by Jaymin Eve
A thunderous scowl quickly turns Gerst’s expression to anger. He won’t like that everyone saw his fear of Baelen. He screams a command and two of the biggest soldiers leap out from the group behind Baelen, a surprise attack.
Baelen is unfazed, his sword swinging out in a fluid movement to impale the first male through the chest. At the same time, he evades the other male’s weapon and grabs his sword arm before the gargoyle can complete a downward stroke. Baelen wrenches the male’s arm outward and the gargoyle screams. I have no love for these soldiers, but the way the attacker’s arm dangles makes me wince. Baelen moves swiftly, twisting left, his sword whispering through the air. The second gargoyle’s head rolls across the floor and hits Gerst’s boot at the same time as the first male’s body thuds to the floor.
Gerst screams a battle cry and all of the soldiers race at Baelen and the miners at once. They don’t make it twenty paces before the side of the wind tunnel springs up again, creating an impassable barrier from floor to ceiling between the guards and miners. The attackers can’t even fly over it.
On the miner’s side of the barrier, Roar had already taken flight and Jasper had urged the miners forward, but they pull up short, unable to get through, protected on all sides.
Baelen has chosen to take on all of the soldiers by himself.
An ear-popping shriek is the only warning the nearest soldiers have as Baelen’s sword crackles with lightning. A single swing drops ten soldiers to the ground before he clashes with ten more coming at him from every side. He plows through them while blocking any attempts to attack him from behind. One after the other they fall in rapid succession, a trail of bodies lying in Baelen’s wake.
Gerst’s wing daggers slice through the air a moment before he roars a challenge and launches at Baelen. Fear shoots down my spine. A gargoyle’s wing daggers can tear through rock. Baelen ducks, feints left, and comes up on the right, his sword tearing through Gerst in a single, deadly swipe.
My fear evaporates.
Gerst wobbles on the spot, eyes wide, before he topples to the floor. He is dead within seconds.
Baelen spins to the remaining soldiers as they swerve away from him, scrambling out of his path. Their leader is gone. Nobody is making them fight now.
“Who else?” Baelen roars from deep within his chest, an echoing shout. “Who else wants to die today?”
The nearest soldier drops his sword, throwing his hands into the air, starting a chain reaction among the others.
Baelen waits a mere beat before he turns his back on them and strides toward me. Swords and daggers clatter to the floor behind him as the soldiers lay down their weapons. The lightning fades from Baelen’s body as he approaches me. My heart enters my throat as he stops three paces outside the shield he has placed around me. He eases the tornado and allows me to descend from up high, but not by much. I’m still elevated too high to come close to placing my feet on the ground.
This close I can see what’s different about his face.
His eyes are full of fire. Literally. Normally green, his eyes now glow like hot coals, resembling the scorched stone he burns beneath his feet.
“Marbella.” He growls my name, drawing it out like he doesn’t want to stop saying it. The corner of his mouth lifts into a smile, the intensity of his gaze burning through to my heart. His voice washes over me like a lifeline, breaking through the tension in my entire body.
“Baelen… why are you here?”
“You were falling,” he says as though that explains everything. At my questioning look, he adds, “I’ll never let you fall, baby.”
He’s so calm, so controlled that it sends me into a spin. I can’t begin to understand why he isn’t worried about his own life right now. I burst out, “But how are you still alive?”
I’m so worried about him that I’m going to leap out of my skin. Fear consumes me as completely as the flames filling his eyes. After everything that’s happened, after everything we’ve been through, I can’t lose him now. My own eyes burn with tears I can’t seem to shed.
Baelen’s smile fades, concern flashes across his face. He half reaches for me before he reconsiders that action. “I’m alive because I’m not all here. My heart is still suspended.” He shrugs his broad shoulders. “I am a shell made up of storm power while my core remains safe.” He closes the gap between us, one pace away from the shield. His nearness is like balm on my fear, his expression telling me not to worry. “I’m okay. I promise.”
