Trystan moved the bowl out of the way, unwilling to share.
Konrad frowned, but retreated. “We’re two gryphon warriors, with much history.” He went on determinedly. “We should take advantage of this momentsitory day.”
If Trystan wore a watch he would have impatiently checked it. “I wish to return to my room and the man I keep there. I do not have time to reminisce.”
Konrad disregarded his lack of interest. “We can get wingless men anywhere… When’s the last time you bedded a gryphon?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been keeping track.” Everyone other than the knight had faded from his mind forever.
“Well, for me, it’s been moths. Bedding the wingless isn’t the same. The women are scarce and breakable. And the men are,” he looked Trystan up and down, “much too softer than gryphon men.”
Trystan arched a brow. “You wish to have sex with me?” He translated. Konrad had never suggested that before. “Why?” The man must be bored.
“Because I am bored, Trystan.” It was a whine. “This town is dullish and everyone in it is so… sentimental.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wish Mount Feather was a real place and we could dwell there with the old clans. No wingless to deal with. It would all be far easier.”
“The wingless are never the easy path.” Trystan allowed. “But easy paths are never all that interesting to travel.”
“Easy sex sounds wonderful-ed to me.” Konrad scoffed. “Mother and I shared a wingless man in bed last week, who wished to hold hands with us afterwards. Can you picture it? Mother and I gripping his small wingless hands, after fucking his small, wingless body?”
“I would rather not.”
“Exactly! It was preposterous-ish. With you, at least no one will cry.” Konrad paused. “Oh, and I do not consider us cousins.” He tacked on, like that might be a concern. “We share no blood.”
“Rest assured, that fact is a constant relief to me.”
“So, we will go have easy, boredom sex together, yes?”
“No.”
“No?” He pouted. “Why not?”
“For starters, your eyes are not purple.”
Konrad’s head tilted in confusion. “What?”
“Your eyes are not purple. Your hair does not shimmer. You do not smile at me, or harass me into saving useless creatures, or claim me. You are not the man I want.”
Konrad’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher on his forehead, comprehension dawning. “You have a ha’yan?” He demanded, automatically switching to the gryphons’ language. “And you still seek out Yellow Boots for longed-cooled grievances?”
Trystan hesitated. “I did not say this man was my ha’yan.” He muttered. But he also didn’t say that he wasn’t.
His Not-Cousin had known Trystan too long to miss that fact.
“If this vengeance costs you your life, your mate will be left alone, Trystan.” Konrad shook his head, uncharacteristically serious. “This is not a world where I would leave my ha’yan alone. Were he mine, I would care for this man above all else.”
Trystan’s temper flashed, partly because Konrad’s words made perfect goddamn sense. “Do not tell me how to care for my own…”
Galahad’s hand slammed down on the bar between Trystan and Konrad, interrupting the argument. His body pushed forward, like he was ready for a fight, his back to Trystan and his eyes fixed on Konrad. Without saying a word, Galahad took the ground he wanted and then stood there daring someone to move him.
Konrad took a quick step back.
Trystan didn’t blame him. The knight was suddenly the biggest badass in the room. Trystan couldn’t imagine what had pissed him off, but he liked the reemergence of Galahad’s aggressive stance. It always surprised him how much he really, really liked it. Trystan generally preferred being in control, but, every once in a while, it was exciting to have Galahad take the lead. You could never predict what he had planned.
“Didn’t I request that you stay in the room, knight?”
“It occurred to me that you weren’t just getting ice.” Galahad flashed him a glare over his shoulder. He appeared to have haphazardly dragged on his clothing, and his damp hair was rumpled, and he was still half-asleep. Most everyone in the bar was looking at him with speculative lust, including Trystan. “It didn’t occur to me that you were sneaking off to meet some other guy.”
Trystan squinted at the utter lunacy of that statement. “I am not meeting another man. I am meeting Konrad.” He flicked a hand towards Konrad. “This is Konrad.”
“How is Konrad not another man?” Galahad shot back. “Explain it to me.”
