He washuge. She had to crane her head to see all of him, his harsh, stony features lit by the street lanterns below. His heavy brow furrowed as he gave her a narrow-eyed appraisal. He looked like a predator, and every instinct in her was torun.
When she made a move toward the door, his right wing snapped out to block her exit. “Are you an intruder?” he barked, his voice like a crash of thunder. She blinked blankly at him. All thoughts had fled. He made an irritated noise at her confusion. “Do you bear ill will toward those in Maiden Hall?”
She shook her head, biting her lip to keep back her whimper of fear. “I live here.”
“Are you a thief?”
“What? No!”
He settled down on his haunches, one muscular shoulder tipped toward her as he gripped the edge of his stone perch. “So you admit they are yours, these growing things?”
Her stomach clenched a warning, but what could she do? If she denied it, she’d be arrested for stealing. Gaoled andpunished, maybe even expelled from the city. Preferring to pay a fine rather than lose a hand or home, she nodded. “I planted them. They aren’t a danger, though,” she hurried to add. “Their roots are twenty feet in the air. They’d have to grow through bucket, balcony, and building before they touched the ground.”
Frankly, she didn’t see the danger in growing them the usual way, either. Everyone she knew in the south grew acres of crops, and never once did a fae lord use his magic to crawl up the roots and make the people dance like puppets. But she’d done her best to follow the spirit of the law prohibiting plants inside the city walls, if not the letter.
“What of the seeds?” the gargoyle rumbled. “Will you count and collect each one to ensure they do not escape the bounds of yourbuckets”—he spit the word contemptuously—”and lodge in the earth somewhere?”
“I…will do my best,” she sputtered, flustered.
“Your best is not enough.” His scowl flashed sharp canines that sent a cool, sickening feeling through her, like seeing an exposed bone in a bad break. “The rules are the rules for a reason. No growing things within the walls.”
He hopped down onto the balcony, and quick as a viper, ripped up every pot of herbs by the roots. Then he kicked over her makeshift planters, smashing them with his hard heel until the whole balcony was nothing but mud and ruin.
A cry caught in her throat, but still, he heard it. With a sharp look over his shoulder, he scoffed at her misery. “I enjoyed this even less, I assure you.”
With that, he took flight, dirt raining down from his ill-gotten bouquet as his wings carried him away.
Chapter 2
Brandt
He burned the fragrant plants in one of the guardhouse braziers and returned home with ashes in his hair. His mother, Ghantal, who shared his fifth-tier eyrie in the Tower, frowned as she brushed them away.
“Why does the Zenith have a watch commander on guard duty? Surely there is someone lower-ranking who can do it.”
“I’m not above guard duty,” he said gruffly, avoiding the question. He had not been on duty when he’d spotted and confiscated the human’s illegal garden. It had seemed like toomuch trouble to report her to the Nadir, the gargoyle who handled any business with humans, when he could take care of it himself. He doubted the terrified little female would plant anything again, and the Nadir would survive without a few more coins in his overflowing coffers. But still, he could not let her flaunt the rules and keep them.
“No, you’re not above anything,” Ghantal chided as she continued grooming him, picking imaginary flecks of lichen from his temples with her curving claws. “That’s the problem. You forget that, as easily as you have risen, you could be pushed back down.”
“It hasn’t been easy.” He’d worked for every new responsibility and title that had been laid upon him. Worked twice as hard as a towerborn to prove himself. Climbed his way up from village guard to the highest-ranking cliffborn anyone could remember. He’d worked double shifts. Taken lessons in the three languages of diplomacy when other gargoyles were playingscaccusand swilling mead. He’d forgone females and fun in favor of advancing his career and raising his family name. There was no possibility he’d endanger it all now.
Ghantal sighed. “You know what I mean. Towerborn can be whimsical in the best of times. You can’t give them any reason to see you as lesser. If a tenth-tier lowered himself to guard duty, it’d be seen as a charming personality quirk. For you? A reversion to your roots. Your true calling.”
He made a noncommittal noise. He was in no danger of losing his position. The Sixth Watch would deploy in the coming weeks to combat the growing goblin threat. As a wing commander, he’d play a crucial role in protecting the southern settlements, but it wasn’t a glamorous assignment. It would be bloody at the best. High-tiers would send him gladly rather than risk their own sons and daughters.
“You don’t believe me.” His mother sounded tired. He watched as she ran her claw over the row of crystal vials in the grooming case before selecting one.
She’d worked as hard as he had to shed the stigma of her low birth. She covered her scars. Capped her horns with gold to lengthen them. Spoke with a dragon-tinged accent that she’d practiced faithfully to master. No one would guess upon meeting her that Ghantal wasn’t towerborn herself.
It went beyond her appearance. She did everything she could to be a credit to their name: associating with the best families, attending the right skyballs, supporting the right issues. Bred pretty moths to collect gossip for her that she kept a detailed ledger, a record of all the high-tier scandals and indiscretions in case the information was useful someday.
Brandt sometimes wondered who she was beneath the ambitious armor she’d so carefully constructed. He doubted she knew herself.
Uncorking the vial, she reached to oil his horns, and he put his hand on her arm, stopping her. “I would never do anything to jeopardize our rise. I swear to you.”
Her quiet purr of happiness cut off when he pried the little flask from her fingers and strode to the polished copper mirror to do it himself, buffing the oil in until the long curves of his horns were dark and gleaming. They looked noble thanks to his father’s blood, even if the rest of him did not. He wore too many scars to be towerborn, but he had fought for every one.
“There is one way you could never be pushed down again,” she said behind him. He knew what she meant: an advantageous mating with a highborn. Not too high, of course, but perhaps someone from a family born into the same tier he’d earned. Once he had a towerborn hatchling of his own, it would secure his family’s roost forever.
