“A few years.”
Years. He set the quill down carefully, because if he held it any tighter, he’d snap it. Years of a gargoyle entering a humanwoman’s home and forcing himself on her. The heartstone vow they all swore, the vow etched into the stone of every gargoyle’s heart, forbade harming humans. As much as he disliked the vast majority of them, he could not approve of such cruelty.
“Have you enlisted the city guard to protect you?”
Her laugh was a dry, airless sound. “They have little sway with gargoyles.”
“Do you know his name? His rank? Any identifying features?”
She shook her head. “It’s always dark. He’s large, I suppose.”
His claws curled against the desk, leaving pale scratches in the finish. “Would you know his voice if you heard it?”
“Perhaps. He doesn’t speak to me often.” Something fractured in her composure, a hairline crack that she sealed almost instantly. “I stopped going out at night, but he comes in. I’ve barred the window, but he tears them out. If I sleep elsewhere, he finds me regardless. It doesn’t matter where I hide.”
That snagged his attention. A gargoyle tracking a human across the city with that kind of precision wasn’t using sight or scent alone. Even the best nose in the Tower couldn’t reliably locate one human among thousands in a city this size.
He knew how the gargoyle always found her. Or rather, he suspected. But the suspicion was so foul that he needed to be certain before he spoke it.
“Show me where he bit you,” he said.
Instantly, her hands went to her high collar. She unbuttoned the top of her bodice with shaking fingers and pulled the fabric aside to expose her left shoulder. The skin there was a mess of scar tissue, layered and ridged, pink over purple over white.
He’d seen mating bites before. Every gargoyle bore the mark of their mate’s teeth somewhere on their body, a sacred wound that opened the mind bond between them. But a mating bite was given in passion, in the trembling height of intimacy, and it healed cleanly into a silver crescent because the bond thatfollowed nourished the flesh. This was something else. This was a hundred bites, driven into the same spot over and over.
The bond would still form. A bite was a bite, regardless of intent. Once those teeth broke skin and saliva met blood, the connection was forged.
“Can you feel him in your mind? A pressure, perhaps?” he asked, his voice rough.
Her eyes widened. The crack in her composure split wide open. “How did you know that?”
The muscles in his jaw worked. He did not want to say what he had to say. He wanted to send her home and pretend this meeting hadn’t happened, because the truth was going to shatter this already-broken woman, and he had nothing to offer her in the aftermath.
“This is a mating bite,” he explained. “What you feel in your head is the mate bond. He can find you anywhere because when a gargoyle bites his mate, it creates a connection. A mental tether. He knows where you are at all times, and he can sense your emotions through it. You may feel his thoughts and feelings as well, but if he is skilled, he can block you from them.”
The color drained from her face, starting at her temples and pulling downward until even her lips were bloodless. “A mate bond,” she repeated, the words hollow. “He’s my... I’m his...?”
“This isn’t the usual way.” His claws dug into the desk again, and he forced his fingers to relax. “It should have been your choice.”
“Can it be undone?” she whispered, a tear sliding down her cheek.
He wished he were the kind of creature who could lie to a weeping woman and send her away with false comfort. But he was not. “No.”
She pressed both hands over her mouth, but a sound leaked through her fingers, thin and airless, like a kettle just beginningto boil. Then the chair scraped back and she was on her feet before he could rise.
“Wait—”
“Thank you for your time, Nadir.” Her voice was a brittle ruin as she rushed for the door.
He could have stopped her. Could have offered sympathy and sent a keeper to escort her home. But neither would protect her from a weapon she carried in her own blood.
Rikard picked up his abandoned quill, dipped it in ink, and opened the ledger. Beneath her name, in careful script, he wrote:Mate bond confirmed. Perpetrator unknown. Complaint recorded.
Then he sat back and waited for the keeper to send in the next one.
Chapter 3
Hannalinde