Trystan’s eyebrows soared, realization dawning. The knight was jealous. Trystan identified the new feelings that filled him as… pleasure and amusement. Ridiculous as it was, Galahad’s flash of possessiveness was oddly endearing.
“Are you honestly concerned that I plan to sleep with Konrad?” Trystan waved a disparaging hand at Konrad. “Is that honestly what this is about? Honestly?”
“I just heard him propositioning you as I walked over here!”
“And I turned him down, didn’t I? Lyrssa, save me…” Trystan genuinely wanted to laugh. He ate another Gala-Chip, close to chuckling. “No one in the universe would prefer Konrad to you. Not even Konrad thinks that is a possibility, now that he has seen you.” He looked at Konrad. “Do you think that is a possibility, now that you have seen my knight?”
Konrad slowly shook his head, his eyes on Galahad.
“You see?” Trystan demanded, his attention switching back to the knight. How could the man not understand what was clear as a crystal ball? “I would pick no one over you.” His palm brushed over Galahad’s hair, just because he could. “Your concern is ludicrous.”
“Is it?” Galahad still wasn’t satisfied, but much of his tension eased. “Because you’re still down here for some reason that you don’t want me to know about, aren’t you?”
Trystan hesitated, his amusement fading.
“This is your mate?” Konrad interjected in the gryphon dialect, still gazing at Galahad with ravenous attention. He was clearly rethinking his stance on the wingless being undesirable. “And you would risk your future with him… for fucking Marcus?” He snorted. “I never took you for stupid, Trystan.”
“You can leave, now.” Trystan didn’t like Konrad’s opinion or the way he was undressing Galahad with his eyes.
Konrad’s gaze lingered on the swatch of muscled abdomen that was revealed by the knight’s misbuttoned clothes, and then slipped… downward. He made an appreciative sound that set Trystan’s teeth on edge. “He’s a dancer, right?”
Dancer?
“He is an artist.” Trystan snapped, also in their language. The gryphon word for “artist” was very close to their word for “crazy.” That wasn’t a coincidence. “He is also a great warrior, when he remembers to be.” He decided to fasten Galahad’s shirt himself, before a riot broke out.
“Stop that.” Galahad batted his hands away. “And why are you eating Gala-Chips? Especially the disgusting caramel-and-whey ones? I thought you hated junk food?”
“They have some nutritional value. Caramel is a fruit, yes?”
“No, it’s not a fruit!”
“Most dancers call themselves ‘artists,’ ya know.” Konrad interjected in their native tongue, ignoring the byplay. “Mother would approve if I brought home a dancer. She enjoys the pretty ones, even if they are wingless.”
“Caelia will not come near my knight.” Trystan warned. Holy gods, it would lead to another war. “He is spoken for. By me.”
“He agrees to be in your care?” Konrad’s stare left slimy trails all over Galahad as he ogled him. “I’ve not heard of a wingless being receptive to our care in many years. How did you accomplish this, Trystan? It’s… extraordinary.”
Trystan hesitated, because it was extraordinary. His eyes flicked to Galahad, considering the impossible odds he’d beaten in finding this man. Hardly any of his kind possesse
d what he now did. There were few gryphons left. And the War had split the wingless and remaining gryphons to such an extent that they rarely forged real bonds.
The inability to have children would cripple the gryphons in the long run, but the lack of mates would doom them far sooner. Even generally emotionless races needed partners in life. If you took that hope away, what did they have left?
Without dreams, people became ghosts.
“My mate is extraordinary.” He told Konrad in their dialect, not even hesitating over the word, now. There was no sense in denying who Galahad was to him. The truth was obvious.. “I did nothing. He is the one who claimed me. I believe the gods sent him to me, but I do not know why I deserved the gift.”
“I had given up on finding ha’na.” Konrad seemed entranced by Galahad and the new possibilities he offered. “But you have found it? It’s still possible for us? This man has entered into the bond with you?”
Galahad hadn’t entered into anything with Trystan, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he was telling Konrad that. “He is mine.” Trystan said instead. The words were deadly cold.
