It wasn’t. How could it be? Brandt was going to kill Tomin if he wasn’t already dead. They’d have his wings for this. There was no way to hide it, either. The passageway glittered with moths at every lantern. Word would spread within an hour. By dawn, the whole Tower would know.
When Brandt finally came inside, she took one look at him and told Loïc to stay in his room. He was completely drenched in blood. Tomin’s, she hoped, though some was his own. He fell to his knees before her, and through the bond came devastation deeper than any of his physical wounds.
“I killed him.” His voice was hollow and resigned. “A watchmate. I murdered a watchmate.”
“He threatened us. He was going to hurt Loïc, too. You did what you had to do.”
“It doesn’t matter. The punishment for killing another gargoyle is death.” He looked up at her with dull eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for ruining what we’ve built. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t control it. I failed you.”
“Don’t speak like that,” she begged him, tears carving tracks in her cheeks.
“I’m broken, Idabel. Irreparably broken.” His wings drooped, trailing blood. “I’ve slaughtered younglings. I’ve murdered my watchmate. Even you can’t heal this. Even you can’t love this kind of monster.”
“Of course I love you.” She knelt beside him, not caring about the blood soaking her skirts. “You are not what you have done.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true. So many of our actions have been forced by circumstance.By secrets kept from us.You are not what you have done.”
The words echoed in the bond between them. He caught her hands, his bloody and hers clean, and squeezed gently. “Do you hear yourself?”
“What?”
“You are not what you’ve done.” He repeated her words back to her, and through the bond she felt the desperate intensity of his love for her. “You need to forgive yourself too. Love yourself as much as you love me. Don’t forget it, even when I’m gone.”
The truth of it hit like a physical force. All this time, she’d accepted her guilt as immutable fact while fighting to free him from his. But if he was more than his worst acts, so was she.
“We’re quite a pair,” she said with a sob that was half laughter.
“Two ruins. I am yours as much as you are mine.” He pulled her against him, and she felt his steady heartbeat against her careening one. “Whatever happens next, know that you saved me. I would still be lost in my mind without you.”
She shook her head, her throat working as she found the right words. “You saved yourself. You found your way out of the labyrinth on your own. I just held a light.”
Footsteps sounded in the passageway outside the door. Guards, certainly. Their time together was running out. But she felt no panic at being separated again. Their bond would endure, no matter what happened next. Their love would be what defined them. Not their crimes. Not their failures. Not their scars.
“Papa?” Loïc’s voice came from his room, small and frightened. “Is the bad gargoyle coming?”
“No. The bad gargoyle is gone.” Brandt held out his arms, and Loïc ran to him, heedless of the blood. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“How do you know?” Loïc sniffled into his chest.
“Because we have each other.” He looked at Idabel over their son’s head and wrapped his wings around all three of them. They’d survived war, betrayal, and each other. They could survive this, too. “We’ll always have our family.”
The knob turned and the door opened.
Chapter 37
Brandt
Relief rushed through him when his mother entered still in her finery, a flurry of moths at her back, all anxious to see what was happening inside. She shooed them out with a draft of her wings and then took in the scene. Their small family, huddled on the floor.
“Don’t move. Don’t speak to anyone.” She was already headed for the balcony. “I’ll fix this.”
“What can you do? What can anyone do?” The dead couldn’t be fixed, not even by a healer with as much skill as Idabel.
But Ghantal was gone, diving into the night with purpose. Through the bond, Brandt felt Idabel’s confusion matching his own. Loïc pressed against his mother’s side, silent for once, gray eyes asking questions Brandt couldn’t answer.
Mere minutes later, Ghantal returned…with the Zenith. She’d brought him his judge, jury, and executioner, it seemed.
