by A C Warneke
His smile felt strained as his doubts and concerns waged war in his head, as his heart beat frantically in his chest. She was going to want him to give up his nights for her and it was the very least she deserved after proving her steadfastness and loyalty. But the idea of giving up his nights for a third time turned his stomach to lead and filled him with dread unlike any he had ever known. Even knowing she would accept his gift and complete the ritual wasn't enough to alleviate his anxiety.
Especially knowing she would accept, because he would have to be the man she believed him to be for the rest of his life.
It was twisted and he knew it was fucked up but he couldn’t be that man, that gargoyle, Ferris dreamed about. Nothing had changed in the ten years he had been stone. He was still a gargoyle without a purpose. He had taken the coward’s way out the first time and now he was even more hopelessly lost than he had been before.
“I didn’t tell anyone that there was a possibility you were going to be waking up,” Ferris murmured softly, her voice interrupting his dark thoughts. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen when Ajreis did the ritual.”
She looked up at him with those blue-green eyes of hers and calmness settled over his soul. His pulse thudded thickly beneath his skin and the world beyond Ferris disappeared. Her lips were moving and he forced himself to pay attention to the words she was saying. “The first time he did it on the new moon, like you guys do, but that didn’t work and we realized it was because he needed the sun and the moon in equal parts because his father was human whereas your father is Apollo.”
“How did the two of you even come up with such a plan?’ he asked, quite frankly a little stunned that an imp had enough power to break the gargoyle’s gift.
Shrugging her shoulders, she admitted, “I’m not really sure. Ajreis simply showed up one afternoon and said he knew what had to be done, that he was visited by an old friend and she had explained what needed to be done. She just hadn’t been clear on when it needed to happen.”
“What happened to Felicity?” he asked.
Ferris came to a halt and looked up at him with a queer expression on her face, “You knew her name?”
Realizing his mistake, he slowly nodded, “I met her a few years before and I had kept an eye on her ever since.” Pressing his lips together, he hesitantly admitted, “She was one of Katrina’s descendants.”
Ferris nodded her head, her adorable frown slowly melting away as she absorbed his confession. “Why didn’t you simply tell me this before?”
“I didn’t want you to hate me,” he admitted awkwardly, hearing the voices of his family coming from somewhere inside of the huge suite. Anticipation welled in his gut at the thought of seeing them again. Apprehension also surged as he thought about the changes ten years wrought.
At that she tilted her head back and laughed, “I could never hate you. I’m a fool for you, Armand. Don’t you know that by now?”
What could he possibly say to that statement that wouldn’t make him sound like a besotted idiot himself? Now that they might actually have a future, he was a little overwhelmed by colossal hopes and irrational doubts. Curling his arm around her neck and ignoring the warring emotions, he kissed the top of her head.
Pausing outside of the rec room doors, she looked up at him, giving him a moment to gather his thoughts and his composure. With a smile that held more confidence then he actually felt, he nodded his head and Ferris pushed the doors open. The sight before him was pure chaos, with his brothers Vaughn and Rhys both holding onto small bundles of blankets, with a pair of younglings underfoot. Jenna and Melanie sat in the middle of the crowd, laughing and looking radiant and happy.
Michael, Leo and Raphe were even there, playing a game of cutthroat on the pool table. A fourth player was there as well and Armand realized with a start that it was young Alex all grown up. The young gargoyle was the spitting image of his father with his golden hair. He looked at the children once more, at the little girl who was a perfect blend of Melanie and Vaughn. Georgia. The other child looked like a miniature of Rhys, only with Jenna's dark hair. Armand didn't even know his name.
And then there were the two babies in his brothers' arms.
Armand’s heart lodged in his throat at the sight: life had gone on without him and so much had changed, even though it hadn’t been very long. He was tempted to turn around and find refuge in his bedroom until Raphael looked up and saw Ferris, a smile curving his lips. But the smile turned into a scowl the moment he saw Armand.
Ferris twined her fingers with his, giving him what he needed without him even asking and all he could do was stare at this amazing woman who held his heart in her hands. She smiled up at him a heartbeat before she cleared her throat to gather everyone’s attention. When the room suddenly went deathly quiet he looked up and saw the expressions of disbelief on everyone’s faces a moment before there was a cacophony of noise as his brothers rushed forwards and embraced him.
“Welcome back!” Vaughn said, switching his baby to his other arm as he embraced Armand.
“This would explain why Ferris has been spending every night on the roof,” Rhys grinned, hugging Armand as well. “We worried that she was having difficulties with the tenth anniversary coming up, except she wasn’t miserable enough.”
“Stop,” Ferris grinned, playfully batting at Rhys’s free arm as he leaned over and placed a kiss on her rosy cheek. “I gave up pining ages ago.”
“Welcome home,” Melanie said warmly, wrapping her arms around his waist and giving him a hug. It felt natural to return the hug, as if she had been a part of the family for centuries instead of a few decades. She held out her hand and Alex strolled over, a wide grin on his handsome face. Not to be outdone, young Georgia popped up as well, grinning from ear to ear.
"My gods, you've grown like weeds!" Armand gasped, staring at the two gargoyles. Turning to Alex he shook his head in wonder, "You look just like your father."
