Baelen jolts beside me, the first sign of surprise he’s shown since he appeared at the Court this afternoon. I don’t know what it means when he whispers, “Senturi.”
At the same time, a tiny face peeks out from behind the male’s coat. Gorgeous brown eyes and rosy cheeks appear as a little girl—maybe only six years old—darts out from behind the older male, hands outstretched to Baelen. “Bae-Bae!”
A grin breaks across Baelen’s face. He catches the little female and swings her up, popping her onto his hip as if she’s sat there many times before.
“Little Adalie! You’ve grown!”
I look for my jaw. I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped it somewhere on the floor.
Adalie is covered in a fur coat too. It conceals her wings, but she pulls out a necklace so Baelen can see it, proudly prodding at the single talon attached to it. “Look, Bae-Bae. I killed my first talon crow.” Her little forehead transforms into a cross frown. “I’m not scared of them anymore.”
“They are not worthy of your fear, little Adalie.”
She grins, clawing her fingers and drawing her lips back into a demonstrative hiss. “They are scared ofmenow.”
“As they should be.”
Adalie turns her gaze to me, her pupils dilating. I was struck silent before, but now her gaze freezes me. I’ve felt this sensation before. The Elven Commander I killed—Gideon Glory—had tried to invade my mind with his sorcery. I’d sensed it like something sliding around inside my head. This tiny female is doing the same. I want to push back against the girl like I did with Gideon, but my power is so strong I could kill her.
Her voice becomes older than her years as she whispers, “You are sad, Storm Lady, and worried about your people.”
Well, she’s right about that.
The older male quickly covers the distance between us. It doesn’t escape me that the other clan leaders lean away from him, avoiding eye contact as he passes. Even the old Priestess suddenly finds something fascinating about the floor as the newcomer reaches for the little girl. “Come now, granddaughter, enough showing off.”
Showing off? It felt more like emotional invasion. But not an ugly invasion. More like an unwilling one. If this little female has some sort of power, she doesn’t know how to control it yet.
Baelen relinquishes the snuggly bundle in his arms to the older male who whispers to the girl, “Remember your manners.”
The little girl drops to a knee in front of me, mimicking her grandfather who also bows to me.
Her little-girl voice rings out innocently into the silence. “Greetings, Storm Lady. Greetings, Bae-Bae.”
I bite my lip, trying to bury a smile at her earnest expression. Baelen solemnly taps his heart. “Greetings, Outlier Adalie.” He also acknowledges the older male with a respectful nod. “Greetings, Outlier Senturi.”
Baelen turns to me next and his expression begs me to go with him on this. I compress my lips. Baelen clearly knows these gargoyles, but to my knowledge, he never set foot in Erador before I brought his sleeping body across the border. He owes me a lot of answers and his expression tells me he knows it.
He says, “Marbella, these gargoyles are from the Outlier Clan. They are the ones who guard the edges of our world.”
The edges of our world are wastelands where the mountains and grass stop and the ground becomes ash. The wastelands lead only to jagged walls that are thousands of feet high where the gargoyle King cleaved a space out of the layers of the Earth for us to live.
“I’ve never heard of the Outlier Clan,” I say, digging into my memory for any mention of it.
“That’s because we are few and far between, scattered throughout the wastelands,” Senturi explains. “We would be even fewer still if it weren’t for Baelen Rath. Adalie would not be alive today without him.”
More answers I’ll need from Baelen, but I won’t be distracted from the more pressing question: why is Senturi here? I highly doubt that any of the other clan leaders invited him judging by the way they won’t even look at him. “Well, you’re here now. You must have a reason for traveling all the way from your home.”
Senturi clears his throat, meeting my eyes. “Members of my clan have Sight. We alone can tell the true nature of things. That is why I have come to you.” He takes a step closer, daring to close the gap between us.
He says, “I’m here to answer the question that everyone is asking: what are you?”
