Page 22

CHARLOTTE

For a woman with four huge gargoyle roommates, I haven’t seen or heard from any of them since that day when the horrific alarm went off.

The signs of them are still here, the baked goods in the morning and muddy footprints after a hard rainstorm, but for almost two full weeks, I don’t so much as see a smudge of color in the corner of my vision.

I almost believe this place is just mine again, considering how often they’ve been away.

I guess that’s what I’m telling myself to excuse painting them nonstop. My art room is covered with little portraits of them. Those brief moments of seeing them are etched into my mind so clearly that putting them down on canvas, making them stagnant, feels like a crime.

Tossing aside my latest piece of Marcus’ smile, I groan. My hands cramp a little, and I do my best to rub at the joints until they ache just a little less. I can keep going if it’s just a little less.

“I have some Tylenol, if you’d like it.”

It takes a long moment for it to sink in that I’m actually hearing Marcus’ voice rather than imagining it. I turn to face him in the doorway of my studio and jump when I see Julius standing at his side with a forlorn look on his face.

“I’m fine. Always have been and always will be. I don’t need protection from my own dang joints,” I grumble, turning quickly to keep the canvas I’ve been working on hidden behind my body. “Why do you have Tylenol anyway? I thought magic would be your cure-all.”

“Why did you toss this one?” Julius asks choosing to ignore my question, and I go completely rigid as he picks up the canvas that is much closer to them than it is to me right now. “Oh…well, this is lovely, Charlotte.”

A soft chuckle mingles with an excited gasp as the two hold the canvas no bigger than one of their palms between them.

“I knew you liked my mouth, Char. It’s missed you nearly as much as I have…My mouth misses yours and you, like all of you really, even if they haven’t been introduced just yet,” Marcus says with a cheeky grin.

“You are the worst,” I groan, pressing my face into my paint-flecked hands.

I can feel the acrylic getting into my fricken pores, but I ignore it and instead focus on the mortification.

“Well, sure, but I also have a pretty mouth,” Marcus laughs.

“Any of me in that pile of yours?” Julius asks, and I can feel him at my back.

His presence is so distinct from anything and anyone else. He smells like berries and herbs and citrus from his simmer pots. The ones I find cold on the stove by the time I get down there in the morning to make breakfast.

“This one is incredible,” he whispers against the shell of my ear, and I want to melt like a baked candle.

“Which one?” I part my fingers and peek through the space to see him holding one that is part realism and part imagination.

I don’t know why I think he knits. Maybe it’s because he makes me feel cozy and safe? Or maybe it’s because I’m delusional.

“It’s really lifelike,” Marcus says suddenly, joining the green gargoyle at my back. They’re both mostly monstrous and handsome. “Wait a tick, didn’t you start that blanket a few weeks back? In the attic!”

I jerk my hands away from my face and turn to them, but since I’m sitting on my stool, my eyes meet the front of their pants. I swallow hard, trying not to imagine what’s behind those zippers as I look up and up and up until I reach their faces.

Marcus is the picture of joy and excitement, holding the canvas with his smile in one hand and pointing at the painting of Julius with the other. Julius is cradling the canvas with his visage painted on it and staring with an unreadable expression.

“Marcus, I think you might just be right,” Julius whispers, his eyes going slowly from the canvas to me. As his eyes lock with mine, he startles before he smiles. “You did me an incredible justice. I don’t think I have that many muscles in my arms anymore.”

“Anymore?” I question softly.

“We all used to be way more fit when we were on active protection duty,” Marcus says, setting the canvas down gingerly and walking over to the large window that overlooks the area in the front of the castle. The area where he showed me how good he is at football.

“I think you’re both still pretty buff, huge actually…like statues,” I mumble.

“Like gargoyles,” Julius says teasingly, offering me the canvas back. “But we can still gain muscle tone and lose some of it. Magic is funny, especially for those born this way.”

“So all of you were born…gargoyles, that is…not made?” I ask, trying to remember the fragments of that conversation. I was under a blanket at the time and quite enjoying how soft it was.

Julius hesitates. “It’s a bit of a sensitive subject for some?—”

“For Atlas. He means it’s sensitive for Atlas.” Marcus butts in.

“Right, Atlas is sensitive about born versus made gargoyles because he was made while the rest of us were born. Other than how one comes to be alive, we are the same at a biological level, but some?—”

“Arseholes,” Marcus says with a scowl.

“That is the best word for them. They see being made as not as good as being born.”

“Well, that explains the chip on his shoulder the size of Texas,” I grumble, though I feel bad for him. I’ve never been so hostile to someone I’ve hardly interacted with before, but something about Atlas sets me on edge.

