Page 41 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)

Brandt

T hough Idabel now gave him his bottles of tonic directly, he still visited the masons’ hall. It was not only to fulfill his promise and avoid their meddling, but also to watch over Rikard as he was pieced back together and ensure he was treated well.

As always, the place stank. Rikard, or what remained of him, lay on a raised platform. The masons had done their best, filling cracks with limestone paste, reinforcing joints with metal pins that gleamed copper-gold against his gray hide. But his wings...

“Don’t stare.” Rikard’s voice was rough, like grinding millstones. “I know how I look.”

“You look alive.” Brandt moved closer gingerly, careful not to jar the platform and cause more damage. “Alive is what matters.”

Rikard gave a clotted, pebbly chuckle with little humor in it. “Is that what we’re calling this?”

It was painful to laugh as such a joke, but he did for Rikard’s sake. “Can I ask you something? How much do you remember about the war?”

Rikard grimaced, exposing broken teeth. “As little as possible. I asked the masons to wall it off permanently.”

Hope faded. He couldn’t push Rikard to remember the painful parts of their deployment. Not when he was half pebbles and depended on the masons for everything.

Aalis waved him over, so he bid Rikard goodbye and approached her desk, stopping by the treatment chair where she practiced her brutish trade. “What is it?”

“I wanted to show you what’s left of him. We’ve made good progress.” She waved to a tray of fragments, most pieces no bigger than Brandt’s thumb and some ground nearly to powder. The pieces of Rikard that they hadn’t yet fit into the puzzle of his destruction.

“What about his wings?”

“We’re attempting to reconstruct everything, but as far as function...” She shook her head. “I doubt he’ll fly again.”

A memory of Rikard’s last flight slipped through a crack in Brandt’s mind walls.

A storm had driven them off course, two survivors from a watch of hundreds seeking shelter on a barren cliff face somewhere in the goblin mountains.

They’d been lost for what seemed like moons, pushed deep into narrow canyons and treacherous gorges by mounted goblin companies that seemed to guess their position no matter how hard they tried to evade them.

Dawn turned them to stone just as exhaustion claimed them. The remote location should have bought them a day of respite, but in the weak morning light, voices—goblin voices—pierced them like arrows.

He’d been lucky, tucked into a natural alcove that kept him mostly out of reach. But Rikard had perched on an outcropping. The goblins used ropes and hooks to rappel down the cliff face and pry him from his roost. They rocked his heavy stone form back and forth until it tipped…and fell.

The sound when Rikard landed on the rocks below, stone exploding against stone, could have been screams. Pieces scattered across the ravine. Brandt couldn’t move from his protected perch and watched helplessly while goblin warriors cheered their clever trap.

Just luck. Pure, stupid luck that he’d chosen the sheltered spot. When dusk came, he gathered what remained of his last watchmate and began the long flight home.

Under the perceptive gaze of the mason, distress flooded his senses.

Walls strained, threatening to topple and unleash the beast behind them.

She was not culpable for his memories, but she was complicit in trying to hide them, and every instinct in him was to smash her unconvincing expression of concern into the floor.

But then—warmth. Through the bond came Idabel’s steady, loving presence. Through the bond, she showed him their nest, with the three of them curled up together in the furs. Safety. Home.

His breathing steadied.

“You’re having an episode,” Aalis observed, those sharp eyes missing nothing. “Your mind is weakening. You need to resume treatments.”

“No.”

“Commander—”

“I said no . I’m improving. My episodes, as you call them, are further and further apart. And my mate is helping me manage my…outbursts. Any time you or one of your healers tinkers with my mind, things get worse. Memories disappear.” He was aware he sounded paranoid, but he didn’t care.

“Healing manifests in complex ways.” Of course, she was ready with her platitudes and excuses. “You cannot expect us to chip away a whole wall without damaging a stone or two along the way.”

“I know what you’re trying to hide from me. The goblin younglings.” The words came out flat even though inside he was boiling. “You want me to forget that some of the hordes were children. What I don’t understand is why . What do you gain from keeping that secret?”

Her expression didn’t change, but her tail snapped behind her, giving away her agitation. She glanced at the moths swarming the lantern on her desk. “You’re confused. The trauma of war has warped your memories.”

