Sebastian …
I opened my eyes. Ezzie and Hugo battled the grotesques around me, but Anya continued to advance. I searched frantically for something else to defend myself with, though I knew it was useless. I flipped the knife over in my hand and threw it as hard as I could.
Sebastian …
The name resounded in my head, an internal scream. The knife found a home deep in the chimera’s thigh. Anya roared, her talon-hand going to the wound. Thick black blood poured out as she ripped the knife from her skin. My heart hit the bottom of my stomach.
This was it.
Tears wet my face. A prayer crossed my lips. Then I cried out inside my head once last time.
Sebastian!
A white flash exploded all around me, following by a shattering pain. I felt myself crumpling to the ground, had a vague knowledge than it was a blow to my head from the chimera. But even that thought was gone as quick as it came. The white faded to gray, then black.
Then nothing at all.
*
The wind rushed through my hair, yanking it from the clip I used to hold it out of my eyes. The air was uncomfortably cool on my face, and I shivered, but only for a second. Sebastian, as if sensing I was cold, pulled me a little closer to his chest as he carried me towards Copper Mountain.
I studied his wings as we flew. In the beginning, I thought they looked like giant bat wings, but after watching Sebastian get his wing stitched up by Karl and seeing them close up, I’d changed my mind. His wings were like something you’d see on a dragon, with large, curved talons making up the end of each center point. They were easily a foot taller than his head when they were folded in – unless weighed down and hidden inside his long jacket.
I was glad he was finally done with wearing the last remaining bit of his disguise, even though I knew it was a hard decision for him. He didn’t talk about it, but I knew. I watched the light from the overcast sky reflect across the thinner parts of his wings. The leathery-looking skin glistened. It was like staring at an oily patch of water in the road and seeing the refraction of colors inside the darkness.
His clawed hands held me securely, but gently, as his wings pumped several times, increasing our altitude. I glanced at his fingers, wondering if his feet were anything like his hands. I’d never seen him without his beat-up pair of Converse. Sebastian suddenly tilted one wing and angled his body. We veered to the right and picked up speed.
‘This is amazing, Sebastian!’ I tightened my arms around his neck. ‘I feel like I’m dreaming!’
Something jostled me awake.
I opened my eyes, expecting to find Sebastian staring down at me with his silver-moon eyes, but instead, it was Hugo, holding me propped up in his arm. I blinked away the confusion, then blinked until he was in totally in focus.
‘What happened?’ I demanded, struggling to sit up.
Ezzie knelt nearby, wiping her blood-splattered mace in a clump of grass. ‘I could’ve sworn I told you and Katie to remain inside,’ she said, her attention focused on her task. When she finished, she looked at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Why should I be surprised you didn’t listen?’
‘Funny,’ said Hugo, shifting his gaze to Ezzie. ‘I pretty much said the same thing to you.’
I twisted free from Hugo’s grasp and maneuvered into a more upright position. The movement made my vision swim. ‘I sent Katie back to the house, but I couldn’t leave until I made sure you were okay.’
‘And are you?’ asked Hugo, still looking at her.
A trace of a smile rested at the corner of Ezzie’s mouth. Then she glared back at him, chin raised. ‘Of course I’m okay. I told you, even in my current form, I am still better at dealing with shadowen than you are, Gypsy.’
‘Not anymore,’ he said, patting the second diamond-coated mace, which was lying on the ground beside him. ‘Not since we got these babies. Did you see how easy that beast went down?’ He nodded smugly at me. ‘We killed the groties,’ he said, jutting his thumb towards the two stone bodies in the garden clearing. ‘But we don’t know what happened to the chimera. It just took off.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that.’
I tried to stand, but Hugo held me by the shoulder. ‘Don’t get up. Not until we get you looked at.’ His eyes drifted towards my temple. ‘You’ve got a pretty nasty cut.’
My parched throat felt like sandpaper. ‘It was Anya.’