"So they tell me," Alex grinned cheekily.
Turning to Georgia, he was amazed. The baby who had caused so much trouble looked like a young lady who was going to be a heartbreaker in a few years. "The last time I saw you you were just a wee, little thing."
"I've grown up," she said, her smile open and affectionate. "It's good to have you back, Uncle Armand."
"And this is Orion," Melanie said, tilting the baby just enough so Armand could see the incredibly young infant. "He just turned three months old."
“It’s good to see you,” Jenna murmured, giving him a hug as well before leaning into Rhys’s arms and watching Armand with weary eyes. Her son stood by her side, watching Armand with wide, curious brown eyes. Jenna placed a comforting hand on the young gargoyle's slender shoulders and murmured, "This is James."
Armand looked past the well-wishers to the trio of gargoyles who held back, eyeing him with something close to animosity. He felt Ferris’s soft body press up against his as she whispered in his ear, “Don’t mind the demented trio. They’re just pissed they have to give up your room.”
Fury swept through him at the thought of the young gargoyles stepping foot in his room until he heard Ferris laugh and realized she was teasing him. A reluctant smile curved his lips as he simply nodded his head at his youngest brothers. He was sure that they would vent their spleen at another time when he wasn’t the center of attention. And if it was bad enough, they would wait until there were no children around.
Suddenly a baby was pressed into his arms and he had no choice but to take it. A pair of large, brown eyes gazed up at him from an excessively pink face. Rhys’s finger moved over one of the chubby cheeks as he beamed, “This is Sarah, our newest gargoyle. She's almost three months old.”
The air went out of the room as he stared down at the baby he held in his arms and suddenly he wanted a child with Ferris. Glancing around the room at the children, at the pride and glowing happiness on the parents’ faces, his gut clenched and he wanted all of it. Terrified and exhilarated, he turned hi
s head to tell Ferris something when the world froze. Two incredibly beautiful people, a male and a female, strode into the room with effortless grace, their platinum blond hair giving away their identity before he even saw their faces.
He looked down and saw the joyous smile lighting Ferris’s face as she saw the newcomers and the joy he had been feeling turned to shards of glass, ripping through his guts. Unable to speak, he could only watch as they stopped just beyond the circle surrounding him. Melanie saw them and smiled brilliantly as she looped an arm through the male’s arm and then the female’s. “Armand, you haven’t met the newest residents of the Castle, Gavin and Gwendolyn.”
His jaw tightened and he had to swallow the bile that was rising up in his throat. How could no one see whose children they were? They had Ferris’s blue-green eyes and Apollo’s hair and bone structure and subtle radiance. Betrayal tore through him as he glared down at Ferris. Ignoring the look of confusion on her face, he growled, “Did you fuck him as soon as the sun rose or did you wait until I had spent a few weeks encased in stone?”
“What are you talking about?” Rhys asked with forced laughter, extricating Ferris from Armand’s arms and pulling her towards her family as Vaughn wrapped a hand around his arm to hold him back. She looked at him with wounded and confused eyes that squeezed the last drop of blood from his shredded heart.
“Armand, please,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes pleading with him to stop speaking but he couldn’t stop. Fury burned the pain and jealousy away and all he wanted to do was hurt her as badly as she hurt him.
Jerking away from his brother’s hold, handing the baby to someone, anyone, he stalked towards her, using his height to intimidate her and ignoring the feelings that made him weak. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out that it was my father that you slept with? That their father is Apollo?”
“What are you talking about?” Ferris pleaded, infuriating him with her incredible acting abilities. “I’ve never even met Apollo. Their father is Marick.”
Armand sneered in disbelief, “Look at them, Ferris. They have his white blond hair.”
Color stained her cheeks as her gaze darted away and he knew he was right to distrust humans, to distrust her. “That’s because Marick sometimes likes to pretend he's an old wizard.”
This time Melanie gasped, her eyes widening in her face as she looked between Armand, Ferris and her two offspring. Covering her mouth with her hand, she whispered, “Omari?”
“Yes,” Ferris nodded, her cheeks bright red as she avoided everyone’s gazes now. The two spawns forced their way through the crowd and wrapped their arms around Ferris, protecting her.
Jenna had tears in her eyes as she asked Ferris in a pained whisper, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Ferris met his eyes over Jenna’s shoulder and he couldn’t be in the same space as her anymore. Turning his back, he walked away before he shattered completely. Of course his father would be the one to lure Ferris away. The bastard only cared about his own pleasure. Hadn’t Apollo nearly killed Melanie when he had given her the blood of Medusa? Hadn’t he always vowed to have a human, damn everything that stood in his way, including his own son?
Even as Ferris’s words of ignorance pricked at his conscience he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t help but feel betrayed, especially when the product of that betrayal stared at him with Ferris’s blue-green eyes. All of those warm, fuzzy feelings that had been taunting him were gone, replaced with cold, hard reality. Ferris slept with Apollo.
He was never going to get over it.
