Page 49 of The Gargoyle and the Maiden (Nightfall Guardians #1)
Brandt
R elief rushed through him when his mother entered still in her finery, a flurry of moths at her back, all anxious to see what was happening inside. She shooed them out with a draft of her wings and then took in the scene. Their small family, huddled on the floor.
“Don’t move. Don’t speak to anyone.” She was already headed for the balcony. “I’ll fix this.”
“What can you do? What can anyone do?” The dead couldn’t be fixed, not even by a healer with as much skill as Idabel.
But Ghantal was gone, diving into the night with purpose. Through the bond, Brandt felt Idabel’s confusion matching his own. Lo?c pressed against his mother’s side, silent for once, gray eyes asking questions Brandt couldn’t answer.
Mere minutes later, Ghantal returned…with the Zenith. She’d brought him his judge, jury, and executioner, it seemed.
Gérald strode from the balcony to the front door and opened it. Idabel covered Lo?c’s eyes while the Zenith surveyed the blood-spattered passageway where more and more moths had gathered to witness. Then he turned back to them, his frame filling the doorway, blocking out the horror.
“Take your mate and son,” he commanded. “Leave immediately. Go now.”
Brandt struggled to his feet, mind reeling. “Zenith, I can explain.”
“No explanations needed. I’ll handle the body and the Council.” Gérald shut the door behind him. “You were never here. This never happened.”
“Why would you do this for us?” The word came out strangled. “Why would you do this for me?”
“He owes me a favor,” Ghantal said quietly. “I’m collecting.”
“A favor?” Brandt looked between them, noting the careful distance they maintained. “What debt could possibly warrant a favor of this gravity?”
“Tell him.” Ghantal’s voice was tight with compressed emotion. “He deserves the truth.”
Gérald’s marble composure cracked. “Ghantal, are you sure?”
“Tell him, or I will.”
The Zenith, the most powerful gargoyle in Solvantis, the embodiment of strength and authority who only gave orders and never received them, obeyed. “There is no easy way to say this. Your mother is my mate. I may not deserve the title, but I am your father.”
The words hung in the air. Idabel’s shock pierced through their bond, sharp as a needle.
It couldn’t be true. Brandt shook his head, his mind running over the timeline and all the things Ghantal had ever told him about his father.
How he’d been high-tier. Had left her while she was pregnant with Brandt and never returned.
How she could feel him through the bond sometimes, enough to know that he was alive.
How she’d never seen him again. But she saw the Zenith all the time.
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s true.” Ghantal moved closer to Gérald, not touching but near enough that their connection was obvious. “We met while hunting in the wildwood. We were mated before he entered the Zenith trials. Young, foolish, and in love.”
“Cliffborn and towerborn,” Gérald added, his voice rough as he looked at Ghantal. “An impossible match, but we didn’t care. But when I was chosen as Zenith, the council made it clear. I had to abandon my unsuitable mate or lose the position.”
“He chose duty.” There was no bitterness in Ghantal’s voice, just old resignation. “Left me with enough coin to survive and you growing in my belly.”
Brandt’s mind struggled to reshape thirty years of understanding. Every interaction with the Zenith, every moment of feeling unworthy of notice. His own father, watching from a distance, saying nothing.
“You knew who I was all this time?”
“I watched you grow up with so much pride.” Gérald’s formality crumbled entirely. “Watched you exceed every expectation, become more than I ever could be. You are brave where I was weak. Loyal where I was false.”
“You let me think I was nobody.”
“I let you become somebody. You proved it with every choice, every achievement you earned without any special advantage.” The Zenith— his father?
—stepped closer. “Your mother has advised me in secret all these years. Her counsel has shaped every good decision I’ve made.
But unlike you, I have been too much a coward to claim my mate or child publicly, and I regret it every day. I failed you both in this.”
Brandt couldn’t wrap his head around it. His father, always there but never within reach. His mother, lying to him his whole life. Could it be true?
Through the bond, Brandt felt Idabel’s steady presence, her love anchoring him through this reshaping of his world. He looked at her, at their son, at the family they’d pieced together.
“Don’t make my mistake,” Gérald continued. “Take your family and go. Tonight. Go south, to the cliffs where the Tower’s authority is less absolute. Live the life I was too weak to choose.”
Brandt looked at his mate, drank in the unflagging warmth from her brown eyes. He smoothed her hair back from her face. “Can you give up everything here? All you’ve worked for?”
She nodded, eyes shining. “You are my everything. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”
Brandt turned his attention to his mother. “Come with us,” he urged.
Before she could answer Gérald caught her hand. “Ghantal, please. Stay.”
Her wings flexed in surprise. “Why?”
“I need you.” The Zenith of Solvantis dropped to his knees before his secret mate. “I’m ready to be better. To be true to you. All these years, you’ve been my secret strength. My wisdom. I can’t—I won’t —live without you by my side any longer.”
“What about the Council?”
“They can accept my mate or find a new Zenith.” He pressed her palm to his chest. “I’m done hiding what matters most to me.”
The way they looked at each other, with decades of things unsaid, gave Brandt the resolve he needed. “Go on. Take your rightful place, Mother. You have earned it a hundred times over.”
“What about you?” She took them all in with the word, him and Idabel and Lo?c, too. “I only just got my son back.”
“I have learned that love is never simple, and it’s rarely easy.
” He pulled Idabel into his side and felt their bond tighten and strengthen with the proximity.
“If the connection exists, nurture it. Don’t use it to punish each other for the past. We will meet again, and we can send moths in the meantime. ”
Ghantal studied his face, then looked back at Gérald, still on his knees for her. “I have your forgiveness if I stay, then?”
“Of course.” He understood why she could not refuse Gérald.
And he needed time to make peace with the lifetime of lies by omission.
He had a great well of compassion for what it must have been like, living at the bottom of the Tower while her mate lived at the top, so he knew he would forgive her in the end, even if he couldn’t quite manage it yet.
Gérald rose, still holding Ghantal’s hand. “Go. Now. Before the guard shift changes. I’ll ensure no one follows.”
“And I’ll ensure the moths don’t talk,” Ghantal added grimly.
“Lo?c?” Brandt crouched before his son. “Are you ready for your first long flight?”
The boy’s fear transformed into excitement. “Really? I can fly all the way to the cliffs?”
“All the way. Do you think you can do it?”
“I’ve been practicing during the day,” Lo?c admitted in a rush. “When you’re stone. Sorry, Papa. But I wanted to learn faster.”
Pride flooded through him. “Then let’s see what you’ve learned.”
He lifted Idabel, her weight familiar and right in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her trust in him absolute. Lo?c studiously stretched his wings to prepare for the flight, and Brandt saw himself as a fledgling. Young, determined, ready to leave safety for something better.
“Thank you,” Brandt told his parents. “For the truth.”
Gérald inclined his head. “I owe you much more of it.”
The three of them launched together into the vast possibility of the night. Behind them, the Tower shrank to a smudge of dust and then vanished completely.
Far ahead lay the familiar cliffside caves of his childhood, when he’d been hopeful and adventuresome, like his son. It was like flying toward his past and his future at the same time.
Through the bond, Idabel’s thoughts twined with his: We’re free.
Not from consequence or struggle or the scars they carried. But free to build something new from the ruins of what they’d been. Free to love without permission. Free to heal without judgment.
The wind caught Lo?c’s wings, lifting him higher than ever before.
His delighted laughter was a salve to another of Brandt’s scars.
That was his son flying alongside him, born of his mate whom he carried in his arms. He had nothing else to his name and yet still had everything he could ever want or need in this life or another.
Together, they flew toward dawn.