
For the second time in a week, I wake up in a panic.
“Alessia!”
I sit bolt upright, clutching my chest. My whole body aches and burns; I glance down, seeing that I have a few lacerations around my middle and one across my forearm. They’re not bleeding anymore, but man, do they burn like they’re on fire. My whole body aches like I’ve been thrown off the side of a mountain.
Wait…
I look around to regain my bearings, only for my heart to seize in my chest. I am on the side of a mountain. A cliff face, to be exact. The griffin that stole me away is nowhere in sight.
But there’s a very still, pale Alessia only a few feet away.
“Alessia!”
I shoot to my feet and run to her, rolling her onto her back so I can see her better. For a heart-stopping moment, I think she’s not breathing, but then I see the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and I realize she’s alive. Her face is paler than a ghost, though, and her hands are scraped and bloody.
“What happened to you?” I whisper.
“She saved your life.”
I look up, and hovering above Alessia is none other than Lief. He flutters down to perch on my shoulder, his face weary, but his smile genuine.
“What do you mean, she saved my life?” I ask. “Where did the griffin go?”
“She killed it. She sliced its wing and sent it toppling over the side of the mountain,” Lief explains.
I shuffle to the edge of the cliff, and sure enough, way down at the base of the mountain, there’s a griffin’s corpse. The sight of it sends a chill down my spine. I quickly return to Alessia’s side, examining her injuries.
“How on earth did she get up here? Don’t tell me she…climbed all the way up here?”
“She sure as hells did,” Lief says, his grin broadening. “The way she looked, she was ready to burn the world just to get to you. Even I was a bit intimidated, if I’m being honest.”
I cradle Alessia’s hands in my own, kissing the tops of them gently. My heart aches to see her injured, but it’s also warming, like I’m standing beside a small campfire. She put her life on the line to save mine. She was ready to sacrifice it all just to get to me, even though there was no guarantee I’d be alive, or that she’d survive. I truly am the luckiest man alive to be married to such an incredible woman.
And to think, when we were first married, I was planning to skive off and read my years away, ignoring our marriage entirely,I think to myself, snorting. How fickle fate can be.
“She’s going to take a while to wake up,” Lief says. “She overextended herself greatly, using all her magic to get up here and defend you. There was no other way to scale this cliff face.”
My chest tightens. “Didn’t she overextend herself less than a week ago, too?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Then that means…she came pretty close to dying, didn’t she?”
Lief nods grimly. “She did, but she pulled through. You wouldn’t have appreciated the sight of her about twenty minutes ago.”
I shudder. “I’m glad I didn’t see that. I’d never get that image out of my head.”
Lief hugs onto my shoulder, burying his face in my neck. “You scared the hells out of me too, Aurelio. Don’t do that to me ever again, you hear me? I kind of like having you around. The world was a lot more boring before you came into it.”
“I promise I’ll be more careful, Lief.”
“You better!”
The smile returns to my face. “You helped Alessia save my life, too, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. I’d like to thank you too, Lief. It can’t be easy for a fairy to go up against a griffin.”
“It wasn’t, but Alessia did most of the hard work. I just gave her the opportunities she needed to defeat it.”
“You’re one special fairy, you know that?”
Lief climbs down my arm and onto my hand, where he sits and dangles his legs off the side of my palm. He looks away from me, pretending to grumble to himself while his cheeks turn pink.
“You’re my friend, okay? I can’t let my friends get hurt. That would ruin my reputation as a guardian fairy.”
I’m about to tease him, but just then, there’s a sound to my right that distracts me. It sounds like a cross between a hammer whacking wood and ice shattering. When I look over, my eyes fly wide.
“Lief, why didn’t you say something?” I demand.
“It’s pretty obvious. I thought you’d see it. Did that griffin knock you blind or something?”
I rub my eyes, but they aren’t deceiving me. I have no idea how I missed this. Right across the cliff face, nestled between the side of the mountain and a rocky outcrop, is an enormous nest. There’s a single egg in the very center of it, and that egg is starting to crack. It wiggles back and forth as the creature inside struggles for freedom. My heart rate spikes to a very unsafe level as the first makings of a beak and a few talons peak out of the top of the egg.
