Page 24 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)

Brandt

H e couldn’t stand it in there. The healers’ hall reeked of limestone dust and pine resin, the flesh-and-bone-mending paste that made his nostrils burn.

He leaned on a stone rail outside, watching through the open door as the masons scurried between their stations like beetles over carrion.

Their voices buzzed together into meaningless noise that he wanted to swat away.

A younger mason cautiously approached with a platter of steaming meat. “Commander? Would you like something to eat?”

Why did her obsequious question annoy him? He could feel the answer pressing against one of his mind walls, trying to break through, but when he reached for it, the memory scattered like moths from an extinguished flame.

“Not hungry.” His voice came out rough and graveled.

“You must be. You haven’t eaten since your return, and I expect many nights before.”

How long had he been back? It could have been three moons. Time moved slowly here. It has been an eternity since he’d flown here, the weight of something important in his arms. No, not something. Someone. Someone broken.

“Where is he?” The question erupted from him. “The one I carried.”

“Rikard is recovering.” The mason’s answer was carefully neutral and avoided the question. “He needs extensive repairs still, but he lives.”

“How many others?”

Her wings twitched. “If you will not eat, you should rest.”

“How many?” He grabbed the mason’s wrist, feeling bones shift under his grip. “How many made it back? How many live?”

“Commander, if you’ll—”

“Tell me!” The roar tore from his throat, and suddenly he wasn’t in the masons’ hall anymore. He was in the air south of Meravenna, witnessing his watchmates fall like stones, their wings shredded by goblin blades. The smell of war-bat fur filled his nostrils, and his claws extended, ready to—

Pain bloomed across his jaw. The head mason, a diminutive female gargoyle named Aalis, stood before him, staff raised after the blow, her ancient face lined and stern. “Stand down, Commander.”

Brandt blinked. He was inside the hall. The young mason was on the floor, cradling her wrist. Three others had formed a defensive circle, their expressions wary. When had that happened?

“I—” He couldn’t finish. Another wall in his mind cracked, threatening to spill whatever horror lay behind it. He clutched his head.

“Outside,” Aalis ordered. “It’s not safe for you to be in here.”

Not safe in the Tower, inside the walls of Solvantis? He almost laughed. But he let them herd him back to the eastern roost, where at least the open air didn’t tighten around his skull like a vise.

The city spread below. Smoke rose from human chimneys, and small figures scurried through streets like ants. When he’d been away, his only goal had been to return here, but now he couldn’t remember why. No matter how he hunted them, his thoughts slipped away like rabbits into their warrens.

The moon tracked across the sky, but it might as well have been the sun. He didn’t move, couldn’t move, trapped between the need to remember and fear of what remembering might bring.

His body ached, his muscles strained by whatever journey he’d undertaken to return here. Time would heal most of those complaints. New scars latticed his hide, a map of battles he could barely recall.

“Brandt?”

He startled when a female gargoyle landed on the roost beside him. She was older than him by a few dozen years, with small, gold-wrapped horns and the kind of elaborate grooming that marked Tower-born nobility.

“Do I know you?”

Her expression shuttered. “I would hope I haven’t changed so much. I’m your mother,” she prompted. “Ghantal.”

Mother. The word bounced off his mind walls, finding no purchase. She could be anyone.

“Prove it.”

“What?” Her wings flared in shock.

“Prove you’re my mother.” He studied her face, searching for something familiar. “Tell me something only she would know.”

“You were born during a thunderstorm. You tried to fly before you could walk. Your first words were—”

“All things I can’t remember and no one else can verify.” Frustration clawed up his spine. “Give me real proof.”

Ghantal—if that was her name—moved closer. “You have a scar on your left wing, near the third joint. From when you were just a hatchling and tried to capture a raven as a pet. It was nearly your size.”

He twitched his wing forward to look. There it was, a pale line on the third joint. But that proved nothing. She could have seen it and made up a story. He shrugged his wing back into place and stared out at the city once more.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t know what to believe.” The admission scraped out of him. “My mind is choked with walls. I can’t find anything.” He pressed his palms against the base of his horns where pressure was building.

