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“Look, he’s gorgeous and brilliant and talented and all those things, so it’s only natural that I might slightly enjoy interacting with him, but I didn’t take him seriously, because I thought I had a chance with someone else, but it turns out that I don’t, and he’s a snake who lied about everything, and how can I trust someone like that?”
She patted my knee. “Trust has to be earned, but maybe he’ll try to do that. Where are the blueberries?”
The rest of the night was spent making chocolate disasters, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Percy, about the bugs, about the whole love’s mate crap.
When we finally settled down, me on my bed, her on a sleeping bag on the floor, I had the weirdest dream that I snuck out of the healery and went hunting a gargoyle mate. It couldn’t be real, because it was too easy to climb the wall to his window, and then once I was inside, I crouched there, in the windowsill, watching over his dreams while he slept until the world became silent and still, as quiet as stone and everything else drifted away.
I heard my name, a distant echo that barely plinked the surface of my awareness while I lay deeply buried in a cocoon of last year’s leaves on the bottom of a lake. The ripples grew more disruptive, but I didn’t want to wake up, so I stubbornly sank lower into the quiet, peaceful safety of stone. Nothing could hurt you when you were limestone.
The ripples faded, and everything became more solidly quiet than before. And then he bore into my soul with burning flames that melted the stone, melted the peace and left me gasping against his lips.
I melted against him, his softness awakening the terrible vulnerability that I’d worked so hard to never let him see. He kissed me like I was his breath, his song, his soul, and I could not stop myself from stepping into him, sliding my hands around his neck, and pressing into the kiss like I couldn’t live without him.
I kissed his soft lips harder and harder, pressing into him with a rising desperation that knocked him a step back, then another, then another until he came to his bed and we fell, me pinning him down while I kissed him until I tasted his blood.
I pulled away, mind spinning, caught between different instincts, the protective gargoyle, the angry vengeful sorcerer’s daughter, uncertain what to do or say to make any of this make sense. I was pinning him down on his bed, and I’d cut his lip with my teeth. I pressed my teeth against my lips to check if there were fangs, but no, it was just my overexcited human teeth that wanted to devour my gargoyle mate like he was apple jam cupcakes.
I gripped his shoulders and shook him, while humiliation and anger warred with the protectiveness. "Why did you torment me all those years?”
He blinked and then his eyes went haunted, the flecks of green growing a darker gray. “Do you really want me to explain?”
“I wouldn’t have asked while pinning you to your bed if I didn’t,” I snarled.
He sighed heavily, and his body rose and fell beneath mine, setting my skin on fire. “I saw you when I came to visit Gray College as a favor to my mother, who wanted me to reach a hand of diplomacy towards those in the Gray Society who I had too much contempt to know. When I saw you and your crazy red hair, the world stopped and restarted, with an entirely different focus, purpose, meaning. I stepped back and knocked the garbage can over because I didn’t see anything besides you. I was struck in that moment with the realization that I’d found my love-mate. I wondered what excellent family you came from. With your coloring, you were probably a descendent from the Miners, but then you came over and started picking up the garbage while staring at me like I was something stuck on the bottom of your shoe. I didn’t begin intentionally.”
I scowled at him. I couldn’t trust a word he said, particularly when he looked like that, so soft and vulnerable and lying. “And you also accidentally tied dozens of knots in my hair?”
“I was devastated when I realized that you were human. I’d always considered anyone who chose to be with someone when their union would end in the suffering or death of their children to be selfish and short-sighted, the worst kinds of people, and there I was, completely transfixed by you. I transferred to Gray College in spite of it having none of the specialties that I was interested in, and then I was going to watch you from afar until you found someone else and I could bury my love in stone and live on as best as I could, but then you had Poe drop worms in my soup, and I looked up and saw you standing there, with the sun lighting your hair up like a volcano, and I physically could not resist your game. It’s customary for gargoyles to have mating rituals like gifts, songs, and games. You fed me worms, so I needed to reciprocate in some way according to my gargoyle’s instincts, but I couldn’t give you anything you liked, because actually seducing a human and ruining her life would be reprehensible, against everything I believed, so the game was to spell you with energy and tie knots in your ridiculously glorious hair while you were sleeping on the bench, which you would hate, but I would know was actually for your benefit. You responded quite violently to that. That was the first time you drugged me or kicked me.” He smiled as he reminisced, and I wanted to kick him again, with spiked boots this time.