‘Yes,’ said Ezzie, pursing her lips together. ‘I had suspected that Augustine’s minions had survived your Marksmen’s attack outside the Circe. Now we know for sure.’
‘So that other chimera—’
‘Was Matthias,’ she finished. A shadow crossed her face. ‘I didn’t realize at first. His scent has changed, even his voice. He is nothing of the gargoyle I once knew, traitor though he was, even then.’
I probed the side of my head, feeling stickiness. ‘But what happened? She was going to kill me.’ I glanced at my bloodstained fingers, wincing as I became conscious of the pulsing at my temple. ‘She would’ve killed me.’
Hugo pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick message, and then he stuffed it in back in his pocket, all the while still holding me firm in the crook of his other arm. ‘I was hoping you could answer that.’
‘I’m okay,’ I said, pushing against him. He reluctantly allowed me to sit up straight. ‘I don’t have a clue. I mean, I got her in the leg with my knife, which really only made her mad. She was coming for me, and then …’
‘And then,’ said Hugo patiently when I didn’t continue.
‘I called out to Sebastian,’ I said, shoving aside the grogginess I felt, forcing my memory to clear. ‘I don’t know why I did it, but I just knew I was supposed to. I yelled it in my head.’
Ezzie moved quickly forward, grasping my leg. ‘How did it feel?’
I frowned. ‘Feel?’
‘When you spoke to him,’ she replied.
‘I didn’t speak to him. I just said his name in my mind.’ I reached up and pressed my hand against the back of my neck. ‘No, wait. I did feel something. It was like electricity. A buzzing, right back here.’
The lines and creases reappeared on Ezzie’s face. ‘And what else?’
‘The chimera hit me,’ I said slowly, piecing together those last few seconds before I lost consciousness. ‘But then, it was like … like she’d hit a brick wall, or something. She froze. I saw the hatred in her eyes; she wanted to rip me apart. But she couldn’t. Something stopped her.’ My heart beat faster, and I clasped my dandelion pendant as warmth filled every part of me. ‘Ezzie, I think … I think it was Sebastian.’
20. Josephine
‘Have you ever experienced this before?’ Ezzie questioned.
I massaged my neck to keep my mind off the pain in my temple, and to distract myself from the weird feeling in my stomach. ‘Not like this.’ I hesitated. But maybe Ezzie would understand. I licked my dry lips. ‘I could read his emotions before, but there were times that I felt, like if I tried really hard, I could do something more. I don’t know if that makes sense.’
‘You communicated with him tonight,’ said Ezzie, ‘in a way that goes even beyond the unspoken communication shared between guardians and charges through their bond.’ She stood and stared up at the night.
‘The gargoyle telepathy,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘The gargoyle what?’ said Hugo, looking back and forth between us.
At that moment, Nadya Corsi appeared from around the sunflowers. She held a small bag in her arms. She turned a quick, casual circle around the space, taking everything in. The three of us watched quietly as she pulled out a glass vial from the bag and popped off the lid.
She approached the bodies of the dead grotesques and sprinkled the contents over them. It was the same stuff Quentin and his men used to dispose of shadowen bodies. Within seconds, the stone corpses crumbled, turned to dust, and floated eerily away on the breeze.
Nadya came to me next, shooing Hugo away like he w
as a kid. She knelt down and took my chin between her fingers, turning my head to examine me. ‘You’re lucky I’m here,’ she said. ‘Shadowen wounds can fester if not treated properly.’
She pulled a smaller pouch, a metal box, and a wooden bowl from her bag, reminding me of a sort of weird Mary Poppins. She poured light gray powder into the bowl and added a sprig of some kind of plant that she’d taken from the box. She crumbled it all between her fingers.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Shadow medicine,’ she said, like I should know.
Nadya licked her thumb and stuck it in the mixture. She then placed her thumb directly on my temple. I scrunched up my face, caught between curiosity and total disgust. But the pain immediately stopped. Nadya removed her hand and studied the wound with satisfaction.
‘Better,’ she said.
