Page 13 of Cherish

It’s a very different welcome than my first time here—when Alistair and I visited the court when it was frozen in time and had no worries of being attacked by any other paranormals—but one I’m getting used to. Now that gargoyles are unfrozen and back in the timeline again, they’re a little bit overzealous with their determination to stay here.

Not that I blame them. A thousand years frozen in time after being poisoned, tortured nightly by the souls of your fallen friends and family members desperate to be welcomed home, would make anyone skittish. I’m still traumatized by what I saw—and what Hudson did to protect us then. Why would my people be any different?

Still, all six guards stop abruptly when they see me, giant grins replacing their scowls as they lower their swords and drop into deep bows.

Behind me, Heather gasps.

“Strange watching Grace the queen, isn’t it?” Flint whispers to her.

“Soooooo strange,” she answers.

I turn around just long enough to make a face at both of them before stepping forward to greet the soldiers.

“I’ve told you a million times, you don’t have to do that,” I say to the guards, gesturing with both hands for them to stand back up. When they don’t immediately take the hint, I just flat out ask, “Please, get up.”

Funny how, when I first got here, all I wanted was some small sign of respect from these people. Now that I’ve got so much more than that, there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than for things to go back to the way they were when I was just any other gargoyle to them.

It’s not that I don’t want to be their queen, and it’s not that I don’t take my responsibilities seriously—because I do. Very, very seriously. I just wish those responsibilities didn’t also come with a whole lot of pomp and circumstance that only manage to make me very uncomfortable.

At least they heard my pleading as an order. They all straighten at once.

“How are you, Dylan?” I ask, extending my hand to the young warrior at the front with golden-brown skin and short dark hair.

“Ready to serve,” he answers, taking my hand. But instead of shaking it, he bows his head and kisses my ring.

“Oh, umm, that’s really not necessary,” I tell him as I try desperately to extricate my hand.

I’m saved when Hudson steps forward, eyes crinkling with affection, and claps the young soldier on his shoulder. “I hope you’ve been practicing that jump move I taught you last week.”

Dylan immediately drops my hand and takes Hudson’s, bowing over his as well. “Yes, sir. I think I’ve mastered it now. I even took the general in a hand-to-hand trial earlier this week, sir.”

The two men separate as Hudson leans back to gives the guard a measured look. “You bested Artelya? That’s impressive, Dylan. I look forward to seeing that demonstration at next week’s training.” He raises one brow. “We’ll see how you fare against a vampire, eh?”

Dylan’s eyes widen with excitement, as if Hudson hadn’t just offered to give him a beatdown. “I’ll be ready, sir.”

“I’m sure you will,” Hudson answers, his voice thick with pride. He’d been working hard to find his own place within the Gargoyle Court, a use for a king, and he found it on the training grounds a couple of months ago. Now that I have my memories of our time in the Shadow Realm, I’m not surprised that even here, he gravitated toward a teaching position.

I’ve just started telling Dylan he should never be this excited to face a vampire on the battlefield when I see Artelya stride across the courtyard.

She’s dressed in green shorts and a matching shirt, but the long braids she usually wears in a coronet are gone. In their place is a beautiful afro that frames her high cheekbones and makes her eyes look huge in the very best way. She takes one look at me and bursts into a jog, a smile on her face. “Grace!”

I have one moment to flash back on my brand-new memories of her—of her guiding me in the Shadow Realm and then of watching her turn to dust by dragon fire—before she envelops me in a tight hug.

Sorrow overpowers me, has my stomach clenching and my chest tightening, as I realize that she doesn’t have the same memories. Her timeline reset the moment I failed to save her from the time-dragon fire that consumed her, and now she remembers nothing of the Shadow Realm or our friendship there.

For a long time, I didn’t remember her, either. But now that I do, I can’t help but think about everything she sacrificed for the people of Adarie. She spent a thousand years trapped with only a beast for company, just to be yanked back here to spend another thousand years frozen in time.

The isolation, the loneliness, the agony… Her death may have saved her from the memories of her imprisonment in the Shadow Realm, but I’m pretty sure the emotional trauma of those years lingers somewhere deep inside her still. The same way my feelings for Hudson lingered deep inside me long after I lost my memories of him.

Even worse, it’s robbed her of the knowledge of the many people her sacrifice saved. So she doesn’t even have that to hold on to when the loneliness imprinted within her rears its ugly head. Instead, all she has are shards of pain she has no memory or understanding of.

It’s a terrible thought—one that has my heart aching for the soldier I knew in the Shadow Realm and the general I’ve gotten to know here in the Gargoyle Court and on the battlefield. She deserves so much better than that.

But as she lowers me back to the ground, I tell myself I can’t let my newfound memories of the sacrifices she made haunt me. They were her choices to make, not mine, and they eventually led her here. Not just as a soldier before me, but as a dear friend and the general of my entire army.

She leans over and claps Hudson on the shoulder. “I wasn’t expecting you guys to get here quite so fast. Give me a second to change, and then we can head in.”

“Head in where?” I ask, watching her step away and transform once again into my serious-faced general. Her gaze darts to my friends before coming back to mine, her jaw a little tighter.

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