Having seen enough, I entered the room and gave her a gentle shake. “Dragonfly, wake up,” I whispered.
Daphne’s eyes shot wide open, her pupils dilating as she thrashed against me for a moment before collapsing into a heap on the bed.
“Cash?” she rasped, squinting in the dark at me. It was easy to forget sometimes that she didn’t have the same kind of night vision that I did. Just like it was easy to forget that she was human. I turned the bedside table lamp on, waiting for her eyes to adjust before speaking.
“It’s me, sorry for waking you. You looked like you were having a nightmare,” I said, watching her brow furrow as she sat up with her back against the wooden headboard.
“I was… I think. But I can’t remember it now,” she lied. I could always smell the shift in her scent when she was lying to me. It would usually bother me to be lied to, but with Daphne everything was different. She never did it without a good reason.
I reached out and brushed a stray strand of pink hair out of her face, the song in my chest soaring with the physical contact.
After spending the last few weeks with her, I was more sure than anything that she was my heartsong. My mate.
The surety of it was both comforting and terrifying.
Human lives were exceedingly fleeting. I would live long after she died of old age and just the thought of it made me start to spiral. I had spent two hundred years on my own until Daphne stumbled into Monstrous Ink… could I really sign myself up to do it after she was gone again?
It was part of the reason I was trying to go out and see Ronan. He’d been alive a lot longer than I had, so I figured he had to have encountered a gargoyle mating with a non-gargoyle at some point.
“Why do you never sleep?”
Daphne’s question drowned out the song in my chest and pulled me from my thoughts.
“What do you mean?” I asked with a frown.
I could see pink rise to the tops of Daphne’s cheeks in the dim light. “You don’t turn into stone at night, but I’ve never seen you sleep either. Don’t gargoyles turn to stone at night?”
A surprised laugh bubbled out of my chest. “I do sleep,” I told her. “It’s usually only for a couple of hours a night.”
Gargoyles didn’t need much rest. I could go days without sleeping if I needed to.
Daphne’s blush deepened. “You don’t have to laugh at me…” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Sorry,” I apologized, trying to hold in my next laugh. “I don’t need much sleep, dragonfly.”
“Even without going into the stone sleep? Effie told me that gargoyles use it to refresh…” she asked, her earlier nightmare temporarily gone as curiosity won out.
“Yes, it’s supposed to be a time of reset with your community at the zenith of a season, kind of a religious thing like I told you before. I hardly ever go into stone sleep anymore.” The last time had been a long time ago when a hunter had sent a crossbow bolt into my abdomen. It had been instantaneous and if Dallan hadn’t been nearby he could have shattered my stone form completely.
“Why not?” Daphne pushed.
I didn’t want to have to tell her the nitty gritty about my past, it was messy, lonely, and would show her just how truly broken I was. But she’d told me about hers, so it was only fair to do the same.
“Effie told you a little bit about why I don’t have wings, right?”
Daphne nodded.
“Well, they were ripped off right after the winter solstice a very long time ago,” I sucked in a shaky breath in an effort to steady myself before continuing. “I broke clan law and it caused some people I loved to die.”
“How did you break the law?” Daphne’s words were said in the exhale of one breath and were so quiet I nearly missed them.
“I saved a little human boy and he led his village back to our home with pitchforks. They attacked us while we were vulnerable in our stone sleep. Gargoyles can survive most things, but our stone forms being destroyed is a death sentence no matter how you twist it. I did that and then my wings and community were taken from me. No gargoyle will interact with a Wingless if they can help it.”
Daphne’s misty eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “And that’s why you don’t exist to them. Like you told me a couple of weeks ago.”
I nodded, clenching my jaw at the memory. “It’s gotten better over the centuries, they don’t take gargoyle’s wings anymore at least. But they still treat Wingless like shit.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Daphne said, her lips turning down into a frown as she slid her fingers through mine. Her skin was hot next to mine as a wave of sensation traveled up my arm at the contact.
