They would never, never give this child up, no matter what it might do to the politics of their people. They would never allow it to be taken away or harmed, even if they themselves had to fight the Old Races. They would fight as hard for her, too, as the mother of their child, and there was no mistaking in Sarah's mind: it would be theirs, no matter who the father was. No matter, indeed, who the mother was.

  Inside a breath, the life that she had been offered, the long years of her own, became something very different.

  "I think tomorrow I'll stay in the city house when I'm done visiting the Lady Rathbourne," she said when Eli and Janx's game of sharing outrageous stories as done. "I've been invited for tea, and it seems a long journey to come home again before morning."

  "If only I could fly you there and back," Janx said in a mockery of sorrow. There was genuine regret in his green eyes, though, and Sarah shared that regret. They hadn't flown again, not since that first night, and she wanted very much to come so close to touching the stars again.

  "If only I had the strength of ten," Eli said, much more dourly. "It's never seemed entirely fair to have speed but no commensurate strength so I can carry things as I dash around."

  Sarah laughed. "Oh, yes. You're much abused, Eli. You can only go to India and back with arms full of flowers instead of carrying a tiger across the world for me."

  As one, he and Janx straightened, their interest piqued. "Would you like a tiger?" Janx asked hopefully. "I could get you one."

  "The poor creature would expire of fear if you captured one and brought it to me. I'll settle for going to India someday to see one myself."

  "When London tires of the slaughterfield's daughter and her paramours," Janx promised. "Should we join you for tea with Lady Rathbourne?"

  "Don't be silly. I saw her at the masque with you. She could hardly talk for tripping over her tongue. I think she actually drooled."

  "Janx has that effect on women. I'm far less exciting," Eli said. "So if you require an escort..."

  Sarah reached across the table to take both mens' hands. "I'll be fine. It's only a single night. You wouldn't want them to think I'm your prisoner, would you?"

  Janx gave Eliseo a considering look, and Sarah, laughing, aimed a kick at him under the table. "You would not," she told him. "No matter how it might add to your mystery."

  "Oh, very well. But we'll be bereft without you, so you must come back to us in the morning."

  "How could I not?" The promise made an ache in her chest, but she smiled as she spoke, and they thought no more of it.

  Tea with the Rathbournes was a trial, but at least it wasn't supper: Sarah escaped before sunset, and at her own home found the boy Alban had set to watch the grounds. He scampered to find the gargoyle, hand fisted around a coin that would see his family through a year of living graciously, and Sarah retreated to her parlor to wait.

  Alban came, which she expected. So did Hajnal, which she did not, but the female gargoyle took a sentry post at the windows without speaking. Janx and Eli wouldn't come; Sarah had told the boy to pass on that message, and so wondered a little what devils Hajnal stood guard against. She didn't ask, though, and instead turned to Alban and spoke without preamble, for fear she'd be unable to speak at all if she did otherwise.

  "I can't live with it." Whispered words, words that hurt her throat, her heart, to speak them. Whispered lies, because she could. Oh, she could live with the magic and mystery that were the two men she'd come to love. She could and was eager to, but not at the inevitable cost. Not at the price of her child lost to them all, or of her beautiful men lost to war. She was human. Mortal, for all that Eli's blood might stretch those mortal years out beyond imagination. She was meant to die, and they would, in the end, live with that.

  "I look at them and I tremble." Her voice did too, shaking with what Alban would hear as fear, though in fact it was truth and sorrow. "They are such great creatures, and I cannot breathe when I am near them. I am so small."

  Hajnal looked away from the window, her gaze deeper with sympathy than Sarah had imagined possible. She knew, Sarah thought: she knew what Sarah was doing, and would let Alban misunderstand.

  And misunderstand Alban did. "That is the cruelty," he said, as he'd said once before. "There is so little in the memories, Sarah. So few instances of humans learning our secrets, and it always destroys them, in the end. I fear we're too much for mortals to grasp. How will you do it?" he asked more softly, and Sarah sat with her face in her hands.

  "I'll have to die. They'll have to see it, or think they do, and...perhaps even think themselves to blame."