“Lief, is that what I think it is?” I question.
“Of course it is what you think it is. Griffins aren’t normally that desperate for food that they’d snatch up a human. It was probably a mother hoping to keep some leftovers for her baby.”
I know I should feel guilty for murdering the mother of a baby griffin, but after seeing the size of its talons, I’m okay with an aggressive, human-eating monster dying. If its mom is anything to go by, however, this baby will be just as aggressive, and griffin chicks are still the size of human children. It could do some serious damage, even as a newborn.
“Lief, what do I do?” I hiss.
“Oh, relax, you big baby,” Lief says, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like it’s going to kill you. The worst it could do is scratch up your arm.”
“I still don’t want that, either!’
I stand perfectly still as the egg cracks, and cracks, and cracks, until finally the entire shell crumbles to the ground, and out rolls a griffin chick. It lands flat on its face, and it lays there in its nest, face-down, for much longer than should be healthy. I think about approaching it, but a heartbeat later, the chick pops up onto its feet, looking around frantically, as if embarrassed by its fall.
“It’s…kind of cute,” I admit.
I let my guard down. I’m not sure why I was afraid of this thing, other than I was expecting something like its mother to pop out of that egg. Instead of a flesh-eating, steely-eyed killer, this chick has downy gray feathers, adorable brown eyes, and floppy wings that haven’t even grown in their flight feathers. The best it can do is flap around its wings as it dries them, clumsily falling onto its side in the process.
“See? You were worried for nothing,” Lief says, smirking triumphantly.
At the sound of Lief’s voice, the griffin chick looks our way. It cocks its head to the side as it peers at me. Cautiously, it steps out of its nest on wobbly legs, approaching me with uncertainty. When I try to take a step toward it, it backpedals, but fails to keep its balance and falls right on its butt. I have to cover my mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Okay, this is actually adorable,” I say.
The chick peeps at me, much louder than a chicken’s peep, but with all the ferocity of a kitten. I decide to take a seat on the ground, so I stop towering over it and offer out my hand to smell.
“Come on. I don’t bite, unlike your mother,” I offer.
The chick’s behavior changes in an instant. It leaps to its feet, sprints over to me, and bowls me over in an awkward bird hug. I sit there, frozen, very unsure what to do as the chick rubs its face on my chest.
“Lief? Any ideas?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Lief snickers, his eyes glinting mischievously.
I shoot him a look. “Why are you laughing like that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just—I think you’ve been identified as its mom.”
“It’s—what?”
The chick rests its head on my chest, looking at me with adoration, which I didn’t think was possible for a griffin until now. It’s so cute, I can’t help but pat its head. It closes its eyes and leans into my touch, letting out a string of quiet chirrups that melt my heart even more.
“…Aurelio?”
“Alessia, you won’t want to miss this!” Lief cackles.
I glance to my right, noticing that Alessia’s just sitting up from her nap. She stares at me in confusion.
“What’s going on here?”
“We have a problem,” I sigh. “We killed a mother griffin. Baby griffin here just hatched.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Alessia grumbles. “Now it’s going to follow us everywhere.”
“Is that really such a bad thing?” Lief points out. “This is an incredibly rare opportunity. Griffins are as intelligent as humans and can learn human speech by the time they’re adults. They only attack humans and other monsters out of fear and hunger, not aggression. This chick here would be a symbol of strength and empathy for your nation.”
“He’s got a point,” I say, shrugging. “Plus, this little guy’s pretty cute.”
“You can’t be serious,” Alessia says, deadpanning.
“Why not? It’s not like I can leave it to die, not after we killed its mother.”
“That wasn’t our fault. It tried to kill us.”
“Still, I feel like it’s our responsibility all the same.”
Alessia groans, flopping back onto the stone. “I’m too tired for this. I’ve got a migraine. Do what you want, Aurelio.”
“Keeping the baby griffin it is! I don’t know what I should name it, though,” I say, watching the chick cuddle into my side. “Any ideas, Lief?”
“How about East? Since it’s from the Eastern Mountains?”
“East it is, then.” I pat the baby griffin with a smile. “Come to think of it, I already know what your first training session is going to be, little guy. How would you like to take out some nasty orcs?”