“What about Elyria? Where is she?” The Storm is nowhere to be seen. The last time I saw her, she was unable to move from Baelen’s side, tethered to him because I gave him all of my storm power when I cut the connection between him and me. It meant she couldn’t move more than a hundred paces from wherever he was.
Baelen’s expression falls. “She’s as far away from here as I could get her, further away while I’m in this state, but it’s not far enough.”
“Where?”
“Outside the deep springs.”
The deep springs are located in the heart of Mount Erador, across a ravine only a thousand feet west of Crimson Court. Nobody goes there for healing anymore because Howl blocked the entrance. The way he blocked it was horrifying: he’d put up a barrier made of living gargoyle wings.
“She’s struggling, Marbella. She’s caught in the nightmares of her past as well as the nightmares of her present. She needs your help. But first you have to help yourself.”
He withdraws a little, a cautious crease appearing on his forehead. “I need you to trust me right now. Can you do that?”
I whisper, “Always.”
He takes a deep breath as if he’s bracing for my response. “I need you to take hold of the Queen’s heart.”
“What?” I glance in disbelief at the stone floating within arm’s length in the air between Baelen and me. It rotates slowly, a glittering, powerful force. Is he really telling me to touch the diamond heart again?
“Take her heart, Marbella. It belongs to you.”
How can it belong to me? I’m not a gargoyle, let alone one with royal blood. A thousand denials rush through my mind, but Baelen persists.
“It didn’t kill you. You’re more powerful now than you ever were.”
“But… it did hurt me. I hurt everywhere. My head, my arms, my skin, my heart…” I press my hand to my chest where pain burns like a fire inside my chest. “It hurts.”
“That’s because you’re grieving, baby. You’re in pain because you lost someone important to you.”
He inclines his head toward the floor and I follow his gaze, looking down for the first time since he whisked me above the battle.
Cassian lies directly beneath my feet, one wing covering his chest, the other spread out beside him where he fell, its massive length stretching out across the floor. Baelen seems to sense what I need him to do, gently using his power to lift Cassian’s outstretched wing and cross it over his chest, cocooning him. Cassian saved my life in the mines. He warmed me when I was cold. He believed in something that can’t be true: that I carry royal gargoyle blood.
Now he’s gone.
I shiver, suddenly cold. “Cassian brought me the stone. It’s my fault he died.”
Baelen meets my eyes. The shake of his head is slow, deliberate, giving me time to think while the fire in his eyes dims, stern but strong. “He died believing in the truth. He made a choice. Now you have to make a choice, too.”
Choose.
That single word echoes around in my mind. It was the last thing I heard before I began falling: a command to choose between life or death.
My response to Baelen now is small, a reluctant admission. “I don’t think I can do this alone.”
“I’m here, Marbella. I’m not going anywhere. And when you heal me, all of me will come back to you. But right now, you need to know that you’ve changed. You’ve changed inside and out.”
His mouth transforms into a gentle smile. “I wish I could touch you, show you how beau
tiful you are right now, but you have to heal me before it’s safe to make contact again. In the meantime, the best way to accept who you are is to take hold of the heartstone that belongs to you.”
I trust him. With all my heart. He would never hurt me. He has only ever protected me. I don’t understand what’s going on right now or why, but I believe him.
My fingers flex, reaching out through the air. My hand closes around the Queen’s heart.
An electric shock shoots through me, and a surge of power follows it. The power stabs through my arms, legs, and torso, making my spine arch. The Queen’s heart blazes into life inside my closed fist, casting sharp pinpoints of light across the floor and the watching gargoyles. I gasp as webs appear above me, forming out of nothing, glowing brightly across the entire ceiling, a glittering, tangled mass. At the same time, external light fills the space within the Court as the moon outside reaches its brightest point, dominating the sky with its large, round face as if Incorruptible herself is watching.
