Unconsciously, her hand pressed to her shoulder where his bite had once marked her. The scar had faded to nothing. Like their bond, it was a ghost.
She had no hope it could be resurrected. Her only hope now was that, whatever battles Brandt had fought, whatever horrors he’d survived to return to Solvantis, he would be glad to someday know his son.
Even if she could never touch him again. Even if he hated her. If they both loved their child, that would be enough for her.
Chapter 17
Brandt
He couldn’t stand it in there. The healers’ hall reeked of limestone dust and pine resin, the flesh-and-bone-mending paste that made his nostrils burn. He leaned on a stone rail outside, watching through the open door as the masons scurried between their stations like beetles over carrion. Their voices buzzed together into meaningless noise that he wanted to swat away.
A younger mason cautiously approached with a platter of steaming meat. “Commander? Would you like something to eat?”
Why did her obsequious question annoy him? He could feel the answer pressing against one of his mind walls, trying to break through, but when he reached for it, the memory scattered like moths from an extinguished flame.
“Not hungry.” His voice came out rough and graveled.
“You must be. You haven’t eaten since your return, and I expect many nights before.”
How long had he been back? It could have been three moons. Time moved slowly here. It has been an eternity since he’d flown here, the weight of something important in his arms. No, not something. Someone. Someone broken.
“Where is he?” The question erupted from him. “The one I carried.”
“Rikard is recovering.” The mason’s answer was carefully neutral and avoided the question. “He needs extensive repairs still, but he lives.”
“How many others?”
Her wings twitched. “If you will not eat, you should rest.”
“How many?” He grabbed the mason’s wrist, feeling bones shift under his grip. “How many made it back? How many live?”
“Commander, if you’ll—”
“Tell me!” The roar tore from his throat, and suddenly he wasn’t in the masons’ hall anymore. He was in the air south of Meravenna, witnessing his watchmates fall like stones, their wings shredded by goblin blades. The smell of war-bat fur filled his nostrils, and his claws extended, ready to—
Pain bloomed across his jaw. The head mason, a diminutive female gargoyle named Aalis, stood before him, staff raised after the blow, her ancient face lined and stern. “Stand down, Commander.”
Brandt blinked. He was inside the hall. The young mason was on the floor, cradling her wrist. Three others had formed a defensive circle, their expressions wary. When hadthathappened?
“I—” He couldn’t finish. Another wall in his mind cracked, threatening to spill whatever horror lay behind it. He clutched his head.
“Outside,” Aalis ordered. “It’s not safe for you to be in here.”
Not safe in the Tower, inside the walls of Solvantis? He almost laughed. But he let them herd him back to the eastern roost, where at least the open air didn’t tighten around his skull like a vise.
The city spread below. Smoke rose from human chimneys, and small figures scurried through streets like ants. When he’d been away, his only goal had been to return here, but now he couldn’t remember why. No matter how he hunted them, his thoughts slipped away like rabbits into their warrens.
The moon tracked across the sky, but it might as well have been the sun. He didn’t move, couldn’t move, trapped between the need to remember and fear of what remembering might bring.
His body ached, his muscles strained by whatever journey he’d undertaken to return here. Time would heal most of those complaints. New scars latticed his hide, a map of battles he could barely recall.
“Brandt?”
He startled when a female gargoyle landed on the roost beside him. She was older than him by a few dozen years, with small, gold-wrapped horns and the kind of elaborate grooming that marked Tower-born nobility.
“Do I know you?”
Her expression shuttered. “I would hope I haven’t changed so much. I’m your mother,” she prompted. “Ghantal.”