She licked her other thumb and used it to wipe away the weird mixture. It was gross, but it worked. My headache disappeared, and I felt worlds better.
‘Thanks,’ I managed.
Hugo helped me to my feet. The garden was still, and the breeze had ceased, leaving the air cool, but not like it was before.
‘Ezzie,’ I said, turning to her. ‘I don’t understand. How could I talk to Sebastian? I thought only gargoyles could communicate with each other. Do you think it had anything to do with this?’ I undid the necklace and held it out.
Nadya stepped forward, tilting her head to the side. ‘Is this your sclav?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I?’
I dropped the pendant into her open palm. She rubbed her fingers along the glass, examining it with the same intensity as she had my wound. It felt like a painful eternity since I’d held the same necklace out to Sebastian, allowing his tattoo brand and my Outcast trinket to link us together.
‘Who in your clan has the power to initiate a sclav?’ Nadya questioned, a hint of suspicion in her level tone. ‘Only those of Corsi blood or members of the Sobrasi have the ability to tattoo brands and awaken bonding objects such as this.’
‘Nobody,’ I replied, my uneasiness rising.
Nadya tapped the surface. ‘It’s also a dandelion.’
‘It belonged to … to my boyfriend’s grandmother.’
As the sentence left my mouth, I flinched. Saying the word out loud didn’t feel right. That’s what Quentin was. My boyfriend. My intended. A cold tendril curled around my shoulders.
‘This belongs to the Marks family?’ said Hugo, drawing up like he thought the necklace might bite.
‘His grandmother was from the Harven clan originally,’ I replied. ‘At least, that’s what he told me, anyway. He thought I’d like it, you know, because of the dandelion and the Circe logo.’
‘Hmm,’ said Nadya, handing it back to me. ‘Does it change at all?’
I fastened it around my neck, feeling instantly better with it securely in place. ‘Well, it gets warm sometimes. Hot, even.’ I paused, quickly going back over the last few minutes in my mind, and then going further back, to Matthias’ attack out on the street. ‘Do you think this has something to do with me being able to communicate with Sebastian?’
Esmeralda looked skeptical. ‘I’ve never heard of such.’
‘There were once Harvens in the Sobrasi,’ said Nadya. ‘It’s not a stretch to think that perhaps his grandmother’s necklace had once been used in some other shadowen manner.’ She packed up her bag and held it in her hands. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no way of knowing.’
My heart raced. Was it possible that I could talk to him the same way he did with Esmeralda? A smile crept across my lips. Even without Sebastian beside me, I sensed a closeness with him that flooded me with an overwhelming sense of peace.
‘Sebastian stopped Anya from killing me,’ I said.
Hugo rested his mace against his shoulder and shot me a strange look under raised brows. ‘You really think he had something to do with it?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘Don’t ask me to explain it, because it’s just like everything else we’re dealing with. It doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t understand any of it. But I just … felt it.’
Hugo rolled his eyes up towards the trees and shrugged. ‘Well, who am I to question anything going on around here? Next you’ll be telling me that he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes, and you know what? I’ll probably believe you.’ He turned his gaze in the direction of the trees beyond the back yard. ‘Meanwhile, let’s get back inside. I’ve had about all I can handle tonight.’ He grimaced. ‘And I think I pulled a muscle.’ He rotated his shoulders around and stretched his arm.
Ezzie smiled at him. ‘You should start training with the Marksmen.’
He grinned back at her. ‘That hurts.’
*
We made our way through the pre-dawn darkness back to the inn. The guys were in the parlor. Kris looked up from his game of solitaire. Vincent continued flipping through television stations. And James let out a really loud snore from the couch. Hugo propped his mace against the stair railing and plopped into the leather armchair by the window. I kept walking, straight through the parlor and up the stairs. I needed a shower. And I wanted to talk to Katie.
She wasn’t in our room. I figured I must’ve missed her in one of the many rooms downstairs. Or maybe she was avoiding me. I closed the bathroom door and turned on the water. Katie didn’t usually hold grudges, but I had been pretty firm with her. I knew she felt left out of this whole thing, and I didn’t know how to change that.
