Page 38 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)

Brandt

T he moment his teeth pierced her shoulder and the bond reignited, he was in her mind as much as she was in his.

His ever-present rage, the sense of betrayal that had become his closest companion, the desperate need for revenge—all of it faded into the background.

It was a welcome respite to be awash in her emotions instead of his own.

Her regret hit first. It decorated everything, like a layer of fog over a landscape.

When he brushed it aside, he found loneliness, six years of it, raising their son while mourning her mate, not knowing whether he lived or died.

Resignation to his hatred. Desire for his retribution. Fear that he would take Lo?c away.

But underneath it all, vast as the night sky, was her love for him.

It staggered him. He’d remembered her loving him through the bond, yes, but this was more.

This was oceanic. It filled every corner of her mind, colored every thought.

She loved him with the kind of devotion he’d only imagined in martyrs and madmen.

Even now, even as he’d claimed her in anger, even as she bore the weight of his fractured mind through their bond, her love persisted. Deepened.

“You still love me.” His voice cracked. “After everything, still?”

“Yes.” The word was whispered into the furs where she’d pressed her face to hide it. She turned her head to the side and added, “I told you, I broke the bond because I loved you. Everything I’ve done since then, too. Everything I am. I can’t remember who I was before I loved you.”

Something in his chest shifted, stone cracking into flesh and the dust falling away, as though his heart was waking from daysleep.

He rolled them to their sides and pulled her closer, his nostrils flared at the coppery tang in the air.

Her fresh mate mark was still bleeding. He had been so rough with her.

“Stop,” she murmured, feeling his regret.

He licked over her torn flesh, tending it, and was gratified when the blood clotted fully a minutes later.

He was just as gratified that, even when fully healed, his mark on her would not fade this time.

Never again would he build a mind wall around their bond.

If she tried to sever it, he would know instantly and stop her.

His knot eventually softened and slipped out, and she turned to face him. She cupped his jaw in her hands and brushed her lips across his. He let his cheek rest in her palm.

It was wrong to take comfort from his destroyer, but what a comfort it was. Oh, the ache they shared as she traced over the new wound he’d scribed on his chest to mourn her.

“I have my salve with me if you want this to heal without a scar,” she offered.

He shook his head, moving her hand aside. “I want it. I earned that. I paid in blood for it.”

She kissed along the raw edges, and he closed his eyes and let her tend it in her way, understanding the impulse. When she finished with it, she moved on to his other scars, anointing each one with her lips and breath.

When she reached the deep one on his ribs, the one that marked when his watchmate Janusz had died, the tiny twinge of residual pain made a memory crash through him.

The ambush. Goblins diving from the cliffs above, too many, too fast. The screaming.

Janusz throwing himself between Brandt and a poison blade.

The wet sound of metal piercing flesh. Holding his watchmate as life drained from his eyes, unable to stop the bleeding, unable to do anything but pack his own wound with moss to carry the loss forever.

The flooded memory through the bond, and he couldn’t stop it. Idabel stiffened in his arms as she felt the panic, the copper taste of terror, the gutting reality of watching someone die.

She cried out, body convulsing against his, and he felt her experiencing it—not just observing but living it as if she’d been there. The weight of Janusz in her arms. The sticky warmth of blood. The moment when breathing stopped and everything went silent.

“Stop!” She sobbed against him, shaking. “Please, I can’t—”

He slammed up a mind wall, ending her suffering, and horror set in.

He’d wanted her to understand. To suffer along with him.

But feeling her break under the weight of his pain brought him no satisfaction or relief.

He’d thought he couldn’t suffer more, but he’d been wrong.

Now he had to feel it twice, once in his memory and again in hers. He had to feel it break her, too.

“Forgive me.” He gathered his mate against him, wings wrapping around them both. “I won’t be so careless again.”

“Don’t apologize to me.” Her voice was raw but fierce. “I deserve to know exactly what I caused.”

“No one deserves that.”

“I do.” She pulled back to meet his eyes, and he felt that she meant it. “Every ambush, every death. I should know them all. You said it yourself: It’s the only penance I can pay.”

“It’s not penance. It’s torture.”

“Don’t try to protect me from this. From you.” He felt her anger bloom. She was so, so angry. Even angrier than he was. Not at him or at their circumstances, but at herself. She wanted him to punish her, to be the scour for her guilt and shame.

He studied her tear-stained face. They were both broken by this war, just in different ways.

“Tell me about our son.” He needed something pure between them. Something untainted by betrayal and blood. “Please. Everything. From the beginning.”

At the prompt, she relaxed, and so did the bond, transforming from a taut rope to a ribbon of light, warm and full of wonder.

“I didn’t know I was carrying him for two moons. It was Betje who noticed. I was sick every morning and evening, but I thought it was worry or exhaustion. She gave me a stomach remedy, and when it worked, she said, ‘I thought so. That gargoyle left you a gift.’”