The other three heartstones gravitate toward my left hand, hanging in the space above it. I feel them as if they’re alive. Just like I feel the Queen’s thoughts. All four stones are a hammer in my mind, beating hard like drums in unison.
Baelen smiles again, the curve of his lips making my heart race. “Take a seat, Marbella.”
The air around me shifts, slowly transferring my body weight behind my thighs, supporting me as I lower to a sitting position. Baelen has given me a seat of air. I hold the Queen’s heart in my right hand, elevated at my side, while the other heartstones hover over my left palm.
Baelen assesses the stunned gargoyles. He takes up position beside me like a sentinel, guarding more than my body but also my heart. He finally allows the wind barrier to die down around the miners and clan leaders, releasing them from the protective shield.
The floor lights up beneath him. Fire bursts around his feet.
He says, “I give you your Queen.”
2
I’m certain my eyes are as wide as everyone else’s. They stare at me while I stare back at them. Queen? I don’t think so. I loosen my grip on the heartstone, preparing to release it as I whisper to Baelen, “You should let me down now please.”
He gives me a firm shake of his head—no—causing me to frown. He’s not going to let me down?
The old Priestess races toward us, covering ground faster than I expected the ancient female to move. She runs so fast that her wings catch the air, fluttering and elevating her in large leaps.
She shout-whispers, “Lady Storm, do not move! Do not let go of that stone!”
“What—?”
Jasper strides toward us too, not far behind the old Priestess. But we aren’t his only focus. He turns his head, searching the space around us. “Where’s Elyria?”
He doesn’t even get close to us.
The Priestess whirls, her bony hands pushing against Jasper’s stomach so hard he doubles over. Oomph, the air leaves his lungs as she propels him bodily backward.
His startled eyes shoot up to hers. “What—?”
“Get back Jasper, son of Grace! Stay away from Lady Storm unless you want to die.”
“But I need to—”
“You need to live. Which you won’t if you step into her space.”
“What are you talking about?” Jasper glares at the Priestess, his eyebrows drawn down, challenging her. “Baelen’s standing right beside Marbella.”
“Baelen Rath is the only living creature who can share her space right now and survive. Even he is in danger if we don’t act soon. Now get back and let me do what I must.”
Jasper backpedals as she shoves and flaps at him, blocking his every attempt to get to me. She waves her hands at all of the gargoyles who have taken steps toward me. “All of you. Get back. Now!”
If my eyes were wide before, they’ve turned into lakes now. She’s always been a bit odd, but this takes the cake. As she forces everyone backward, even the soldiers, ordering them to form a very wide circle at the edges of the Court, I sense genuine fear in her voice, desperation in her body movements.
She definitely knows something I don’t. I murmur, “Baelen, what’s going on?”
He answers me with a firm, but gentle command. “Hold onto the Queen’s heart, Marbella. Don’t let it go.”
In the distance, Jasper paces, resembling a caged beast. He formed a bond with Elyria before he was forced into the mines with me. Now that he knows Baelen is safe, he needs to know where Elyria is. I understand his frustration. It’s the same desperation I felt being separated from Baelen.
The old Priestess flutters back to us, bowing low to Baelen, her chest heaving. She’s visibly trying to calm herself down. “Thank you, Wrathful One,” she says, still bent low to Baelen. “Without your power containing the heartstone’s force, none of us would be alive right now.”
She rises and peers cautiously at me. I notice that she has chosen to stand further away from me than she ever did before. “Lady Storm, you control the destructive power of the Queen’s heart now. But it is a fragile control. The heart responds to your thoughts and emotions. A single thought from you can have a thousand consequences. You are either our salvation or… our greatest enemy.”
I can’t get rid of the crease in my forehead. “I should have died when I touched it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Cassian said… impossible things.” I shake my head. He said I smelled like the Queen, but I have no gargoyle heritage and I know my mother never had eyes for anyone other than my father. No matter what they say about children always looking like their mother, I’m as certain as I can be that she never had an affair with a gargoyle. Let alone with the former King.
