by Everly Frost
The biggest problem we have, is the gap between Jasper and me that leaves the girl vulnerable. We both see it at the same time, and quickly work our way toward each other with the intention of forming a closer barrier around her. Before we can close the gap, two gargoyles dart inward, each from opposite sides. One rips the girl’s hands away from the Phoenix in a flurry of burnished feathers. The other yanks her feet out from under her and pulls backward. Her face bounces against the bird as the gargoyle holding onto her ankles slings her out into the air and darts away with her. The girl’s scream fades as the gargoyle drops south and flies under the Phoenix, obscuring my view for a moment. I locate him as he reappears on the other side except… he doesn’t have the girl anymore.
He must have handed her off to another gargoyle. At the same time, the remaining gargoyles drop beneath us and scatter in all directions. Now that we’re above them, all I can see is a jumble of grey wings. It’s a clever ploy. One I’d appreciate if I wasn’t on the receiving end of it.
Desperately, I search for any glimpse of the girl’s silver dress that might tell me which gargoyle has her.
Cassian takes a final swipe at Jasper with a vehement snarl before taking off with the others. I swing back to the ones I was fighting only to find the air clear. They’re all gone. And they’re all flying in different directions to act as diversions.
Phoenix, do you see her?
I’m sorry, Princess. Their wings conceal much. Do you want to pursue the ones heading west?
West is the direction of the border. It would make sense for them to escape in that direction, but I wouldn’t put it past them to fly further east into our airspace and then double back to confuse and evade us.
I spin. “Jasper—”
He shushes me, his eyes closed. One hand, palm out, tells me to wait.
The girl screams. Clever girl. We can locate her by the sound. We both spin left to a clump of three gargoyles flying westward. Turns out they’re taking the quickest route to the border after all. The Phoenix immediately turns and spears in that direction and both Jasper and I crouch to lower our centers of gravity so we don’t fall off. She screams again before the sound is muffled.
As the Phoenix closes the gap, one of the gargoyles glances up at the shadow suddenly descending over him. His movement reveals a patch of the female’s shimmering dress. He’s holding her close between his arms and legs.
“That’s her.” It’s all Jasper says before he takes a step back and leaps out from the Phoenix’s back, plunging into thin air.
His decision to leap off into space is so sudden that it leaves me stunned. “Jasper!” I shriek, dropping to my hands. “You can’t fly!”
He presses his arms and legs together to streamline his body and gain speed as he dives. It’s a testament to how strong gargoyle wings are that when Jasper lands right on top of one, he doesn’t rip right through it. It’s the gargoyle holding the girl. It shudders to and fro, dropping and spinning with Jasper’s sudden weight now on one side of it. The two others launch themselves at Jasper, ripping at him with their clawed feet. Funny, I never noticed gargoyle feet before, but it’s suddenly clear that the bird-like claws they have instead of toes could be just as lethal as their wing daggers. Which is to say, they could rip through Jasper’s body in moments.
I need to get down there. Not least because if Jasper can’t latch onto a gargoyle—or free the female so she can carry him—he’ll plummet to his death. I can harness the wind and thunder to stop my fall. At least… I think I can. It’s not exactly something I’ve tried before.
Phoenix, stay close. Please try to catch Jasper if he falls. But also… protect Baelen.
I know I’ve just given the firebird two very contradictory tasks. Catching Jasper involves flying into the fight. Protecting Baelen requires flying as far away from it as possible.
I suddenly realize that the Storm is gone. She disappeared as soon as the fight began. I take one more glance around for her, giving up on calling her for help, only to step into her as I prepare to leap from the Phoenix’s back.
“I will catch Jasper,” she says, her hair billowing out around her as she floats at eye level with me. “Even if it frightens the life out of him to be caught by something he can’t see. The Phoenix should protect Baelen.”
“Thank you!” I hesitate before I dive, but not because of the leap into space.
You have my word that Commander Rath will be safe, the Phoenix says, sensing the fear that springs through me at the thought of leaving Baelen’s side, of letting him out of my sight.