Having her here was harder than I thought it’d be.
I got out of the shower and put on some fresh clothes. Once back in our bedroom, I stood in front of the long, oval wall mirror and studied my reflection. The dark circles under my eyes glared back at me.
I fastened my pendant around my neck and stared at it carefully through the mirror. It had been Quentin’s gift to me and yet, it had been the very thing to bring Sebastian into my life. The irony of that occurrence had never truly hit me until that moment.
I pictured Quentin in the Court of Shadows, interacting with people and charming them as only he could do. He’d always had a way with others. Even if his sense of duty prevented him from physically hurting Sebastian, would he go so far as to try and sway Council members against Sebastian before the trial?
I didn’t know the answer to anything, anymore. For all his heart-felt assurances, Quentin had never trusted me when it came to Sebastian. The bond he knew Sebastian and I shared was a raw spot with him. I had tried – and found myself still trying – to understand where he was coming from. But it was more than just his feelings about my being sealed to Sebastian. Quentin had been trained his whole life to protect us from shadow creatures who hated us. He refused to see beyond that.
He wouldn’t accept what I knew was true.
And now, I was beginning to doubt he ever would.
The bed looked inviting as I dumped my old clothes into my bag. I really could use some sleep. But Katie first. I stepped into the hall and the wooden floor creaked in protest. I shut the door behind me. Instead of going down the main staircase, I turned right and took the smaller, secondary flight of stairs down to the lower level. This one opened into the study, which I’d only glimpsed in passing so far.
The room was decorated with rustic-looking rugs and old paintings with gold frames. A tiny desk lamp had been left on, providing enough light to see by. Two wingback chairs faced a large fireplace, their backs to the door. I stepped around the first one and sank into the thick cushion. Everything about the room reminded me of my father.
One day. That was all I had left of the flimsy story I’d given him about spending the weekend with Katie. Then, just like with Quentin, I was going to have to come up with something new – something that would get me through until the trial. After that, I didn’t care. Sebastian would be free, and I’d deal with whatever happened next.
I set my phone on the marble end table beside me and took the dandelion pendant between my palms, staring
hard into its center. The flower’s pedals shimmered with sun-lit gold, even in the dim light of the study. Was I imagining it, or was the glass getting warmer?
I closed my eyes, conjuring up an image of Sebastian – one of the last times we’d been together before he was yanked in front of the kris, accused of Karl’s murder. I put the necklace to my lips and dove into the memory.
I stood at the opening of the old mineshaft underneath the Sutallee Bridge. Late afternoon had turned to evening while we’d been inside Esmeralda’s hidden cave home. The woods held shadows tightly between tree trunks. We needed to get back to the Circe and tell Karl and my father about Augustine’s chimeras.
Sebastian leaned wearily against the dirt wall, clutching his stomach. His eyes were shut tight. His teeth were clenched, and I saw their sharp points poking out between his dark lips as he took several deep breaths. I winced at the sight of him, but I didn’t say anything.
He’d just learned he could shadow through walls, which was crazy enough, but now he had to deal with the way it made him feel, especially after carrying someone with him, like me. I chewed my nail guiltily. It was my fault he looked like he was about to throw up.
‘I’m okay,’ he said softly, as though he knew I was staring at him. ‘Just give me a minute.’
I wanted to go to him, but something held me back. Maybe it was the guilt.
Slowly, Sebastian opened his eyes. Their silver depths glimmered back at me like a forest animal caught in the light of a campfire. He smiled and straightened himself up, nodding that he was ready to go.
We walked with more distance between us than before the mountain picnic. I sensed Sebastian’s guarded emotions, which he held carefully at arm’s length. I also felt how hungry he was getting. I bit my lip, wondering if I was that much of an open book to him.
‘What went on between you and Esmeralda back there?’ I asked, mainly to get out of my own head. ‘It’s like you guys went in and out of conversation, and then, you’d just stand there, staring at each other.’
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