The Priestess’s fingers flex as if she wants to leap across the distance, grab me, and shake sense into me, but I guess the whole single-thought-can-destroy-her thing stops her.
She says, “Only someone with Supreme Incorruptible blood running through their veins can hold the Queen’s Heartstone like you are now. How this happened is not important right now. We will figure it out soon enough. For now, you need to establish control over the stone or we are all in terrible danger.”
In the distance, Jasper paces halfway around the watching gargoyles. He stops in front of Llion who is very pale. Even from this distance I can tell that Llion doesn’t look good. Roar supports him on one side and Welsian on the other, while Liliana presses close to him. I have to get to them and figure out how to help.
I have to get to Elyria and help her too.
I say to the Priestess, “You’re telling me that I’m dangerous right now. Well, I refuse to stay in this cage forever. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
She seems relieved, rather than annoyed. She points at the Queen’s heart, her finger forming a delicate line to the most powerful heartstone unearthed. “You must tether the Queen’s heart to your own. Then the other heartstones will follow. That is the only way we will have peace in Erador.”
I scan the distant faces. The clan leaders wait and watch me too. Now that Howl and Gerst are gone, and with all of the royal family deceased, the danger is that the clans will go to war to determine their new leader.
The Priestess gestures from the stone to my heart. I know what I have to do. I watched Baelen do this very same thing during the Heartstone Ceremony when he bound himself to me.
I draw the Queen’s heart to my heart and press it against my armor. It feels right that the inner suit of my armor is made out of Elyria thread, the light and life of a gargoyle’s nest. As the stone presses up against it, warmth spreads through me. Light flickers around my torso and it feels like the storm. It is lightning and thunder, a tornado of tears like rain, a torrent of emotion. It’s so much. And it’s… mine.
Still pressing the Queen’s heart to my own, I focus on the three other hearts as they continue to spin in a slow, lazy circle in front of me. They revolve slowly enough that I could reach out and grab them, but I decide th
at isn’t what I should do. The sense I get from each of them is so different: Virtuous responds to my sadness, Lightsworn responds to my determination, and Prime, well, Prime responds to the Queen’s heart with the same bond I’ve seen in Baelen’s eyes when he looks at me.
I don’t want to force a connection with the other heartstones like Howl did. Instead, I extend my free hand, palm open beneath them. Inside my mind, I ask: May I have your permission?
All three hearts drop into my palm. They’re too big to fit all at once but each one balances on the tips of my outspread fingers, weightless, not heavy. A glow spreads up my arm and I can’t help but smile at the happiness I sense from them.
As I open my fingers, preparing to release the Queen’s heart—my heart—the Priestess visibly braces. Baelen plants his feet. He thickens the tornado around me just in case.
I release all four heartstones into the air and a thread of light forms between the Queen’s heart and my chest. As soon as the diamond floats into sync with the others, the thread extends between them all, connecting them in a circle that is connected to me.
It looks just like the thread of storm power that used to link Baelen and me: a thread of deep magic.
The Priestess sags with relief. “Thank the ancients. Now that they’re all tethered, the Queen’s heart is not volatile anymore. It will only react to your conscious and deliberate thoughts. And what’s more…” Her gaze flickers back to the watching clan leaders and the remaining soldiers. “Nobody else can claim them. Remember this, Lady Storm: the stones are yours and yours alone. Even Howl was not tethered to them.”
I have a feeling I should be afraid, but I’m not. For the first time, I understand why Cassian believed so strongly in this, why he gave his life for this. My purpose now is to keep the stones safe. To never allow them to be used like Howl used them. Never again.
The Priestess rocks back on her heels while Baelen eases the windstorm around me, lowering me to the ground, shifting me away from Cassian. The gusty wind dies down but Baelen retains his position as my quiet sentry, staying out of the Priestess’s way but remaining close at my side.