“Does he do more than dance?” Konrad asked eagerly. “Because, I will pay whatever price you ask to bed a man who’s genuinely attracted to our kind. If you’re willing to share him…”
Trystan leveled a flat look in his direction and the other gryphon stopped talking mid-sentence.
“Quit arguing with Konrad in another language, and tell me why you’re sneaking out of our room.” Galahad ordered. “Maybe it’s not for sex, but it’s for something shady.”
Trystan switched back to the wingless dialect. “I did not sneak. I told you I was leaving and that I would be back. Your annoyance over this is ridiculous.”
“Reverse our positions, Trys. Would it be ridiculous for you to complain if I was the one who slipped off to meet some strange, propositioning guy at two in the morning?”
Trystan’s jaw ticked. Shit.
Galahad arched a brow, sensing he’d just made his point.
“You do things like this all the time.” Trystan muttered, not willing to admit defeat. “Not rendezvous at hotel bars, perhaps. But I turn my back for a moment and you are inside a tomb or riding a hippocamp or engaged in a gunfight without a working gun.”
“That’s completely different!”
“It is the same. This is about hunting the man I plan to kill. I am well within the parameters of our deal to keep you far from it.”
“We agreed to be allies.”
“Allies on your mission. Not on mine.”
Galahad stopped arguing so fast he literally blinked. He stared at Trystan, saying nothing for a long moment.
Trystan frowned, expecting him to continue quarreling over this nonsense.
Instead, the knight let out a long breath and looked away. “Yeah.” His eyes landed on the slot machines against the wall, thoughts reflected in them that Trystan couldn’t read. “Alright.” His voice was calm. “That’s a fair point.”
Trystan hesitated. “It is?” It was his point and even he saw the flaws in it.
“Sure. You’ve been very clear from the beginning on wanting to keep your mission your own. I got confused on the alliance thing, but I think you’re technically right. You never agreed to make me a part of anything, did you?”
“Not yet.” Trystan allowed, uneasy with the man’s quiet tone. “I am considering many options.”
“Yeah, that’s probably the smartest way.” Galahad nodded, his expression thoughtful. “You always were better at strategy, than me.” He took a step back, away from Trystan.
He had never done that before.
Trystan felt a chill.
“Trystan has wrotten list of people he’s going to kill.” Konrad interjected, unhelpful to the last. “It’ll take him years of traveling around remote kingdoms to get them all dead. He just told me this. Did he tell you this?”
“No.” Galahad said very evenly. “He didn’t tell me that.”
P’don.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Long ago, an evil spell befell the ancient land, slowly sinking it.
Year by year, the territory around the first gryphon temple seemed to shrink and waters seemed to rise.
Most people fled the forsaken kingdom and moved into Lyonesse.
But, the Looking Glass Pool could not be moved.
It would have been destroyed by the rising waters and the graal would have been lost.
For the Good of the world, that could not happen.
To protect the future, the gryphons built a wall around Listeneise, higher and higher.
Until it nearly touched the sky.
How the Wingless War Happened
Skylyn Welkyn- Gryphon Storyteller
St. Ives- The Siege Perilous Hotel and Casino
Trystan sent Konrad a look that should have ignited his wings. Stupid chattering asshole. Telling Galahad about Trystan’s plans to leave Camelot indefinitely was going to do nothing to ease this deteriorating situation. If it wouldn’t have further distressed the knight, he would have slain the blabbering dickhead right there in the casino.
Sensing his life was in peril, Konrad edged back another step.
Trystan ignored him and moved closer to Galahad, closing the distance the knight had created between them. “I can explain this.”
“You don’t have to. I get it.” Galahad’s body shifted away again, almost like it was instinctive. “I’m Galahad, by the way.” He extended his hand to Konrad. “I’m traveling with Trystan, for the moment.”
Trystan scowled. “For the moment?” What did that mean?
“I’m really sorry for causing a scene.” Galahad continued, his attention on Konrad. “I hate causing scenes. I hope you didn’t feel uncomfortable.”
