by Cate Corvin
I was wide awake in a second, cataloguing everything that had changed in my cell’s environment while I slept. The disruptor was still on, because it took all my energy to open my eyelids and my abdomen was taken over by nausea. Thin sunlight streamed in through the tiny window.
And Sebastian was outside the bars, holding a small bowl with a tarnished spoon in it. The smell was utterly unappetizing, but if I wanted to find a way to get out of here in one piece, I needed all the strength I could get.
He pushed the porcelain bowl through. It was more of a squat cup, and filled to the brim with a thin, light-colored sort of gruel, but hey, calories were calories, and I was starving.
I picked up the spoon and tried to bend it surreptitiously. Absolutely nothing happened. Sebastian quirked an eyebrow as I took a bite of the gruel, unsmiling and feeling more hopeless than ever.
“Obviously the hypersonic disruptor does what we claim. Have you tried punching a wall yet?”
What a bastard. He looked just as grim and hopeless as I did, but still, he didn’t have to taunt me about how powerless I was now.
I took another bite of the gruel without breaking eye contact and considered what to say to him. Whoever these gargoyles were, neither of them had said my name even once, but I was sure they knew it.
They were dissociating me, dehumanizing me. It was hard to feel sorry for someone’s death when you didn’t quite think of them as a real being. Before I asked Sebastian for anything, I needed him to remember that I was also a living person, a gargoyle, not just a vertebrate life form to stick in a cage and poke at.
“My name is Zara, and no, I obviously haven’t punched the walls. I’m smart enough to know it would do me no good.”
Sebastian slowly sank into a crouch as he watched me eat. I took another bite, trying to catch his eyes again. “They usually try. I can’t blame them. I tried too, once.”
That perked up my interest against my will. “Seriously, it’s okay to call me by my name. Zara. Z-A-R-A. Zara Michelle Sterling.” I wasn’t going to use my new last name in case he was another Kyrillian-hater and it set him off. “Were you a captive here, too?”
If I’d thought I was making any small amount of headway with Sebastian, I’d been sorely mistaken. His eyes immediately shuttered and his lips tightened. “Finish your rations, stoneheart.” Sebastian stood again, arms crossed over his chest, and I knew pushing any further would get me nowhere. If anything, it might work against me.
I quietly finished my gruel, slid the cup back through the bars, and set about examining the hypersonic emitter bracelets as Sebastian walked away. All I had to do was figure out how to slide them off or shatter them, and my crystalline physiology would harden once more. Piece of cake, right?
Two days later, I was still staring at those damn bracelets, with no solution in sight. I hated these fucking bracelets, I hated gruel, and I hated Sebastian.
But even more, I hated how much I missed my guys.
My hatred kept me going.
Chapter Twenty
Some people probably got broken down by the circumstances of their situations, but after a week of eating nothing but that thin, flavorless slop and trying everything short of chewing off my own fingers to get these cuffs off, I wasn’t feeling very broken.
No, I was pissed, and just the sight of Sebastian’s black combat boots striding into my line of sight was enough to make me see red.
Today, though, he carried more than just my usual bowl of gruel. A clean shirt was draped over his arm, along with a pair of jeans.
Right at that moment, seven days after I’d been locked in this cell, he could’ve been carrying an old potato sack and I probably would’ve rejoiced at the change in clothes. Mine were crusted with dust, damp thanks to a pipe leak in the cell next to me, and creased all over. At that point, I might’ve seriously considered trading my left arm just for a hot shower and some soap. I was a rightie anyway.
I tried not to look too eager when Sebastian thrust the clean clothes through the bars and let them fall in my lap. For all I knew, they liked to change their prisoners right before they executed them. This could be my last meal.
“Eat and get dressed,” Sebastian said. Since he’d seen through my attempts to befriend him, he’d taken on an almost robotic quality when he spoke to me, like he was conversing with the wall or a chair. I wondered how many other gargoyles had tried that same thing before, and how many he might’ve actually grown to like before they were killed.