As soon as I leap off its back, I risk angling my body to the side so I can see the Phoenix ascending high into the cloud cover, concealing itself far above us and Baelen with it. I trust the Phoenix to keep its word, but even so, a deep-seated fear has found a place in my heart: I can’t lose him.
The Storm flies beside me, a wind tunnel forming around her as she descends. The gargoyles are much lower and further west now and Jasper grapples with two of them, holding them off, but the third is free and flies onward with the girl.
I have seconds to grill the Storm. “Where were you just now? We could have used your help back there.”
Her expression shuts off, becoming remarkably blank for such an expressive female. “I can’t harm a gargoyle.”
I’m stunned. “Not even these brutes?”
“I will catch Jasper if he falls, but I will not join the fight.”
“But, how can you—”
Her gaze flashes over me with veiled menace. “They are my people, Marbella. Do not ask me to fight them.”
I jolt away from the vehemence in her voice, reminding myself that I control her. Well, to a degree. But it’s the edge of fear that enters her eyes as she maintains my gaze that softens any worry I have about her intentions. She’s not trying to fight with me. She’s afraid I’ll make her do something she doesn’t want to do. I don’t know anything about her, nothing about her history or motivations. I need to change that, and soon. I need to understand what makes her tick and why she became the storm. Just… not right now when Jasper’s life is on the line and we’re about to catapult into three angry gargoyles.
“I won’t make you,” I say, testing my theory that her anger is fuelled by fear I’ll coerce her into doing things she doesn’t want to do.
The instant relief that washes over her face tells me I was right. “I’ll stay nearby. If you drop from this height, you’ll have a minute before you hit ground. Don’t worry about Jasper. I’ll catch him.”
With that, she shoots off to the right to watch and wait.
I draw my last dagger. My remaining weapons are with the Phoenix. Holding the weapon with its blade down, I angle for the gargoyle on Jasper’s right. I need to get those two off him so we can pursue the girl. To my shock, the dagger grates down the gargoyle’s wings as if they’re really made of rock. No wonder gargoyles use their wings as shields.
The gargoyle retaliates instantly, trying to dislodge me and I barely maintain hold of the dagger, let alone its wings. We’re too close to Jasper for me to risk ungloving my hand and using lightning. It would be over in an instant if I could. As I grapple with the male, he splits off, picking up speed and hurtling toward the nearest mountain peak.
We’ve just reached the edges of the Revenant Mountains and the lower we fly, the more likely we are to crash into them. The only up side of splitting off from Jasper is that now I can use the storm without fear of harming him. Except that I need both hands to remove my glove and I can’t exactly do that and hold on to the gargoyle at the same time. Can I float? Can I fly? I’ve harnessed the lightning’s power many times so that I’m familiar with it, but I’ve never tried to use a tornado to keep myself airborne. A growl of frustration rips through me as the gargoyle soars straight for the side of a cliff face, angles its body and… it’s going to slam me into it.
As the rock approaches, I grip the gargoyle’s wing where it meets its shoulder, bend my knees under me
, and hoist myself upward in a vertical line away from it. It crashes into the cliff and without my body as a buffer, knocks itself into the rock. With a shake of its head, it recovers enough to locate me, plummeting down and reaching for its wing—anything—to stop my fall.
As I sail past it, my clutching hand just catches its wing and I hoist myself onto its back again.
The male shakes and roars, “Get off me, elf! You can’t win this fight.”
“Watch me try.”
A shriek in the distance has us both snapping around to see what made it. It wasn’t the female’s scream but something more guttural—a roar of pain. My heart sinks to think it might be Jasper, but it didn’t sound like his voice and the storm promised me she wouldn’t let him fall.
Of course, she didn’t promise he wouldn’t be killed…
The gargoyle ignores me for a moment, shooting forward, darting through the mountain peaks and I have to admire the strength it shows to fly with my weight against its back and wings.
We soar between cliff faces to see ahead of us the gargoyle carrying the girl. Its wing beats are ragged. It careers wildly from spot to spot, crashing against the rocks like a moth with a broken wing.
A broken wing!