“That and the fact that he is the youngest,” Marcus says, swaggering back toward me and offering me his hand. “I am the second youngest but the most handsome.”

I giggle and slip my fingers into his, spreading the remnants of the paint on my skin across his stone.

“Of course you are,” Julius says with a playful roll of his eyes behind the golden frame of his glasses. “Now, shall we do what we planned and actually ask the lady on a date or just whisk her away to it?”

“A date?” I balk.

“A date,” Marcus purrs. He pulls me close to his body and wraps his arms around my waist.

“With both of us, if that wasn’t clear.” Julius pushes his golden glasses up the elegant slope of his nose.

“Darius did say something about you all going for the same girl or something like that.” I bite back another giggle of embarrassment.

“When did you talk to Darius about dating us?” Marcus asks adorably, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“There was a little magical incident almost two weeks ago when the alarm went off…before things got all busy,” I say, trying not to wince.

“Really? Our alpha?” Julius asks with a laugh. “He’s so reserved, but I’m not surprised you were the one to crack him, darling.”

I blush and melt a little on my stool at the tender name.

“I mean, it’s a good thing because you’re our?—”

Julius elbows Marcus in the gut and grins extra wide, sidling closer to me and blocking his nest partner with his wings. “You’re everything we could want in a woman. Gorgeous, talented, incredibly sweet, and you like my cooking.”

“You’re smart too!” Marcus says, grabbing one of Julius’ wings and jerking it down to smile at me.

“You two are a lot,” I laugh, standing and putting my hands on my hips. “Do I have time to change or…?”

“No need to change. It’s a sort of an inside-the-castle date,” Marcus says quickly, scampering around Julius and taking one of my hands in both of his. “I don’t want to waste any more time. Come on.” He begins to tug me toward the door of my workroom before he even finishes the sentence.

Julius follows us with an easy smile on his face.

A room at the top of the tower proves to be the perfect spot for movie marathons. It’s the only way to properly use a space where the entire floor is covered in mattresses with enough pillows and blankets to choke a horse.

“This place looks amazing.”

“It’s our nest!” Marcus beams. “We tend to hang in here when we want quality time. We put in a movie screen, and since there are only little windows”—he points to the small ones toward the top of the rounded room for emphasis—“there’s hardly any light to disrupt.”

“It’s a communal space for us that has a little extra magic to help us recover from any injuries or exhaustion,” Julius adds as he settles into a spot against the wall that seems very much like “his spot,” with a basket of knitting supplies and a mostly made blanket sticking out.

“It’s sort of sacred,” he says with a smile that doesn’t impress the gravity of the space.

Marcus dives into another spot with such force it causes a soccer ball to pop out of a pile of blankets and launch across the room. I squeal and dive out of the way, burying myself in the softness of the floor-bed.

“This is incredible. I swear I’ve read something just like it in a romance book once or twice.”

“Or a dozen times.” Julius teases me with a knowing smile.

“Do you read romance?” I ask with a soft, fake gasp.

“Of course I do, it’s the best genre.” He grins. “I started a book club with Darius about a hundred years ago. It’s been the best part of our biweekly forced nest time.”

“You’re telling me Mr. Serious reads romance too?”

“It’s so fucking boring,” Marcus groans from somewhere under the sea of blankets.

I push myself up on my elbows, trying to find him.

It’s hard to lose such a massive man, but in this wonderful mess, I guess it’s actually possible.

Then I see a blanket move, like something is wriggling underneath, and it’s coming closer.

As the shape reaches me, I finally see a flash of his yellow tail before Marcus springs from under the blankets and tackles me gently.

“Please tell me we don’t have to watch romance movies, pleeeeeease,” he begs against the shell of my ear. “I’ve been eyeing a documentary for ages, and I want to watch it with you, get all of your thoughts on the subject.”

I snort and press my face into the blankets, letting a laugh filter out. This feels too good to be true.

“I’m not that smart, Marcus. You’re being too kind, but sure, we can watch your documentary,” I say.

“Sweet!” he cheers, hopping off me and crawling across the room to a closet built into the wall.

It sits flush with the bricks around it, and I wouldn’t have known it was there unless one of them pointed it out. He pops it open and fiddles around with a projector, clicking a button and making a screen roll down to cover the entrance area.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Marcus says with a bright smile as he lowers the light.

“Are you a cuddler?” Julius asks softly, reaching for me with one hand, the half-finished blanket clutched in the other.

“Very much so,” I say, a desperate little trill escaping me as I crawl over and sit beside Julius.