She obviously cared what the moths heard, but he didn’t.

“I know what I saw. Starving children with weapons too big for their hands. They cried for their mothers when we cut them down as we were ordered to do.” He loomed over her, using his height to his advantage.

“I doubt you’re eager to cover up this crime yourself, so who commands you?

Who is paying you to hide those memories? ”

She turned away and pretended to busy herself with tidying her supplies. “I serve the Tower’s interests. I’ve saved hundreds of lives.”

He prickled at her evasive answer. “Whose interests specifically? The Zenith’s? The Council’s?”

She motioned to the guards that dogged him on every visit, and two stepped forward. They were young gargoyles who looked nervous as they sized him up. He smirked at them, flexing his fingers. He’d be happy to show them both what the remaining crumbs of the Sixth Watch could do.

“Have a seat, Commander. You’re showing signs of aggression. I suggest an immediate repair.” The mason cleared her throat impatiently when he didn’t move. Her voice grew a warning tone. “If you refuse, I’ll have to file a report about your dangerous behavior.”

He stared back at her, trying to puzzle out her motives. “Is someone paying you? Or are they threatening you?”

She stiffened slightly. “Guards!”

When they moved toward him, he snarled, warning them back. Wisely, they heeded him, pausing. “Think about what you’re doing, Aalis. I’m not the danger here.”

“Your behavior suggests otherwise. Comply with my directions, or you’ll face the gaol. It’s that simple.” Her quill quivered as she shakily wrote down a few lines on a scroll.

“What for? What is my crime here?” Menace had crept into his voice.

“Disrupting the safety of the Tower.” Her words were measured, but her tail snapped against the side of her desk, and ink blotted across her parchment. “Don’t come any closer. If you touch me, you’ll lose your wings.”

The guards edged nearer, circling him cautiously. Brandt slipped easily into his old role as a warrior, calculating odds, exits, consequences. Through the bond, he felt Idabel’s alarm.

“Don’t.” Rikard’s broken voice cut through the tension from ten paces away. “Not worth it, Commander. Walk away while you can.”

Sound advice from someone who’d lost everything to a fight he couldn’t win. Brandt raised his hands, showing empty palms. “I’m leaving. Peacefully, unless someone interferes. I will not trouble the masons’ hall again.”

Idabel could give him his tonic. He didn’t need them for anything.

He shouldered past the guards, who wisely didn’t try to stop him. But he heard Aalis’s muttered words to her assistant as she handed off the quill with trembling fingers. “Document his non-compliance in the report. Note his delusions and aggressive tendencies.”

They were building a case against him. But for what? On whose orders?

He needed someone who understood Tower politics, who could navigate the currents of power he’d always ignored. Someone who heard all the whispers and knew all the relationships. His feet carried him to the eyrie next door to his own.

His mother answered the door immediately, as if she’d been waiting. Her eyes widened at seeing him, though. He couldn’t blame her surprise after how cold he’d acted at Lo?c’s Fledging.

To her credit, she didn’t ask questions in the hallway but ushered him inside immediately.

Ghantal’s new home was smaller, but it was as stately and tasteful as the female herself, with the same carved wooden wall panels and flagstone floors as the home they’d shared.

Her touch was already obvious in the rich fabrics and furnishings and swarm of well-bred moths that clustered around the lantern. “What’s happened? Are you well?”

“Yes. No.” He rubbed his horn, trying to sort out his racing thoughts. “I need your help. Your political understanding.”

“Sit. Tell me.” She took a seat on a bench by the window, but he couldn’t keep still, so he paced nearby, words tumbling out. His clear progress once he ceased their “treatments.” The masons trying to obscure his memories. The threat of incarceration if he didn’t resume their regimen.

“They’re covering something up,” he finished. “Something terrible that they don’t want anyone to know. I’m certain of it now. Rikard and I are the only ones left who remember, and he’s walled his off and has no interest in recovering them. I can’t blame him. Why add pain to pain?”

“What is it?” she asked gently, worry creasing her forehead. “What memories do you have that are so terrifying?”

He stopped pacing and studied her face. Was her concern for him or for her image if this all came out? Was she asking questions because she believed him or because she thought he was delusional and paranoid?

She seemed genuine, he decided. And he had little choice but to trust her.