Chapter 15
Regret
Ferris was still sick to her stomach by what Armand had revealed. The look of hurt and betrayal that had filled his green eyes haunted her and she just wanted to talk to him about it, explain what happened. But how could she explain something that she hadn’t even known? The supernatural world was so different than the human world, especially when a man could live to a thousand and never age a day beyond the age of twenty-five. No one ever told her that Apollo liked to run around pretending to be a hot cowboy named Marick, who in turn like to run around pretending to be a crazy wizard named Omari. How was she supposed to have known who he was?
For so long Armand had been her destiny and they had overcome so much to be together and still it wasn’t enough. She fucked it up because she was ignorant of one very important piece of information. A shudder worked its way through her body at the idea of sleeping with both the father and the son, of loving them both. It was wrong on so many levels she wasn’t sure there was any hope for her and Armand, and that thought curdled her insides.
She didn’t know if Armand would ever be able to forgive her.
Yet, it felt as if an unbearable burden had been lifted from her shoulders when he spilled the truth of Gavin and Gwendolyn’s identities. When she had first gotten sick she didn't know what was wrong. She hadn't wanted to know because if she had thought for a moment that she was pregnant than she would have had to acknowledge the fact that she hadn’t remained faithful to Armand. It didn't matter if the events of that night were still a little fuzzy from too much wine and too much sorrow.
But then she got even sicker and Fray did the only thing he could, binding his life to hers in the hope that a dragon's strength would cure her. He's the one who realized what the problem was and by that time Ferris had been lost in a haze. She woke up in faerie realm where time moved at a much different rate. The only way to survive being pregnant with the children of a god was to be transformed into something more than human.
She had spent almost twenty years in the fantastical world, watching her children grow, and yet only three weeks had passed back home. So, even though she had stopped aging shortly after meeting Omari, technically, she was closer to fifty-one, not the thirty-one that was listed on her driver’s license. No one knew she had experienced so much and it was too complicated to explain so she didn’t tell anyone about any of it.
Instead, she used her knowledge to teach art at the local community college, preferring the smaller class size of college students. It was also the only college that would hire a teacher who looked no older than twenty-two and the only reason that happened was because the dean was a fairy. He had exquisite wings that he only showed the non-human teachers and since Ferris was technically no longer human she got to see them.
Lying back on her bed, she stared up at the ceiling, wondering if her lack of aging also made her unable to mature the same way humans seemed to mature. A small part of her felt every one of her fifty-one years but mostly she felt like a twenty-two year old girl trying to navigate her way through a darkly enchanted and ever-changing forest.
She had some amazing experiences along the way that so few humans got to have. Hell, she had given birth to demi-gods.
She didn’t remember much of the pregnancy, especially the beginning which had been spent in agony because the babies were too powerful for a human body. And then she was transformed and the metamorphosis made everything kind of hazy. Marick and Fray did everything in their power to keep her strength up, giving her their own life force to keep her tethered to the land of the living. There were so many times she could have sworn Armand was with her but she belatedly realized that was just her twisted mind playing tricks on her, offering comfort from the one man who wasn’t there to give it.
From the very beginning Marick was a very hands-on father, training them to control their power so it wouldn’t overwhelm them. She had been in awe of him and a little terrified when he demonstrated the extent of his powers. Perhaps she should have realized he was no lesser god but, honestly, it wasn’t something she really dwelt upon. He was simply Marick, the father of her children and the man who kept her alive, the man who cried when the twins had been born, his smile bright enough to light the deepest, darkest cave. He had looked at her with utter devotion and extraordinary gratitude. She had been grateful to have survived.
One of the benefits, or drawbacks, of becoming a lesser goddess
was the flood of power that swamped her body and overwhelmed her, power she had learned to bury deep within. She entrusted the majority of them to Fray, who could not be corrupted by such magical power. It had taken years to learn how to shield the brilliance that emanated from her, to hide behind a human mask. At the time she had also been excited, knowing that she had time to convince Armand that she was in it for the long haul whether or not he ever gave her his nights.
Now she had to figure out how to spend eternity without a heart, since hers would always belong to Armand.
“So, you’re a mom.”
Ferris turned her head and saw her mother standing in the doorway, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. Heaving a sigh, Ferris nodded, “Yep.”
Jenna arched an eyebrow, waiting for more, but when Ferris returned to staring at the ceiling, she continued, “I never would have guessed.”
Ferris smiled slightly, “I don’t tell you guys everything.”
“Obviously,” Jenna said wryly, crossing the room and sitting down on the edge of the bed and shaking her head in bewilderment. “Ferris, why do you do this? Why do you keep so much bottled up inside? It’s not good for you.”
Ferris’s smile widened until it felt like her face might crack. If she only smiled wide enough the pain wouldn’t be able to touch her. “I’ve done alright so far.”
Jenna heaved a disgruntled sigh. “I’m your mother, Ferris, and I know so little about you, about what you’re going through, what you’ve gone through. How is it possible you have kids that look like they’re in their twenties?”
“Probably because they are in their twenties,” Ferris said simply. With a frown, she revised her statement, “Actually, they could be a lot older than that, depending on how much time they’ve spent in the faerie realm.”
Jenna huffed out a surprised chuckle, “You are just full of surprises, love, aren’t you?”