  "Choose one," Hajnal said, her only contribution thus far to the conversation. Sarah startled, looking at her, and the dark-haired gargoyle shrugged. "Choose one. It will enrage the other, and a battle will be fought. The aftermath will be your best hope to escape their long reach."

  "How could I choose? How could I—"

  "How could you let one be the victor? Let one think he is less loved than the other? You must, or you and that child will never be free."

  Alban's gold eyes widened and he shot a hard look at Sarah, who curved her hands over her belly protectively. "You didn't say," he accused Sarah, and in much the same tone, said, "How did you know?" to Hajnal.

  "She has the look about her."

  Sarah clenched her hands now, still keeping them in front of her belly. Rash hope ran through her, hope for an answer she had been unable to see. "Is there any way?" she asked Hajnal. "Any way for this to be made...possible? What happens to us, to we humans caught up in your games, if we are found to be complicit in the breaking of your laws?"

  There was no softness in the gargoyle woman's voice. "You already know, Sarah. Daisani and Janx will survive, ultimately. Exiled, perhaps, but they seem to have some bond of family in each other, and exile may mean less to them than it would to others of us. But you and the child will not be permitted to live. You knew that when you called to us for help."

  "And even if we should all flee together, my lovers and I..." But she had rejected that already, though the idea of so many long years with them was far from unbearable. It was the thought of the child being theirs, the thought of how precious and secret they would keep it, and how she would be brushed aside in its care that she could not bear. Not that they would lose regard for her: no, they might hold her in all the more esteem. But she wanted the child to be hers, as greedily as they would, and in the end she would be only human. She would never be able to keep up with the fathers in what she could offer the child, and so would far too quickly fall behind.

  It was selfish, greedy, unkind. That, too, perhaps she had learned from Janx, from the bold creature who had singled her out and taken her from the world she'd known. He had not thought of what it would mean to her if he then rejected her; she, at least, thought of him. Of them. And then she chose for herself, as they would have done, and met Hajnal's eyes. "I knew when I came to you," she agreed. "Will you help me?"

  "If you are ruthless, Alban will help you to escape, Sarah. There is no other way. Can you do it?"

  "I must."

  "Children are..." Alban barely gave voice to the words, shock and hope in his features. "Sarah, this is a great danger. Do they know?"

  "Of course not. So it has to be soon, or this will all be much worse." Sarah's strength returned, though her heart ached with every beat. Quicksilver Janx or conservative Eli. Choosing one was worse than the betrayal of leaving them. They were brothers, and no one had ever dared to love them both. She could not take that away, not from either of them.

  And yet she would have to. Sick with despair, she left the gargoyles behind, entering the gardens that surrounded her city house. The night sky glittered diamonds , sharp reminder of how close she'd flown to them. She would never reach close enough to the stars again to find answers written in them. She knelt, numb and cold despite lingering daytime heat, and let tears slide down her cheeks. So many moments of brightness and hope in these past few months, and they would all come to such a harsh and bitter end.

  Hajnal joined her as the horizon began to blue, and stood quietly for some time before speaking. "Alban," she said as the sky grew golder, "Alban is very young. Very...romantic, I think, even by human standards. My people hardly know what to do with him, with his wild ideas and that romance in his soul. It's much of why I love him and chose him over many others as my mate for life. But he sees the world through that romantic glass. He sees a human woman overwhelmed by extraordinary men. A woman whose only hope for survival is to escape those men."

  "That's what he needs to see."

  "It is, but do not let his perception alter yours, Sarah Hopkins. Do not let yourself imagine that it is fear which sets you on this path. I see otherwise in your eyes."

  "It is fear," Sarah disagreed softly. "Fear for them, not of them. And fear for my child. Your world would not welcome it." Those were true enough things; she did not need to confess her own selfishness as well.

  "You're right. And you put me—and Alban—in a difficult place by sharing this with us. Our memories are shared by all the very moment we enter the repository that links us. To keep your child safe, we cannot ever again join with the rest of our kind."

  Dismay clenched Sarah's stomach. "Would you do that?"

