“Will you fight beside us for her and for the protection of this realm? Will you order your Clan to come to our aid?”
Terak stepped back. He did not break eye contact. He would never be ashamed of his decision, though at this moment he regretted it more than he ever contemplated. “I have no Clan. I gave them up for her. There are no others that can help.”
Fallon’s eyes lost their fire, though her body still had the brittle tenseness that spoke of upcoming battle. “Well, hell. Looks like I owe Ais ten bucks.”
Thwup. Thwup. Thwup.
Both looked toward the balcony to see Malek and a half-dozen other gargoyles on the landing. Malek walked in while the others waited outside. “Mennak, the Guild has contacted us and told us what happened.”
Confusion flew through him on hummingbird wings. “Malek, why are you here?”
“To rescue our Meyla.”
“What are you speaking of? I am no longer Clan.”
“No.” Malek cut him off, his wings flaring out with the strength of that word. “That is unacceptable. We have cut ourselves from the Clan as well, because we will follow none but you. The old ways are unacceptable. We trust you to lead us in a new Clan, you and your mate.”
Terak shook his head as sorrow seeped into the cracks of his battered heart, the parts that broke when he flew away that last night. “I did not want this. I wanted the Clan to be strong and united.”
Malek placed his hand on Terak’s shoulder. “Perhaps it was inevitable. We were never a single Clan before, perhaps it is not our way. All we know,” he said, gesturing to include those behind him, “is we follow none but you. We trust you with our lives and the lives of our mates and children. We go where you lead.”
“And if my first order is to place you in danger to protect my mate?”
“We live and die for our Mennak and our Meyla. It has always been so.”
Terak drew him close and touched their foreheads for a moment, mixing gratitude and acceptance and relief. He pulled away. “How many warriors to follow me tonight?”
“Sixty.”
Terak turned to Fallon. “Will that do?”
“Is there another choice? Now let’s go kill some necromancers.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
‡
So here was where it ended, in a maze of caves far away from her home, a sacrifice to release powerful demons who were going to destroy this world and rip the realms apart.
Larissa huddled deeper into her jacket. Earlier, above the clang of metal on metal and the screams of those hurt and dying, she had heard Laire’s voice.
She’s a null!
Before today, she’d never heard that word, the reason for all these weeks of pain and worry.
The reason Terak had come into her life.
Larissa glanced through the bars to where Taneasha lay in the other cage. The girl was quiet now, curled in on herself, but earlier she had been alternating between screaming at the vampire to let her out and begging Larissa to forgive her, swearing that what had been shown her was real, Terak really said those things.
It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Had it all been a lie? Everything they had talked about those long evenings, the battles they had fought together?
Making love?
How could that have been a lie?
Shivering, she stuffed her hands into her pockets. Stiff leather brushed against her fingers, and she grabbed the unfamiliar object, pulling it out.
This was the book the Oracle had given her. The Mating Habits of Gargoyles.
The Oracle. The woman who had started it all, if those images were indeed true.
Guard her well.
He did do that. He held her and protected her and he was so warm. If he were here right now, she could be curled up against that chest that could double as a furnace.
She pushed the confusion over Terak away and flipped the pages open. Knowing what she knew of the Oracle, this book promised to be…interesting. But it wasn’t like she had anything else to do while waiting to be sacrificed.
It was written in English, which was good. But instead of salacious, wonderfully purple prose, it was written in academic speak. Well, that took some of the fun out of it.
Still, she kept reading, until one passage knocked in her chest and pushed all breath from her body.
“The ultimate physical expression of love for a gargoyle is the wrapping of their wings around their ‘mate’. It is an instinctive gesture and one that the paranoid and isolated gargoyle cannot force and cannot compel, as it leaves the gargoyle’s only true vulnerable spot on their body accessible to the one who is enveloped. Even couples who have been mated for years – decades – sometimes have not reached this level of trust.”
Terak wrapped her in his wings that first night as she had sobbed against the castle floor. She was the one who forced him to let her go.