Page 2 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)

Brandt

H e burned the fragrant plants in one of the guardhouse braziers and returned home with ashes in his hair. His mother, Ghantal, who shared his fifth-tier eyrie in the Tower, frowned as she brushed them away.

“Why does the Zenith have a watch commander on guard duty? Surely there is someone lower-ranking who can do it.”

“I’m not above guard duty,” he said gruffly, avoiding the question.

He had not been on duty when he’d spotted and confiscated the human’s illegal garden.

It had seemed like too much trouble to report her to the Nadir, the gargoyle who handled any business with humans, when he could take care of it himself.

He doubted the terrified little female would plant anything again, and the Nadir would survive without a few more coins in his overflowing coffers.

But still, he could not let her flaunt the rules and keep them.

“No, you’re not above anything,” Ghantal chided as she continued grooming him, picking imaginary flecks of lichen from his temples with her curving claws. “That’s the problem. You forget that, as easily as you have risen, you could be pushed back down.”

“It hasn’t been easy.” He’d worked for every new responsibility and title that had been laid upon him.

Worked twice as hard as a towerborn to prove himself.

Climbed his way up from village guard to the highest-ranking cliffborn anyone could remember.

He’d worked double shifts. Taken lessons in the three languages of diplomacy when other gargoyles were playing scaccus and swilling mead.

He’d forgone females and fun in favor of advancing his career and raising his family name.

There was no possibility he’d endanger it all now.

Ghantal sighed. “You know what I mean. Towerborn can be whimsical in the best of times. You can’t give them any reason to see you as lesser. If a tenth-tier lowered himself to guard duty, it’d be seen as a charming personality quirk. For you? A reversion to your roots. Your true calling.”

He made a noncommittal noise. He was in no danger of losing his position.

The Sixth Watch would deploy in the coming weeks to combat the growing goblin threat.

As a wing commander, he’d play a crucial role in protecting the southern settlements, but it wasn’t a glamorous assignment.

It would be bloody at the best. High-tiers would send him gladly rather than risk their own sons and daughters.

“You don’t believe me.” His mother sounded tired. He watched as she ran her claw over the row of crystal vials in the grooming case before selecting one.

She’d worked as hard as he had to shed the stigma of her low birth. She covered her scars. Capped her horns with gold to lengthen them. Spoke with a dragon-tinged accent that she’d practiced faithfully to master. No one would guess upon meeting her that Ghantal wasn’t towerborn herself.

It went beyond her appearance. She did everything she could to be a credit to their name: associating with the best families, attending the right skyballs, supporting the right issues.

Bred pretty moths to collect gossip for her that she kept a detailed ledger, a record of all the high-tier scandals and indiscretions in case the information was useful someday.

Brandt sometimes wondered who she was beneath the ambitious armor she’d so carefully constructed. He doubted she knew herself.

Uncorking the vial, she reached to oil his horns, and he put his hand on her arm, stopping her. “I would never do anything to jeopardize our rise. I swear to you.”

Her quiet purr of happiness cut off when he pried the little flask from her fingers and strode to the polished copper mirror to do it himself, buffing the oil in until the long curves of his horns were dark and gleaming.

They looked noble thanks to his father’s blood, even if the rest of him did not.

He wore too many scars to be towerborn, but he had fought for every one.

“There is one way you could never be pushed down again,” she said behind him.

He knew what she meant: an advantageous mating with a highborn.

Not too high, of course, but perhaps someone from a family born into the same tier he’d earned.

Once he had a towerborn hatchling of his own, it would secure his family’s roost forever.

Another duty, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, like so many.

He turned to her and nodded. “Find someone suitable for me while I’m gone.”

His mother’s gaze turned crafty, and he could see her ambitions take flight. “If you should return a hero…”

“If I should return at all,” he reminded her.

There was every likelihood that he wouldn’t.

The goblins were a formidable enemy. Fierce fighters in their own right, they rode war bats and forged their armor and weapons with tael that they dug from deep beneath their mountains.