  "Yes. Because Alban is romantic, and because I...am not." Hajnal smiled, barely a crease across her stern face. "I will perhaps be led to believe you have died, so at least one of us might stay connected to the memories. But Alban will stay apart. It's a great gift he gives you, Sarah Hopkins. Savor it. Savor the life you will lead, for it comes at a cost to all of us."

  Sarah nodded, unable to voice a promise so large, and the gargoyles went away with the dawn.

  She could not, in the end, choose, so what she did was worse. No easier, but certainly no kinder to take an afternoon in the sunshine with Janx and to say in a small and shaking voice, "I am afraid."

  "Of what? I shall savage that which alarms you, my dear. I shall protect your virtue—very well, not your virtue—your stalwart heart from all comers! I shall—you are not playing," he interrupted himself, and all the humor fled from his face. "What on earth could frighten you now, Sarah? After you've seen so much with us?"

  "I dream of being drained of blood," Sarah whispered. "Every night, worse and worse as his heat lies next to me. I dream of a cold death, my body empty and unwanted with its spirit and flavor fled."

  Janx sat, eyebrows drawn down in concern. "You fear Eliseo? Sarah, he would never hurt you. He would..."

  She raised her eyes to his, and whispered, "Wouldn't he?"

  So easy. So terribly easy to sow a seed of doubt. So wrong, too: she wanted to cry out in protest as uncertainty and then angry caution changed the shade of Janx's green eyes. He spoke clearly, precisely: "I will not let him harm you, Sarah Hopkins, slaughterfield's daughter. Not ever."

  "He's so fast. How could you stop him? I could be dead before..."

  "I will not let him harm you." Brothers, and brothers could be driven apart by jealousy and hate. Sarah crushed her eyes shut and turned her face against a pillow, loathing what she did and seeing no other way forward. Janx sprang free of the bed and stalked away, anger and distrust in his actions. When he was gone she rose and went to find Eliseo.

  To say to him, as she'd said to Janx, "I am afraid, Eli. Janx seems angry, and he's so fiercely other, when he changes. I'm afraid his anger, his size, his differences will be the end of me."

  And as Janx had done, Eli shook his head. "He wouldn't hurt you, Sarah. He would never do you harm."

  "Not intentionally," Sarah whispered, and watched a darkness come into Eliseo's eyes too.

  "We are not meant to fight one another, his kind and mine. His size is too great, my strength too small. But he cannot match my speed, and I may not be strong, Sarah, but I can carry you from danger. Do not fear," he said, low and angry. "I will not let him harm you."

  They slept separately that night for the first time since she had been unable to choose. All of them separate, each to their own rooms, though Sarah, wracked with exhaustion, rested very little at all. Daytime was worse, herself unable to meet either of their gazes and the men glowering at one another until at tea she burst out with, "Excuse me," and fled not just the table, but the estate.

  She was astonished they let her go, though Eli was at the city house when she arrived. Janx would be just behind her with a coach and four, or would wait for nightfall so he could come by sky, his most favored way to journey. But Eli had no such need for discretion, and so waited for her at the home she called her own. He offered her a hand out of the carriage, his fingers hot against hers.

  "Has it all changed so quickly?" he asked with regret. "It's been a beautiful summer, Sarah. If you're afraid of him, come away with me. He'll forgive us in time."

  "Would you?"

  Guilt replaced regret, Eli's gaze sliding to the ground. Sarah nodded and stepped away, only to have his voice follow her: "You're afraid of me now as well, aren't you."

  She looked back. Looked at the distance she'd put between them, and the pain etched in Eliseo's features. There was no answer she could give, no answer she wanted to give: lying to them each separately about the other was a cruel enough trick. The thought of doing so directly took her breath so sharply she was left with nothing to speak with. But Eli took the exhalation for admission and bleakness came into his face. "How might I regain your trust? It is...unfair, Sarah. I think I've done nothing to lose it."

  "Trust is a fickle mistress," she whispered, and Eli, blackly, said, "As are you."