Still, I wasn’t going to turn down clean clothes just because death was looming. “Would you turn around, please?”
Sebastian just stared at me. I stared back, clutching the new clothes. It felt like years passed before he slowly turned around, standing just out of arm’s reach and clasping his hands behind his back beneath his wings.
I changed quickly, only wobbling the slightest bit. Over the last few days of desperate escape-planning, I’d adjusted to the nausea and dizziness the hypersonic disruptor caused and could walk without teetering over for short distances. Granted, I only had the distance of my small cell to measure that by, but I figured if I could get away from the disruptor, I could hold myself together long enough to get away.
Maybe. I might’ve just developed some overly idealistic notions during the monotony of imprisonment. I was also wobbly from the lack of food, and trying to come up with coherent thoughts and plans was growing more difficult by the hour.
I pulled off the pajama shirt that Damien had bought for me and let it drop, swiftly yanking the plain tee shirt over my head. My pajama pants followed. The new jeans Sebastian had given me were a size too large, had glittery sequins on the butt pockets, and were clearly chosen for a taller gargoyle. I wondered if other females lived here, and if they were just kept away from this prison. Or maybe these were the clothes of a former prisoner, a gargoyle whose footsteps I’d soon be following in.
I nudged my dirty clothes over to the bars and Sebastian turned around. He passed me the gruel in silence, gathered my clothes while I ate, then left me to my own devices and boredom once again.
Half an hour later, I received a shock that rattled me to the core.
The hall filled with the sounds of shoes. It was easy to pick Sebastian’s boots out of the noises, but two other strides were new: one a little slower and more cautious, and a pair of high heels that snapped against the concrete floors.
I climbed to my feet, using the bars to leverage myself upright just in time. Sebastian’s dead eyes flicked over my face, and he stopped outside my cell. “Keep your hands outside the bars at all times,” he said tonelessly to the visitors, but for the first time, I didn’t give a shit what he said. I just wanted to hug the man outside hard enough to shatter his bones.
My fingers were white-knuckled around the bars, but my smile fell away. Angelique Clarté looked me over, her upper lip twisted in a sneer, but Sawyer… I’d expected that Sawyer would ignore Sebastian’s instructions and reach for me immediately.
He wore the same sort of dark fatigues as my captors, perfectly cut to emphasize his height and broad shoulders, and his usually-rumpled hair was slicked back. He looked like the kind of sleek, hard-faced bodyguard who belonged by Angelique’s side, rigid and unsmiling as he took me in.
He looked me over with the same sort of detached regard that Sebastian gave me: like I was a thing, not a person. “Have you verified the stoneheart variety?”
A shiver went down my spine. He sounded as cold as Angelique. I gazed into his blue-green eyes and saw… nothing. He might as well have been looking right through me.
“Not physically, no,” Sebastian replied. Unless it was my imagination, he shifted in place a little, looking uncomfortable with the line of questioning.
Sawyer stood only a foot away from me, well within arm’s reach. He was close enough that when he turned his head to look at Sebastian, politely outraged incredulity written all over his face, that I noticed the small changes I would’ve seen right away if I
hadn’t been so floored by his unexpected arrival.
His skin had a glassy, translucent gleam, the lines of his bone structure ever so slightly perfected. Even the blue-green shade of his eyes seemed more vivid, almost tropical.
Sawyer Hawkins was a gargoyle.
I held my breath, waiting for Sawyer to claim me like I knew he would, to destroy the disruptor and break me out of here. There was absolutely no way he’d let me stay here a second longer, because that wasn’t the Sawyer I knew and loved. Even though he looked different, even though he was with Angelique for some reason…
Even though he was the last person to text me right before I was captured, the one who summoned me to the roof in the first place. My heart stuttered in my chest.
“What are your questions for her?” Angelique asked, sounding bored. Sawyer kept his chin tilted towards her, all interest in me apparently dropped.
My heart sank to the ground and kept going. If this was a rescue attempt, it was a very shitty one.
