10
This fight started with a blood challenge. The only way it’s going to end is with another one. I have no idea whether it will work but I have to try. Without moving any closer to the blade at my throat, I stretch my free hand forward, reaching out to drag my fingertips across the same spike she used when she made her challenge, screaming out the pain in my jaw and all the places she thumped me with those rock-like fists of hers.
“I am Supreme Incorruptible Marbella Mercy. Grievous Indira, you owe me the Grievous Clan’s allegiance!”
I take hold of her face with my bleeding hand, curling my fingers into her hair, forcing her to look at me and not the weapon at my neck. “I hold you to your clan’s debt, body and soul, for the rest of your life.”
Her eyes widen. “For the rest of my…”
I ease my bloody fingers from her hair, too sticky not to catch and pull, making her wince. I don’t apologize. “For the rest of your life. Which will have to be very long to pay out the debt that your clan owes.”
I pull upward, withdrawing my dagger.
Her arms flop to her sides. The sword clatters onto the street. “What did you do?”
I have no idea but she stopped fighting me so it can’t be a bad thing. The heartstones flicker back to life, telling me the blood challenge has ended. I check my fingers. The cuts have healed and when I brush my neck, it no longer hurts. Virtuous’s heart has done its job and healed me.
Now the Queen’s heart casts a soft glow across Indira’s stunned features. “I… can’t fight you now.” She scrambles to her feet, sporting a cut across her cheek and another across her am. “How did you know which blood words to use? You’re an elf.”
“I’m really not.”
Her chest heaves. She roars, long and loud, curling her fingers into fists. “Grievous Clan! Come down from the rooftops!” She picks up my sword and hands it to me, her voice lowering. “We have a new leader.”
She takes a wobbly breath. Drops to a knee. Bows her head, her braid falling across her shoulder. “Supreme Incorruptible… I honor you.”
The gargoyles swoop down from the rooftops and out of the alleyways, settling down onto the street in neat rows, hunched under their wings, faces hidden, all of them taking a knee. “Supreme Incorruptible, we honor you.”
I frown as they speak. Their voices are not quite what I expected… but relief overcomes any uncertainty I feel. “I am honored.”
Erit strides forward and retrieves my sword, slipping it neatly into the weapons brace at his back. “Lady Indira, there’s something that you and the Grievous Clan need to know. It’s important because of clan law.”
He waits for Indira to find her feet. I eye the others warily as they retain their hunched positions, remaining concealed under their wings, not revealing their faces.
Erit announces, “Lady Storm killed a shadow panther.”
Indira’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
Erit continues. “It smelled her blood and attacked her. She killed it with her own hands.”
Indira is incredulous. “But… shadow panthers only crave gargoyle blood.”
I press my lips together before I say, “Like I said, I’m not an elf.”
But inside, I’m surprised. If shadow panthers only crave gargoyle blood then that would explain why Erit looked so perplexed when I told him the story about how the shadow panther hunted me. It’s just one more piece of evidence to support Senturi’s declaration that I’m partly a gargoyle now.
Erit speaks firmly to Indira. “You know what this means.”
Indira contemplates me in the heartstone’s light. Her gaze flickers to her people, still concealed under their wings. I notice how they stay out of the light, preferring the shadows.
She says to me, “Very few gargoyles will fight a shadow panther. They leave that job to the Grievous Clan. You are not Grievous, but by killing a shadow panther you have earned certain clan rights. Since you are also female, there is something you have the right to know.”
She takes a step back before she shouts, “Rise, Grievous! Show yourselves.”
As one body, the warriors behind her glide to their feet and emerge from beneath their wings.
I gasp. Not wings… but shadow panther skins pretending to be male wings to conceal their bodies. From girls as young as ten years old to females as old as one hundred, they lift their faces and stand proud before me, each of them holding weapons and dressed in armor, an impressive and determined force.
They are all female: every single one of them.