  A palpable hit: one of Janx's favorite phrases. Sarah closed her eyes with the blow, then drew tattered dignity around herself and went silently inside her home. Eli didn't follow, and she had the bitter thought that he didn't care enough to persuade her, and then an idea of fanciful anger: perhaps the Old Races couldn't cross a human threshold without being invited, and surely if he wouldn't fight for her she wouldn't wish to invite him.

  She did not, in truth, want anyone to fight for her. Weary and heartsick, Sarah went to the back parlor, where she could stare out a window without exposing herself to Eliseo Daisani's watchful gaze. There was no better way, nothing she could think of to keep herself, her men, her child, safe. She whispered that promise to herself until the words were meaningless, and in time slept cradled in the window seat.

  The sounds of destruction woke her. She jolted awake, unsure of her location, then came to her feet before thought could make sense of the roaring outside her home. She hurt everywhere: her narrow corset was not suited for sleeping in. Nor for running, but still before thought was fully engaged she was running, skirts gathered in her hands so she wouldn't trip as she rushed through the house and into the gardens.

  A dragon and a vampire did battle there. Sarah screamed, useless sound of protest: the whole of London would see them if they weren't careful. Certainly all of her staff would, and gossip would spread from there. But her voice was lost beneath Janx's infuriated roars and tossed away by the wind brought up by Eli's speed.

  They could not touch each other, not in any meaningful way. She saw that even in the dark, even with one too quick to watch and the other huge with rage. Janx slammed massive paws down, trying to skewer or crush Eli, but the vampire darted between the blows as if Janx fought under water, slow and clumsy with it. Neither, though, could Eli damage Janx: the dragon's scales were too hard to penetrate, and he had nothing like the strength or size necessary to rip one free so he might reach tenderer flesh below.

  It didn't stop them trying. Sarah screamed again, and this time Janx heard her. He stopped mid-motion, wings flared to shelter half the estate grounds, and then snapped long teeth in obvious fury.

  Half a breath later he was in the sky, taking the fight away from Sarah. Taking her out of danger, as he had promised he would. Sarah put fists against her mouth, trying not to sob, and Eli gave her one angry, helpless look before disappearing in a blur of speed.

  Fire gouted through the sky, chasing after the vampire. Sarah ran for the garden walls, scrambling up trellises so she might see. She caught a glimpse of Eli swarming up a building wall as a swath of black against lighter brick, then lowered her head to watch where she put her feet. Fire roared again.

  Sarah looked up, and London began to burn.

  It seemed a long time before she realized she might be in danger. The fire spread quickly, leaping from one wooden building to another, and the heat became impossible long before she thought to save herself. Impossible, because she saw others running from it, saw them burning, saw them fall and die as she sat rigid on the wall, staring through smoke at the battle continuing on. She should have felt the heat, should have roasted from it, long before Alban separated himself from the night and landed beside her.

  She had not seen him in his true form, so much broader and taller than he stood as a man. Paler, too: she could barely pick him out within the smoke, though his wings sent eddies swirling away from them both. He had no tail, which she thought odd for a flying creature, but his feet were huge and rudder-like. One could sail him, perhaps, she thought, then let go a sharp sob as he offered his hand. "This is your chance, Sarah. Come now, while the fire rages and the smoke hides us. Come while they're still fighting. They must not think to search for you until your scent has been burned away."

  Sarah put her hand in his, astounded at her delicacy beside his size. He drew her up, then lifted her in his arms as if her weight was nothing. "Hold tight, Sarah Hopkins." He sprang upward as he spoke, wings catching the air more effortfully than Janx's had done, but in seconds they were within the smoke, and stayed there as the fire leapt and spread below them. She heard its crackle and Janx's bellows as they left London; those would be the sounds that stayed with her always, drowning out every other memory of childhood and youth spent in the burning city.

  They flew until dawn, when the gargoyle's curse set in, and Sarah stayed at his side, silent and appalled as she watched the city burn in the distance. Come nightfall they flew again, until they reached a house set by itself in a small wood. Alban landed there and put Sarah down to gesture around. "You can grow food here, and I'll bring you pigs for meat. Will it be enough?"

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29