“You’re telling me that every time that you did something vile to me, it was actually for my good? I suppose I should thank you for the countless sleepless nights and all the trauma, because it was for me.”
He studied me soberly. “Never thank me for hurting you, but I’m a gargoyle. I saw you and my heart was yours, in spite of all of my promises to myself to the contrary. I had a cousin, a half-gargoyle who died when he was seven. It was very memorable, the half-shifts that flaked off, then became raw wounds when he turned human.” He closed his eyes tight. “I needed you to hate me, or I’d end up hurting you, destroying you long-term.”
“If you were so determined to be honorable and make me hate you by torturing me, why did you stop?”
He opened his eyes and stared at me. “Well, Rynne, your witch friend, told me that you would only think of marrying a gargoyle. If you were going to choose misery and pain, it would be with me.”
Of all the lies he told himself to help him sleep at night, that was the worst. I snorted. “You’re so incredibly honorable; it must physically hurt to be you.”
“It has hurt to be me for a long time now. That is true. Making you hate me was miserable on every level, only made tolerable knowing that you would torture me back with interest. I’m surprised you never cut off any of my toes. You should have. I would have deserved it, but you always stopped short of permanent destruction because you have a beautiful nature that I could never deserve. I love that about you, your hesitation to harm, as much as I love the refusal to make yourself a martyr.”
I shuddered and pulled away from him. “Don’t use that word, ‘love.’ You wouldn’t know love if it punched you in the face. You don’t torture people you love. That’s not love. Obsession, maybe, but not love.”
“I love you.” He exhaled quickly after he said those words and then reached up hesitantly to touch my cheek.
I jerked back. It’s like he was determined to get his toes chopped off. “I told you not to use that word,” I ground out. Maybe I could rip his arms off.
“I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry that I let you think for a moment that you were anything other than the single most brilliant, beautiful, fascinating, fiery soul I’ve ever known. You’re right. You shouldn’t forgive me for what I did to you, what I let you think, how condescending I was, not allowing you to choose for yourself whether or not you wanted to be with me. I loved you stupidly.”
“You don’t love me, and the word ‘sorry,’ doesn’t make everything all better. How could you kiss me while I was watching over you? You know how angry I am, but you took advantage of me, the way that you always do.” The way I wanted to take advantage of him now, while I had him pinned beneath me.
He glanced down at my mouth, and his brows drew together. “You were silent stone for too long, too soon. You weren’t responding to anything else, and I panicked. I shouldn’t have kissed you, particularly when three kisses from a gargoyle is basically an eternal vow of love and devotion, but you almost didn’t wake up. I have to protect you.” He spoke those last words softly, and this time, when his fingers brushed my cheek, I didn’t pull away.
I inhaled and caught the scent of his skin, the blood of his still healing wounds, and the remnant of his shaving cream. For a dizzying moment, I wanted to forget about all the hurt he’d caused me so that I could selfishly indulge in the thing that I craved, that I’d been craving more and more a little at a time over the last two months. My jaws ached to taste his skin, like my fingers wanted to catalogue the texture of his hair and lips.
I sat up and slid off him onto the floor. My lower legs were not responding perfectly well, but that didn’t matter when my own heart was aching to betray my safety.
I pointed at him while I tried to get my mind to operate according to specs. “Three kisses marks an eternal vow of love and devotion? Are you talking about mating customs?”
