Page 35 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)

Brandt

T he weight of his son in his arms anchored him to something he’d thought lost forever.

Lo?c slept with the complete trust of childhood against his battered hide.

For the first time since returning to Solvantis, Brandt felt like who he’d been before.

Not the broken thing the masons tinkered with, not the fury-driven creature who destroyed furniture and grabbed own his mother by the throat, but himself.

A guardian. A protector. Someone with a purpose.

It would be a perfect moment if it weren’t for his betrayer on her knees in front of him.

“You fear having the one you love stripped away?” he asked her bitterly. He couldn’t look at her face, not while holding their perfect child. “You think it would be painful to have your bond with him broken?”

She flinched. “Yes. I understand my hypocrisy. I deserve your ire. But it doesn’t stop me from begging for your mercy. Don’t forget that the mate bond goes both ways. I feel its loss like a missing limb.”

“You at chose that loss. You made the decision to sever it.” Now he did meet her eyes, letting her see the depth of his torment.

“I woke up one day and everything I thought I had was gone: my watch, my mate, my mind . And now I learn my son was here all along, kept from me like I was some rabid beast. It hurts .”

“I understand the pain. I felt it too,” she cried softly, her salty human tears pattering down and making dark spots on the stones. “I feel it even now!”

“No.” The word cracked like a whip, chasing away any sympathy that threatened to grow in him. “You understand nothing of the pain I’ve endured. You had our son to hold through your grief. His smiles, his love. What did I have?”

Lo?c stirred slightly, murmuring in his sleep.

How strange and sweet to see a fledgling sleep at night.

Brandt gentled his voice, though the internal volume of his fury blared.

“You’ve had years to watch him become this remarkable creature.

Years of lullabies and teaching him about the world.

I have not only the pain of a broken bond, but the gaps where those memories should be, like they have been sliced out . ”

“I’m sorry.” Tears tracked down her face. Even red-nosed and puffy-eyed, with her mouth drawn in a grimace, she was beautiful, somehow, and that just made him hate her more. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t take him away from me entirely. I know I deserve it, but—”

“You deserve worse.” He shifted Lo?c carefully, the boy’s wings twitching in sleep. Perhaps he dreamed of flying. “You deserve to feel exactly what I feel. Every injury. Every ugly memory. Every betrayal. Every regret. Perhaps your penance should be taking my bite again.”

Her breath caught. “What?”

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed just. She should be made to endure him. “You want to understand my pain? You’ll feel it through the mate bond.” He met her eyes to let her know how serious he was. “Then you’ll suffer exactly as I suffer.”

“Won’t that cause you more pain? To be bonded to someone you hate?”

He scoffed. “I can’t possibly suffer more than I do now. Every moment is agony anyway. At least this way you would suffer alongside me.” He felt a kind of vicious happiness making the proposal, like he’d told a good joke at her expense.

She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the floor as the damp spots there evaporated. Then she raised her head. “I agree.”

Her acceptance stunned him. He had expected her to argue and cry, not to capitulate. “Why would you?”

“I’ll do it if it’s what you want from me. If it’s the price of keeping Lo?c in my life, of making amends for what I’ve done.” Her chin lifted with the same defiance he’d once found irresistible. “If those are the terms, then yes.”

“We are in agreement, then.” He had a son, and he’d soon have a mate again. A traitorous one, but the only one who deserved to be bound to his mess of a mind. What an empty triumph. The fledgling in his arms suddenly weighed the world. “Tomorrow night, you’ll accept my claim.”

She reached for Lo?c, but he turned away from her. “He’ll stays with me tonight.”

“He’ll be confused if he wakes somewhere unfamiliar.”

“Then I’ll comfort him the way fathers do.” The words came out sharper than intended.

“He has school in the morning,” she protested, wringing her hands.

“You have a key. You can take him after dawn.”

He adjusted Lo?c’s weight, and his son nestled deeper into sleep. “Return tomorrow night if you’re ready to pay the price. If not, send his things with a keeper.”

“I’ll come myself.”

“We’ll see.”

After she left, Brandt carried Lo?c to his nest, settling them both among the furs. Tomorrow, he’d outfit Ghantal’s chamber for him, but for tonight, the boy fit perfectly in the curve of his arm, like he’d been carved to rest there.

“Papa?” Lo?c mumbled, not quite waking.

“I’m here.”

“Good.” The boy pressed closer, one small hand clutching Brandt’s scarred forearm. “Stay with me.”

The simple words broke him. His son wanted him there. Wanted to be close to him.

He thought of Idabel’s tears, her desperate plea not to lose their son.

Part of him—the part that wasn’t blind with rage—recognized the cruelty of threatening to take Lo?c entirely.

She’d raised him alone, loved him fiercely, made him into this amazing creature who spoke two languages and yearned to fly.

But the larger part, the wounded part, the new part, wanted her to suffer as he suffered. Wanted her to know what it felt like to have everything that mattered ripped away without warning or choice.

The bite would accomplish that. She’d feel inside his fractured mind, get lost among his walls. She’d understand what the war had done to him, what her betrayal had compounded. What these weeks of lies had cost.

Maybe then they’d be even.

Maybe then he could begin to forgive.

Or maybe forgiveness was a luxury he’d lost along with everything else, and all they’d share was a son they’d both fight to keep.

Lo?c sighed in his sleep, happy and safe. Brandt pressed his face to his son’s dark hair, breathing in his scent. The tiny remnants of the parent-child bond feathered against his pulse.

Tomorrow night, he would bite Idabel again. Not with love this time, but with bitter justice. It wasn’t mercy. It wasn’t kindness.

But it was all he had left to give.