Another pair of footsteps echoed down the corridor. Sebastian straightened up, his jaw tightening as the gargoyle who’d kidnapped me appeared through my bars.
I no longer felt rage from looking at him. With Sawyer not even bothering to acknowledge me, I just felt empty inside. After having been partners with him for so long, I felt like I would know if my pardner was faking me out…
But right now, I couldn’t tell at all. Sawyer was a gargoyle, flawless and beautiful, and he had Angelique at his side. He’d given me absolutely zero tells.
What if there was a side to my partner I’d never known before? Sawyer had never regarded gargoyles with the same amount of disdain as I had. This entire time, he might’ve been overjoyed that someone as close to him as me had found an in into the gargoyle world.
Strangely, my abductor seemed to dislike Angelique as much as I did, if not more so. He narrowed those pale eyes, looking her over from head to toe with an expression of disgust I didn’t think any male could wear when looking at her.
“So sorry to take up your precious time, Miss Clarté,” he said, emphasizing the Miss for some reason. “And… Mr. Terez. These questions are necessary. Surely you understand that, unless you have the balls to take on the Accords.”
Terez? Sawyer was a Topaz now?
Sawyer rolled his shoulders and let out a small sigh. “No one is attempting to take on the Accords, Nolan, but we’re not here to fuck around. Miss Clarté is a very busy woman, so if you could get on with it…?”
Nolan—I was glad my abductor and captor now had a name in my mind besides ‘big gaping asshole’—just turned that icy gaze on Sawyer. “To answer your previous question, no, we don’t physically examine the stoneheart specimen until a Diamond has a chance to question them. The fewer Accords we break, the better. My employer is a firm believer in not cutting corners.”
“Well then, ask away. I have pressing business with your employer, as it stands.” Angelique examined one translucent baby-pink fingernail like she didn’t have a care in the world. Sawyer still didn’t even look at me.
My stoneheart felt like it was finally becoming dead stone and crumbling to pieces inside me.
“Prisoner.” Nolan gave Angelique one last nasty look and diverted all his unwelcome attention onto me. “How long have you belonged to gargoylekind?”
My fingers tightened around the bars until my joints creaked. “Almost three weeks now,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I think.”
Angelique raised an eyebrow and tossed a long sheet of white-blonde hair over her shoulder. “Truth.”
All I wanted was for Sawyer to look at me. He smiled at Nolan and shifted his weight, almost leaning into Angelique’s side. She tilted her head towards him.
I was pretty sure that if looks could kill, between Nolan and I, Sawyer would’ve been reduced to a wet red smear on the concrete.
“Do you have any affiliation with Damien Viridios?” Nolan asked me, but his eyes remained on Angelique.
There was no way I could lie my way out of this one, even without Angelique. He’d snatched me, a wingless human turned stoneheart, right off the top of Viridios Tower. Obviously I was some sort of affiliated with him.
He didn’t need the specifics, though. All I could do was wait and see if Angelique would sell me out. “Of course I know him. We’re friends.”
“Truth.” Angelique whispered something in Sawyer’s ear after she confirmed what surely popped up as an obvious truth on her radar.
Nolan finally ripped his eyes away from Angelique to cast me an oblique glance. “I’m sure you are, prisoner. Last question: which variety of stoneheart did Damien give you when you were created?”
If I were still a human, a cold sweat would’ve broken out across my spine right then and there. If I openly admitted to possessing a Ruby stone heart, much less one belonging to the Kyrillians, I’d be hastening my death. I only had seconds to lie, to make a choice, and for some reason, quiet Jules popped into my head.
“Amethyst. My name is Zara Danthuzin,” I said. My stone heart pounded weakly, flooded with fear.
It felt like a small eternity passed in the next few seconds.
“That’s impossible,” my captor said, his wings rustling behind him in agitation. Sebastian kept his eyes straight forward, hands clasped behind his back, but a furrow had appeared between his brows.
Incredulity spread across Nolan’s features like an ink drop through water, cemented there when Angelique huffed and said, “Truth, Nolan. My god, did you really believe this was your lost Kyrillian Ruby? You’re wasting my time for this?”
