My emotions are getting away from me. I try to reel them in. “The female you tried to take with you was Llion’s wife, Liliana. She was holding their two babies—the only babies she will ever have. Howl ripped their family apart. She hadn’t seen her babies for a year and then you tried to kill them.”
I stop talking because I have to suppress my feelings. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. He doesn’t want to know about the gargoyles. He has a picture of them in his mind and they are nothing more than beasts to him. They are the reason he was ridiculed when he was a boy.
Grayson is quiet for a time. Our boots crunch in the leafy carpet and the air grows colder the deeper we travel into the forest. Then he says, “I didn’t meet Howl.”
“Howl was just like the drawings, but worse.”
“You did us a favor when you killed him.” He pulls me to a sudden stop, his grip warm, but firm. “Your mercy is your undoing, Marbella. Howl was ruthless. We were never going to get to the deep springs while he was alive. But you… you won’t betray others to further your own interests. You sacrificed your freedom for those gargoyles on the cliff. Youcare. It’s your weakness.”
I yank myself out of his hold. “I’d rather be weak than your version of strong.” I will never get through to him. “Now where is this thing you wanted to show me?”
He points. “Right there.”
We’ve reached an opening to a small, circular clearing. The ground inside it is covered in ash and burned tree trunks, as if a sudden, vicious fire burned in this spot. I sense the remnants of sorcery in the ash, the emotions that burned with the unnatural fire, layered with sadness, pain, and rage.
It’s hard to miss the single gravestone in the middle of the clearing.
Grayson loses the mask he keeps over his true emotions. Stepping onto the ashen ground, genuine sadness enters his expression as he says, “I carried him here after you left him where you killed him.”
He’s obviously not talking about Howl.
I whisper, “Gideon Glory.”
Grayson looks at me the same way he did on my first day here, when he grabbed my arm with a vengeance and his expression was filled with wrath.
I say, “That’s why you’re angry with me. Because I killed him.”
He paces out onto the ash, kicking blackened earth up beneath his boots, stopping in front of the grave. “There have been other natural-born sorcerers in our history but only two of us have survived beyond infancy. Do you want to know why?”
I don’t particularly, but I figure he’s not really asking my permission to tell me.
He continues, “Because their families figure out what they are and kill them. They leave them to die in forests like this one.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “All natural-born sorcerers have a different strength. Some can read thoughts, others can manipulate your actions: force you to do things you don’t want to do. But me… I killed my mother and sister at the moment of my birth when my power awakened. The healer who delivered me also died. Nobody wanted to touch me after that. They wanted to leave me where I lay and let me starve to death. Only Gideon kept me alive.”
I try to reconcile what he’s telling me with what I knew about Gideon Glory. The Gideon I knew never did anything for anyone unless it benefitted himself in some way. Even cloaking Grayson would have more likely been for Gideon’s own protection than for Grayson’s sake. But why would Gideon raise a child he knew could kill him? Why would he take that risk? Grayson must have had something he wanted.
Grayson says, “He was my father when I had none. My protector when I had none. I owed him my life. And then you killed him. You killed the only person who ever cared about me.”
The gravestone is like a glaring accusation. Regardless of Gideon’s motives, he was the only family Grayson had. I took Gideon away from him. I don’t know what to say or do. Grayson is angry, but not threatening, despite what he says next…
“I vowed that I would find you and kill you. I convinced the Elven Command to let me join their ranks. I possessed a hundred talon crows searching for you in Erador, but I never found you. It turned out you were deep underground all that time. But when Howl asked for the Rath and Mercy Heartstones I knew they were important. So I broke them up and made them part of me. That was the same day you resurfaced and killed Howl. Now here you are. And you are… nothing like I imagined you.”
His expression softens as he looks at me, a mixture of confusion and intrigue. Maybe hewaslistening when I was talking about the gargoyles. Maybe I can get through to him. My Virtuous heart is glowing.Curse its empathy.I hate that I understand Grayson’s point of view. Gideon Glory was the father he never had and I was responsible for taking that away from him.
He turns to me, open, needing to know. “Why did you kill him?”
My voice is small. “He was going to kill me.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He wasn’t that person.”
I search his face for traces of a lie.Does he truly believe that? Are we talking about the same elf?His earnest expression tells me that he honestly believes what he said. I’m hesitant but I have to tell him the truth. “Gideon and the other Elven Commanders killed Baelen. Once they had my storm power, I was next.”
“In self-defense.”
I blink. “What?”
“Baelen Rath attacked them. They fought back in self-defense.”
