Lucan rose from the roost. His wings flared in the confined space, the tips brushing both walls. For a moment, the old Lucan surfaced, the gargoyle who’d stood on tavern benches and sung ballads and charmed every female in a hundred-league radius with nothing but a grin and a well-timed compliment.
“No,” he said. “Find another way to save me, or don’t. But I won’t be blackmailed into a bond.”
Rikard stood, too. “If that is your choice.”
“No, it’syourchoice. I didn’t kill Drogan. It’s an injustice that I’m imprisoned, and yet you dangle freedom like a prize instead of my right.”
“What about the right of your child to know its father?” Rikard pressed. “What about the injustice to its mother, who must now face life without a mate because of your reckless promises to her?”
Lucan turned his back on the door. It was answer enough.
The short trial concluded without a conviction. The evidence against Lucan was merely circumstantial. A broken neck could have come from a fall, from a hunting accident in rough terrain. Without a witness or a confession, murder could not be proven.
But suspicion was its own sentence. The moths talked, invitations were withdrawn, and Lucan’s family sent him away until they were certain the Tower’s attention had moved to the next scandal.
The tavern was quiet without him. Rikard sat at their old table with Bastien, two cups of mead between them and empty seats on either side.
“Perhaps we should have chosen better friends,” Bastien said after they’d been drinking in silence for some time. The bluntness was like him. No preamble, no diplomacy, just the observation laid flat on the table.
Rikard shrugged, feeling numb. “We were barely fledglings. So much has happened since then. We are all changed, for better or for worse.”
“I’m not.” Bastien grinned and tipped back his mead. “I’m the same old lump of stone I’ve always been. And Lucan…he has always been the way he is, too. He gets away with a lot of bad behavior because of his charm. I’m not surprised it finally caught up with him.”
Rikard raised his brow. “You think he killed Drogan?”
“Who knows. Drogan was so volatile that he could drive anyone to madness.”
The words landed close to home.
“We can’t unmake our choices,” Rikard said grimly. “Right or wrong.”
“We should speak of happier things. The moths say your child is thriving.”
“The moths are correct for once. And Hanna is thriving as a mother.” All her warnings that she might not love the child had proved needless, because she was as devoted a mother as any.
Bastien grinned at him. “How do you like fatherhood?”
Rikard couldn’t help the smile that cracked his face, pulled up at one corner by his scar. “It is…the best thing I’ve ever done. You should come meet Rosalore and introduce her to Uncle Bastien. You know I have no other brothers.”
“I would like that.” The earnestness in his voice was the same earnestness that had been there since they were hatchlings, the quality that made him the best of them. Bastien raised his cup. “To family.”
Rikard raised his. “To family.”
Chapter 33
Hannalinde
Rosalore was an easy baby. From dawn to dusk, she folded herself into a compact bundle of chubby limbs and slept without waking, by which time Hannalinde’s breasts were tight and throbbing.
“She’s the quietest infant I’ve ever seen,” Carlijn said, peering into the cradle where Rosalore lay motionless in the afternoon light, her small fist curled against her cheek. “Is she in daysleep?”
“I don’t think so,” Hanna mused, stroking one soft baby cheek. “She doesn’t turn to stone. But she does seem to keep to a gargoyle sleep schedule.”
“I wonder if mine will do the same.” Carlijn touched her belly. “I hope so.”
Hanna grimaced. “You might rue that wish when you feel what it does to your bosom. Mine feel like two rocks on my chest.”
Carlijn giggled. “You may be right. Plus, I don’t have an eager mother-in-law to watch the baby while I sleep at night.”