Seizing the knight’s hand, Konrad gave it a vigorous shake. “No, no, I was comfortable a lot.” He rushed out, in some broken version of the common tongue. Galahad’s presence seemed to excite him and make him forget what little he knew of the language. “I am not Trystan’s cousin. We grew up golfing much.”
Golfing?
Trystan arched a brow. Whatever word Konrad was searching for, that wasn’t it. Trystan would bet that the man couldn’t tell a golf club from a spinning wheel.
“You like… golfing?” Galahad seemed understandably baffled by that remark, but he was too polite to say so. “Sure. Okay. Me, too. Last time I played on Camelot’s Greens, I was fifty-three under par. I’d like to see if I could shave another point off.”
Now, Konrad looked confused by Galahad’s response, possibly because he had no idea what he’d even said in the first place. “Yes. Par is under.” He said vaguely.
Trystan did some mental math. From what he grasped of that pointless game’s scoring system… “You achieved eighteen hole-in-ones, knight? All in a row?”
“Seventeen. One shot took two swings. I got distracted by a new breed of butterfly I discovered. Really unique. Doctors think its DNA might be a breakthrough cure for hangnails.”
Trystan didn’t care about breakthrough bugs. He cared that Galahad hadn’t met his eyes when he answered. As if he was uncomfortably looking for somewhere else to be and someone else to talk to. Trystan didn’t like that.
At all.
Konrad pushed onward, showcasing his doomed conversational skills in their full glory. “My mother wishes me to find a mate. Not just a man who holds hands and cries much, after a proper bedding. This is horrible, yes?”
Galahad floundered for an answer to that gibberish. “Well, I’m sure most mothers want their children to find happiness, don’t they?”
“With my mother, it depends greatly on the child. Some she has ill wishes for.” Konrad nodded. “But me she favors! She would much like it, if I brought you home to share.”
“You’re not bringing my knight anywhere.” Trystan interjected flatly. “Especially, not to ‘share’ with Caelia.” It would be a literal virgin sacrifice.
“Yeah, I�
��m sorry, but I need to stay here.” Galahad told Konrad. “It’s always nice to meet fans, though. I can give your mom an autograph, if you’d like.”
Konrad didn’t seem surprised by the refusal, but he also didn’t let go of Galahad’s hand. “You are the best Galahad I have ever seen. I’m sure mother would agree.” His eyes glowed with earnest sincerity. “I mean that.”
Galahad squinted at him.
So did Trystan.
“Uh… thank you?” Galahad offered cautiously and tugged on his palm, trying to retrieve it.
Konrad still didn’t let go. “If you ever tire of traveling with Trystan’s moment, I am welcoming.” He assured Galahad, hungrily. “If you are receptive to our kind, mother and I would offer to care for you well.”
A film of red coated Trystan’s vision.
Galahad seemed mystified by what Konrad’s suggestion meant. It was abundantly clear how he’d remained untouched. A thousand prurient thoughts were reflected in Konrad’s devouring gaze, but the man somehow missed them all. “Well, that’s very kind.”
Trystan didn’t think so. He jerked Galahad away from Konrad’s grasp. “If you offer to care for my knight again, I will kill you.” He warned in the gryphons’ language, so there could be no misunderstanding. “We have much history, Konrad. But for this man, I will kill anyone.”
Konrad arched a brow and relented. “Not so stupid after all, huh?”
“Bring Marcus tomorrow.” Trystan snarled. “And do not speak to my mate.” Done with this whole debacle, he looked down at the knight. “We will talk alone.” He started for the elevator, dragging Galahad along with him and leaving Konrad with the bar tab.
“Why are you so upset?” Galahad walked with him, but he also freed himself with some practiced twist of his arm.
The move was meant to seem casual, but it had been very deliberately executed. No one else in the world could have gotten free of Trystan’s hold so easily. Galahad wasn’t of this world, though, and misty creatures were impossible to catch. If the knight decided to pull away, nothing would stop him. He could literally slip right through Trystan’s fingers, at any time.
Best Knight Ever (A Kinda Fairytale Book 4) Page 36