It made them nearly impervious to attack by fae magic or human blade.

But still, they were vulnerable to gargoyles, who were immune to tael’s magic. When the gods fell ten centuries ago, their blood seeped deep into the earth, infusing it with their power. And as everyone learned, blood and stone made magic.

That was tael.

The goblins mined it. The dragons hoarded it. The fae of the north drew it up through the roots of their northern forest. The humans built their walls of it. And the gargoyles were it, born of blood and stone themselves.

As such, they were impervious to tael’s special qualities, and that made them the perfect army to fight against a goblin invasion. Magic simply could not touch them. Still, in a fight against the hordes, many good gargoyles would fall to basic tooth and claw.

“Winds aid you,” Ghantal murmured, but she was clearly already making mental lists of tempting towerborn females who might stoop to mate with him.

She did not even consider the possibility that he might not come back. And if he did not, her position in the tower would be in jeopardy. At the whim of the Zenith and anyone who had his ear. If Brandt died well, she might be allowed to remain in his roost. If he did not…

“Perhaps you should find someone for yourself while I’m gone. You could secure our roost sooner than I can.”

Her wings snapped out in surprise, rasping against the wall as she barked a disbelieving laugh. “Me?”

He shot her an amused look. “You. And why not? You’ve proved you are more than your beginnings. You understand Tower politics better than anyone. Can still whelp hatchlings. And you’re a preferred partner at every skyball. You could have your pick of highborn mates if you put your mind to it.”

Ghantal’s expression shuttered. “I am mated already. You know that.”

Brandt gritted his teeth at the reminder. “My father is dead.” It was a lie, but he wished it were true.

Ghantal rubbed her upper arm, where the silvered outline of his father’s bite stood out from her dark-gray skin. “He has built many mind-walls around our bond, but I can still feel him.”

“So? No one has to know. He’s been gone for decades.” Since before Brandt was born. He likely did not know nor care that he had a son. “It’s not as though he’ll appear to tell anyone otherwise.”

“I would not dishonor him.”

The feeling in his guts was volcanic, hot and explosive.

Honor? His father had no honor. What kind of male claimed and seeded his female and then abandoned her?

“He did not even care to attend my birth. I hardly think he will object if you take another mate. Someone who will not dishonor you . Someone who will care for you and protect you if I don’t re—”

“We will speak no more of it,” his mother snapped, cutting him off.

But Brandt wasn’t done. “He might be higher born, but he is worth far less than you. Never believe you deserved his rejection. I’d rather be cliffborn a thousand times than admit I’m his son. I hate him.”

“You don’t know him. Your father is—”

“Dead,” he repeated. Pain flashed across Ghantal’s face, and it made him nostalgic for the mother-child mind bond they’d once shared so he could understand why.

Did she really still hold onto the hope that his father would return someday?

Brandt was trying to carve away her shame with his harsh words, nothing else.

He softened his tone. “This is not how I wish to spend these last few weeks with you. It will be many moons before we can share company again.”

She nodded in agreement, though her gaze was still distant and unhappy. “I’ll call the keepers to fetch us a meal.”

He stopped her before she could sound the bell that would bring a scurrying little human bearing a tray of lukewarm meat. “Or…we could catch it ourselves.”

That caught her interest. Her lips twitched. “A hunt?”

“Why not?” he asked brashly. “There are hours yet before dawn. Plenty of time if we don’t go far. There are rabbits to run down in the wilds outside the wall. It will be like the old days when it was just you and me, fending for ourselves. We always ate well.”

“Better than anything these humans serve.” Ghantal grinned wolfishly, and he knew he’d won her over.

It might not be high-tier to hunt for herself, but his mother had always been especially good at chasing down her prey.

Maybe a successful hunt would remind her that—even if her hard-won towerborn allies eventually shunned her like his father did—she had every skill she needed to survive.

So did he. The cliffs had given them both that gift.