A slender object is lodged in one of its wings, but I can’t make it out until we draw nearer. My eyes widen as I recognize the shape of an arrow lodged in the gargoyle’s left wing. I’m astounded that such a thing is possible given that my dagger couldn’t puncture their wings.
The gargoyle fighting Jasper soars overhead, closer to the wounded gargoyle than we are.
Another projectile flies through the air from a point beneath us in the mountains and Jasper’s gargoyle shrieks as an arrow lodges in its arm. The one carrying me races toward the scene, aiming for the girl since it looks like the first one is going to drop her.
A moment later, a third arrow speeds toward my gargoyle and I jolt left just in time as it flies right through the male’s wing, skimming past my right side. That was way too close. I can’t be sure if the attacker with the arrows is aiming for the gargoyles or whether we are targets too.
The gargoyle cries out, jolts, and can’t control its flight now that its wing is pierced. Luckily, it had almost reached the girl. Her terrified eyes meet mine as I whirl past. I tense, crouch, and leap for her, wrenching her from the first spinning gargoyle as the one I was riding spirals away from me.
A clearing made of jagged rocks rises up to meet us.
I scream, “Storm!”
She’s already there, beneath us, a torrent of air rising upward from each of her hands. I turn to locate Jasper but can’t see him. I scream out into the rushing wind and hope he will hear me, “Jasper! Jump into the wind tunnel!”
Further above us, General Cassian appears, his massive wings sweeping across the air, but two wind tunnels have already swallowed us up. I see Jasper now engulfed in one of them as the other encloses me and the girl.
Out in the clear sky, another arrow narrowly misses Cassian, its path upset by the sudden torrent of air. He roars down at us, pausing for a brief moment before shrieking overhead. The last I see of him through the rushing white wind, he’s grabbing the two injured gargoyles who can’t fly, taking hold of them with his clawed feet. The one who was lucky enough to only be struck in the arm races ahead of them. They speed away and out of sight.
The wind tunnel sweeps around me and the girl, drawing us downward in a controlled descent, finally allowing our feet to touch ground on the mountain path. The Storm maintains the swirling wind around us while the gargoyles fly away.
The female shudders in my arms, clutching hold of me like a slender branch in what is literally now a gale force wind. I stroke her hair, trying to keep her calm, until the Phoenix’s voice sounds inside my mind.
The gargoyles have gone. They are fleeing back behind the border with their injured. Jasper is safe and so is Baelen.
Relief floods me, but it’s replaced by a new worry. Do you know who shot the arrows?
No, Princess. This new attacker is well concealed.
“Storm,” I whisper. “The gargoyles have gone. You can release us now. But please remain alert. We don’t know where the arrows came from.”
The wind dies down around me, dropping away so suddenly that the quiet is unnerving. Jasper’s running footsteps are a welcome relief against the sudden calm. The Storm draws away from all of us. The arrow that almost struck Cassian clatters down the cliff face and onto the rocks. It must have got caught up in the wind tunnel too.
The Storm follows it down with her eyes, crestfallen and shaken, moments before she hides her face behind her hair. I can’t decipher her thoughts but the fact that these arrows broke through gargoyle wings seems to have shocked her. It certainly surprised me. She finds a shadowed spot at the side of the clearing and stays there. I make a mental note to speak with her sooner rather than later.
“Are you okay?” Jasper looms over me, checking every part of me with his worried eyes before stopping on the girl.
“We’re fine, Jasper. The female is shaken and she needs care, but we must take cover as soon as possible. Someone was shooting at us and I don’t know if they’re friendly.”
I’m startled as a piece of the landscape shifts on my left—the opposite side of the clearing to the Storm. I push the female behind me and reach for my dagger. Curses. I’ve lost it in the fight with the gargoyle. I have more weapons, but they’re with the Phoenix and it can’t land in this narrow space.
A large, gray rock turns around on itself nearby, pieces of it sliding away from each other like petals of a flower opening. Except that this is no flower. The rock rises up and up, taking on a new form as Jasper and I usher the female backward. I take stock of the growing form before us, making out clawed toes, muscled legs, a broad torso, and finally an angular face. A quiver of arrows rests against his leg, supported by his wings, and a bow dangles from his enormous hands at a deceptively casual angle.