She nodded. “The masons say it’s normal. That you built too many during the war, but they’ll probably crumble naturally, if you give them enough time. They told me to have patience, and my son will come back to me.”

“They say a lot of things, but none of them are whole truths.” His laugh was bitter. “They won’t tell me if we’re winning or losing the war.”

“The war is over.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, does it? They won’t tell me who died. Won’t tell me why I feel like—” He stopped, jaw clenched, hardly able to put it into words.

“Like what?”

Like he was missing something. Something more than just the words for it. He felt like his heart had been carved out and a stone set in its place.

“Tell me about before,” he said instead. “About who I was.”

“You were a guard and then a commander in the Sixth Watch. The youngest ever promoted. You were proud, determined. Loyal.” She sounded wistful. “You were happy.”

“Happy.” The word might have been in the goblins’ tongue for all the meaning it held. “What made me happy?”

She hesitated too long. “Your position. Your achievements.”

Lies. Or at least not the whole truth. He could smell it on her, that particular scent of withheld information that he’d learned to recognize in the masons. His claws scraped against stone as he drew away from her.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. I’m just trying to help you remember who you are—”

Lies. The pressure in his skull spiked. But he could tell she was being earnest. She thought she was doing him good. Whatever she omitted, it was because she thought she was protecting his delicate mind.

“Stop.”

“Stop what? What did I do?”

“Stop helping . All I need is honesty. How can I put together the broken pieces of my mind if no one will tell me the ones that are missing?”

“You’re not broken.” She reached for him, and he jerked back so violently he nearly fell from the roost.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Brandt, please! I’m your mother.”

“I don’t know you!” The words exploded out of him, echoing off the Tower walls.

“Come fly with me,” she begged. “I’ll show you the eyrie where we live together. Maybe that will be the missing piece you seek.”

In his peripheral vision three masons approaching from the hall, their faces grim. He felt an unwelcome wash of gratitude at their intervention. His head hurt from battering against his mind walls. His claws ached to rip and ruin.

“I’m sorry, Ghantal,” Aalis said firmly. So she hadn’t lied about her name. “He cannot leave this tier until he is no longer a danger to himself or others.”

“He won’t hurt me. He’s my son.” Her voice wobbled on the word. “I just want to take him home.”

“His home is here for now. Zenith’s orders.”

Ghantal’s expression cycled through hurt, anger, and finally resignation. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“No.” Brandt felt raw. The mason hadn’t denied their relationship, so she wasn’t lying about that, either.

He might not see anything familiar in her face, but she was his mother.

He just wasn’t sure he was her son. Not the one she remembered, the one who was proud and loyal and happy.

“Don’t come again. Not until—” Until what?

Until the mind walls came down? Until he remembered how to be whoever he’d been before? “Not until I send for you.”

She left without another word, though he caught the gleam of moisture on her face as she dove from the roost. The sight stirred something behind a wall, but when he reached for it, pain lanced through his skull.

“Commander,” Aalis said carefully. “Perhaps you should eat something. It might speed your healing.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“You need sustenance.”

“I need to think.” Or not think. “Just...go.”

The masons retreated, whispering among themselves.

He sat alone, trying to penetrate his own mind, but it was as well-guarded as the city itself. The moon set, painting Solvantis in shadows. Hidden somewhere in this place was his life, but every time he chased it, it slipped through his fingers as easily as tears.

A scent drifted up from the streets below.

The smell of someone cooking in the marketplace with lemon and herbs.

His appetite returned in a rush. Suddenly, he was starving.

His whole body went rigid, every instinct screaming that this meant something, but when he tried to follow the thought, agony bloomed behind his eyes.

He built another mind wall against the pain and turned his back on the city. When dawn broke, he was forced to stare at the blank Tower wall all day, without even a view to distract him from his own thoughts.

Tonight, the mind-masons would try again. His unfamiliar mother would likely return, even though he’d warned her away. Everyone would keep pushing him to remember who he’d been.

But Brandt was beginning to suspect that they’d be disappointed when his mind walls finally crumbled. They wouldn’t find his old self in the rubble. That Brandt was gone for good.

They’d more likely find a corpse.