“Were you happy?”

“Terrified.” Her honesty rang through the bond. “I was alone, carrying a half-gargoyle child. I was afraid to tell anyone. But also...yes. Happy to be carrying your child. At that time, I could feel you through the bond. I knew you were alive. I thought you’d be back soon.”

Something soured. He felt it before she explained, “That was around the time we began getting casualty reports. Soon after, Lord Wilkin pressured me for more blood, and I knew he had something to do with it, so I went to the Nadir. He didn’t believe me at first, but—”

“I want to know about our son, not the villains who kept us apart,” he reminded her. “I know their ugly story already. Tell me about Lo?c.”

The rising panic in the bond subsided. She told him everything she could remember.

The difficult pregnancy—gargoyle babies were larger, which was hard on a human body.

The birth, attended by Betje, Ghantal, and a reluctant mason who’d only helped because Ghantal paid triple.

Lo?c’s first cry was loud and strong despite his early arrival.

“He tried to fly before he could walk,” she said, smiling at the memory. “Just spread those tiny wings and threw himself off furniture. I spent his entire second year catching him until he was old enough to understand that he couldn’t fly yet and needed to be careful.”

Through the bond, he felt her emotions from that time as she spoke.

The exhaustion of long days and late nights.

The joy watching their son grow and thrive.

The bittersweet satisfaction she experienced learning the ways he was like human babies and the ways he was not.

His first words, his obsession with moths.

The pride when he’d mastered reading in two languages before his fifth birthday. Her worries that she was not enough.

“You’ve done well,” Brandt said, meaning it. “He’s remarkable.”

“He’s yours. He’s just like you.”

“He’s yours, too,” he reminded her.

“The weak parts.” Shame seeped through the bond. His delayed flight abilities. His soft hide. The bullies.

“ No .” He shook her, not unkindly, just to stop her thoughts, and pushed all his pride into the bond.

“Our son has no weak parts. Even if the rest of Tael-Nost can’t see it, we can.

He is all strength. All our best parts and none of the broken ones.

Don’t forget that. I don’t ever want to hear or feel differently from you.

Do you understand me? He is what’s good. ”

She nodded mutely, her brown eyes wide and earnest. She believed him. She trusted him. He could destroy her so easily if he ever felt the urge.

“Lo?c will occupy my mother’s old chambers,” he said idly, toying with the end of her braid.

She went rigid. “You’re taking him away from me?”

“No. You will live here, too.”

“I can’t.” Her instant refusal stung. “I can’t live in the Tower. The gargoyles here know what I did. They hate me.”

“You’re my mate. This is where you belong.”

She sat up, pulling away from him. “That makes it worse, don’t you see? They already know I’m a traitor. Now they’ll call you one, too.”

“I don’t care what they call me.” He pulled her back down, trapping her in his arms. “You’re my mate. Lo?c is my son. You both belong here, with me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She sounded doubtful because she didn’t realize he wasn’t asking.

“This isn’t a request.” He let command enter his voice, the tone that had once directed hundreds of warriors. “You live here. Both of you. Starting tonight.”

Through the bond, he felt her resistance crumble. Not because she wanted to live in the Tower—the thought terrified her—but because she saw it as part of her penance. Another price to pay for her betrayal.

“What about our apartment in the rookery?”

“They’ll give it to someone who needs it.”

He caught her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “No more arguments. You’re mine. The bond proves it. The entire Tower will know it. They’ll treat my mate with respect or answer to me. That is the end of the discussion.”

“You can’t fight the entire Tower for me.”

“Watch me.”

She laughed, but it was hollow. “You still don’t forgive me, but you’d defend me?”

“Yes.” No point in lying when she could feel it through the bond. “Part of me hates you. Maybe always will. But you’re still my mate. The mother of my son. That means you’re mine. We are a family. It might be a broken, angry, complicated one, but we’re still a family.”

“And families live together.”

“Yes.”

She nodded slowly, although he could still feel her doubts. “All right.”

“I’ll tell the keepers to move your things.” He paused, then added more gently, “There’s room for a small garden on the balcony, if you want one.”

The hope that flared through the bond was painful in its intensity. “Really?”

The corner up his mouth tugged upward. “You realize that if you’re miserable, I’m miserable, too?”

She laughed croakily, and it made his stomach flip to hear her even a little bit happy.

“The bond. Feeling you again.” He struggled for words to describe the six different emotions flooding through him. “I know I did it to punish you, but it’s the first thing besides Lo?c that’s felt right since I returned.”

Through their connection came her reaction: relief, joy, sorrow, and that endless love. “For me, too.”

Anticipating Lo?c and Ghantal’s return, they dressed. Tomorrow, she would move into his nest. His first love. His betrayer. His mate. The mother of his son. They would be a family.

He didn’t know how to reconcile these things, how to love and hate someone simultaneously.

But then, he wasn’t sure he hated her anymore at all.