Nope. Definitely not a flower.
I lift my arms away from my body, showing that I don’t hold a weapon, deliberately spreading my fingers in a gesture of peace. “You’re the source of the helpful arrows. We should thank you.”
The gargoyle drops to a knee, nocks an arrow, and points it directly at my chest. “Elf,” he growls, menace dripping from every sound. His nostrils flare as he inhales. “Tell me why the next one shouldn’t pierce your heart.”
“Because… you didn’t kill me before. I don’t think you can now.”
3
The gargoyle inhales again and I sense the pull toward him. It’s as magnetic now as it was all that time ago. Muscles ripple across his arms and bare torso as he keeps the bow taught. His lower half is covered in leather pants, well-worn and supple. I cast around for our location. We must be close to Scepter Peak, because this is the same gargoyle I met before—the one who allowed me to live.
“You are ice. And clouds,” he says, the hint of a smile settling onto his curved lips, creating a startling contrast to the deadly weapon he keeps trained on me.
I take a hesitant step forward, my boots crunching much too loudly on the rocky pathway. I stop, not wanting to startle him. Although… I’m quite certain he’s completely in control of his reflexes right now. “Do you remember me?”
“You are the Storm,” he says. He rumples his nose at Jasper in distaste. “But the other one reeks of twisted metal.”
Poor Jasper. His armor is well and truly banged up now.
The gargoyle adjusts his aim faster than I can blink, the arrow now pointed squarely at Jasper. “I will kill him if you want.”
“No!” I step between the gargoyle and Jasper. My arms remain splayed to make myself wider. I’m close enough to Jasper that he wraps his hands around my waist from behind. His grip tells me he’s about to pick me up and put me out of the firing line. I’m too small to be an effective shield anyway. The gargoyle has simply adjusted his aim again, this time pointing the arrow over my he
ad. I’m guessing that’s right at Jasper’s face.
Jasper’s fingers flex against my armor but he leaves me where I am. His growl is soft in my ear and very unhappy. “Princess, I want you to know I’m swallowing my pride right now. Something tells me this gargoyle will only listen to you and I won’t be any use to you dead.”
Maintaining firm eye contact with the gargoyle, I raise my voice to the level of a stern order. “This elf is very important to me. I want him alive.”
The gargoyle’s lip curls at one corner as if he disapproves. “As you wish, Lady Storm.”
But he still doesn’t lower his bow. I glare at it, but my displeasure doesn’t seem to have any impact on the male.
He asks, “What did Cassian want with you?”
I’m surprised the gargoyle knows our attackers. Before I can reply, the female gargoyle speaks, stepping to my side. “He wanted me.”
I cast a quick assessing glance at her because her demeanor is different now that she’s not terrified for her life. Her emerald eyes are hard and cold for the first time, surprisingly unafraid. It’s a stark difference to the girl who dived into Jasper’s arms begging for help.
What’s more… a tingle of air brushes me as she passes by. Goosebumps rise under my armor. It reminds me of the charge in the air when Elise is spellcasting, but it’s not quite the same. Elise’s spells are always contained and controlled. This girl gives off sparks in all directions. I don’t know whether gargoyles have spellcasters—I assume they do. But if the girl is a spellcaster, then I’m not sure why she didn’t use her power to save herself from Cassian before.
She snarls at the gargoyle, “These elves saved my life. You will not kill them, Grievous monster.”
The male’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “How do you know my Clan name, girl?”
She spits like a hissing cat. “I see your mark.”
He lowers his bow and arrow, but it’s a kneejerk reaction rather than a calculated move—the first reflexive response he’s given. One big hand shoots to his side. I peer at the spot he clutches, making out a fine silvery shape not much bigger than my thumb etched just above his right hip. It looks like some kind of ink mark, but the shape is indistinguishable because it appears to have been cut into, jagged scars crisscrossing it.