Nolan cast Sebastian a cold look. The gargoyle who’d been bringing me slop for the last half a week raised one shoulder. “Her face was confirmed by eyewitnesses. It doesn’t add up.”
“I believe that I am the Diamond here.” Angelique’s tone could’ve cut glass. “And my truthsense detected no deception. If she possessed a Ruby stoneheart, she would be a complete void to me. Eyewitnesses can lie, Nolan. Besides, Viridios wouldn’t pass off such a precious stoneheart as that Ruby to a woman he’d never met before.”
I tried to keep all hope from my face. Angelique was obviously lying for me through her teeth, which meant Sawyer…
No sighs of relief. I kept myself tense and worried, eyes round. They had to believe me for this to work, but the wave of relief that crashed over me was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe that I’d doubted Sawyer for an instant, but after an entire week of nothing but a cup of cold gruel to keep myself alive and mildew for company, I’d probably gone a little insane.
Nolan cast a shrewd look my way, clearly calculating. His next words did nothing to alleviate my fears. “Thank you for your insight, Miss Clarté. We’ll decide how to proceed from here.”
Sebastian crowded in behind them, ushering them back down the hall. I clung to the bars, watching them recede until the last of Sawyer’s broad shoulders were out of sight.
He never looked back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Seeing Sawyer and Angelique filled me with a renewed sense of hope for about half an hour.
Once the hall was quiet again, I was left behind with nothing but my swirling thoughts and suffocating dread that hung over me.
Whatever Nolan’s employer was planning, they clearly didn’t give a damn about the Stone Accords, regardless of what Nolan may have said. It was the singular absolute, unbreakable law: never take a stoneheart from a gargoyle. Whoever was keeping me here obviously didn’t care, especially if no one outside of his employ knew that I was here.
I had spent hours lost in my thoughts, barely aware of the damp seeping into my new clothes, when new footsteps heralded another visitor. Feeling bitter, I forced myself to my feet, grasping onto the bars just as a very surprising and unwelcome face came into sight.
My thoughts ground to a halt in shock. “You.”
The arsonist looked me up and down, a smirk twisting his features. “Knew they’d get ya eventually, stone bitch.”
“Nice to see you where you belong,” he said, glancing around my bare concrete cell. “In just a few hours, you’ll be joining your boyfriend in the ground. Lookin’ forward to it.”
My fingers tightened around the bars until my knuckles went white. “How’d you get here?”
He shrugged, grinning widely to expose yellowed teeth that were blackening at the roots. “You should have realized by now, your herd of little piggies is rotten to the core. I was out in a matter of hours.”
My stoneheart pulsed in my ears, drowning out the sound of another set of footsteps approaching. The poor Ruby nearly gave up entirely when Jake Selter sauntered up to the bars, his hands shoved in his pockets. It was odd seeing him out of uniform, but dressed in plain jeans and a tee shirt, Selter could’ve been any other guy on the street.
Well, now I knew who’d sprung the arsonist.
“Shut the fuck up, Robert,” he muttered, giving my arsonist a name. “Shame to see you here, Zara. I tried. I really did.” Selter drew his hands out of his pockets and spread them wide. “Josh wanted me to take care of you if anything happened, and I would’ve. If you’d just agreed to be my partner, I could have protected you from all of this. You’d still be one of us. A cop… human.”
No, if I’d attached myself to Selter when Josh died, my life would have turned out very differently. I wouldn’t have a stoneheart, nor would I have met Gio and Damien. I would’ve been another crooked cop fucking people and gargoyles over for their mysterious employer.
I sucked in a breath, unable to form words that would impress on Selter just how much I fucking loathed him. He wiggled his left hand, and my eye went to the cell phone in his palm. It had a metallic blue case. Just like Sawyer’s.
“You texted me,” I said, the pieces clicking into place. Josh had been after the Ruby in the Opal’s apartment… “And Josh was working for them too, wasn’t he?”