“Give me my daughter and the Codex, or all of you willburn.” The fire surges brightly at his ominous threat, flames licking the top of the hearth, smoke swirling into the common room, choking out the breathable air.
Chaos erupts as the gargoyles and I charge at him, the witches calling up more spells, the fire roaring like a living beast as we grapple with the dark fae king and magic sizzles in the air and dishes clatter to the ground and then, all at once, the bastard is just… gone.
He’s gone.
The fire is back in its place. The smoke has cleared.
Drae, Augs, and I look around at each other and the space between us like we just hallucinated the whole damn thing.
“Where the fuckishe?” Draegan demands. “He was right bloody here in my grasp, and then he just—”
“No… Oh, goddess, no.No!” Westlyn’s cries slice through the confusion, and we turn to find her on her knees in front of the fire, tears glittering on her cheeks, her hair wild.
In her hands, she holds a pair of broken glasses like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever touched.
My fucking heart drops.
Because right beside her, towering over her like a silent, protective sentry, is a horned, winged statue of solid stone.
Agargoyleof solid stone.
Rook.
Chapter Thirteen
DRAEGAN
There’s no safety to be found here. No security.
Rook’s transformation is just one more reminder of the ticking clock hanging over us all, as sharp and deadly as the guillotine outside.
From a bedroom on the second floor an hour after the attack, I gaze out the window, trying to see beyond the dark, snow-covered street. Trying to gauge how far this town is from Verrick’s castle, assuming that’s where he might’ve gone. Trying to pick out the best route.
Trying to do something other than stand by while my men to turn to stone and the woman I love falls into the clutches of her evil father, cursed to roam this desolate land as the souls of her gargoyles will be cursed to wander the halls of hell.
I’ve just decided that no one route is better than the other—that I must simply choose a direction and fly until I find him—when I feel her approaching the doorway.
It’s her presence I sense first, the warmth on the air, the way my heart beats faster when she’s near. Her scent comes to me next, apples and sweetness, newly tinged with a magic all her own.
When I finally hear the creek of her soft footsteps on the wooden floors, I turn from the window and look her over.
Before dinner, she traded in her thin dress for some warmer clothing she must’ve found in one of the rooms—a soft tunic and trousers, wool socks that are a bit too large, slouching on her feet—and despite her show of power at the cathedral, she looks young and soft and far too vulnerable.
“You’re planning to go after him,” she says quietly. They’re the first words she’s directly spoken to me since our argument in my bathroom—feels like a lifetime ago now.
But those words are not a question, so I don’t answer them as such.
“This is yours,” I say instead, handing over the amulet I found in her bedroom at Blackmoor. “You… left it behind.”
It glows bright at her touch, violet and amber light reflecting in the depths of her eyes.
“It feels stronger here,” she says, tucking it into a pocket in her trousers. “Everything does—the amulet, my magic. My…” She swallows hard. “My connection to Verrick. Even when he’s not with me, I feel him trying to get inside my mind. Trying to manipulate me again.”
My blood simmers, my jaw clenching tight.
“All the more reason for me to—”End him, I want to say, but don’t. That would require admitting that yes, Iamplanning to go after him—an admission that would only lead to a prolonged argument in which she tries to talk me out of it and I try to justify it and then, once again, we part in bitter silence.
“What happens when the sun rises and your stuck outside somewhere?”
