Page 17 of My Guardian Gryphon

I couldn’t see his face, but the female wasn’t afraid, not like the others around her. The landscape was covered in ice, so different from the landscape surrounding Sanctuary. Even the sky had been a different shade of blue—otherworldly.

“Did you see them?”

I nodded and met her gaze. My mouth opened to speak, but the firm look in her eyes made it snap shut again.

“It is better not to know our future, Gretchen. Life would be too difficult if you were always striving for a vision or fighting against it. The gift you Sisters bear is a heavy one indeed. I prefer the freedom of not knowing.”

“It can show us future. What to look for. What to look forward to,” I said, brightening my tone while sorrow threatened to pull me beneath its dark shadow. Her words rang horribly true. My vision of Alek and me together had consumed me since it’d first come years ago. Every move, every decision since that point had been to try and make the vision a reality. I knew my choices thus far had not changed our future, because the vision kept returning, but I lived in constant fear that one day I would ruin that perfect scene I’d carried in my heart for so long. The fear that I would never feel loved or whole as I did in Alek’s arms in that one moment.

“But your visions are not the whole tapestry. They show small threads and knots in the fabric of time. What the Lamassu cursed your people with so many years ago was not a gift of visions for you, but a means to an end for them.”

Cursed? “How can you say that? We are the hope for every supernatural being not of Earth.” That was what we’d been taught since we were children. What Rose reminded us of every time she spoke to the Sisters. “We are the key to re-opening the portal to Veil. We are your salvation.”

“Perhaps.” Diana laid her palm to my cheek. “I have lived so many more years than you, child. Things are not usually what they seem on the surface.”

“You just don’t know Rose. She’s protected us for thousands of years. She saved my ancestors from Xerxes and continues that crusade to this day. We seek the Protectors who will fulfill the prophecy.” I spouted off the stuff the Oracle and Rose were always repeating. It was what everything centered on.

“I do agree that Xerxes is an imminent threat, and I am new in Sanctuary,” she continued, her voice calm and even. “Perhaps I just don’t fully grasp the mission of your Sentinel yet.”

I nodded, accepting her explanation. She hadn’t been in Sanctuary long. She hadn’t been on the Earth long, either. It could easily explain her hesitation to believe…to trust in the goal we all worked toward.

“Jared asked me to tell you that Alek won’t be coming by today,” she said, dropping her hand from my cheek.

“Oh, thank you.” I managed to keep my voice flat, emotionless, void of the disappointment flooding my body. I wanted to scream and cry and go hide in the farthest corner of the library. Why was Alek avoiding me? “That was kind of him. I think I’ll still stay and read a while, though.”

“Of course.” She turned and walked for the French doors at the far end of the large room, pausing just before turning the corner and looking back over her shoulder. “Be careful, child.”

Be careful? Of what? Every conversation I’d had with Diana Blackmoor had been strange. She was strange. Like she’d stated herself, she didn’t understand this world. She hadn’t lived here long enough to know Rose and trust her.

Without us, the prophecy could never be fulfilled. We could never be human and free from the visions that plagued us. We could never have sons. Never have a normal life.

I’d heard whispers of others who had refused to participate in the joinings, but none who’d held out as long as myself. Rose and the all the elders maintained we couldn’t have children with supernaturals—except a Lamassu, which is why we were kept hidden from Xerxes…but if Diana thought there was more going on than Rose let on… plus, there was my vision, what else was Rose hiding? Or lying about?

All other thoughts of Rose’s possible deception were erased. My hope—my belief— smothered my doubts about the prophecy. I would be free one day, and I would have a real relationship outside of these stone walls. The prophecy could go on without me.

I walked down one of the aisles, letting my fingertips run along the edge of the books, finally stopping on one oversized old volume I didn’t remember ever looking at. The cover was worn fabric and the lettering, like most older books, was embossed with gold leaf. Fancy script and swirls decorated the front and spine. I traced the title—Legends of Arthur and Avalon.

King Arthur? I’d read stories about his knights and the round table of Camelot. They were adventurous stories of love and devotion. The knights fought bravely for their king and defended their land from invaders.

I walked back to the favored loveseat and curled into the cushions on one side, opening the large book. The paper was yellow with age, but in good shape. It didn’t flake as I turned the first page. The musty smell of history hit my nose, and I breathed in deeply, reading the opening line. In the year of our Lord, five hundred thirty-nine, Arthur Pendragon fought and died for his kingdom. But the end of his story was merely the beginning of another…

The chapter went on to describe how magick was used in the many successful battles Arthur fought and then how magick left his side before he died. His knights took his fallen body from the battlefield and disappeared from the world into a fortress called Avalon, a fortress no man could find again after leaving.

A smile curved my lips. Sounded familiar to me. No mortal man ever remembered seeing this castle, either.

Chapter 7

XERXES

“Yes, General,” Cal said, entering the Oval Office.

“To the lab,” I said, walking toward him from behind the desk. He touched my shoulder and hurtled us into the vortex of space the Djinn used to teleport from place to place.

We materialized again in the new lab I’d set up inside the building formerly known as the Pentagon. Each level had been spelled by witches along with a twist of my own magick to allow only permitted personnel through the shields. Not even that fucking siren, Calliope, would be able to stroll through and take my people unaware again.

I’d made few mistakes over the course of my lifetime, but leaving the mansion at Whitemarsh without wards had been a costly one. Losing the Kitsune Riza and Sochi, and the baby Sochi carried in her womb, had enormously slowed my overall timeline. It would be a decade and a half before Lila, Sochi’s first child, was able to bear a child of her own.

And today was the day we would harvest the last usable blood sample from her.

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