Page 72 of Hearts of Stone

“Free me, Graven!” The prisoner’s voice felt like it echoed through the entire grounds of the estate and beyond. “Free me, brother!”

“Brother?” I asked, looking squarely at Graven. “Anyone want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Chapter 41

Wulfstan

It had been a long, long time since I had been woken by the rising of the moon. For a moment I stayed motionless, my eyes closed, finding something peaceful in the cool night air. As I took a breath, though, I felt something tear inside me. It had been a small scratch when I was first installed in Z Ward, bound to a brand-new building with magic like ropes of steel. But when humans didn’t tend to their wounds, they festered, growing putrid and rotting them from the inside. I had assumed that, as a gargoyle, I was impervious to such injuries, until I came to this place. But as I opened my eyes and took a deeper breath, the wound Luther had left inside me was ripped wide open.

And the pain was so overwhelming that I could do nothing other than scream.

Not that it did much good. If screaming had any effect, this place would’ve been reduced to rubble. Instead it was as if the residue of Luther’s malevolent form of magic grew with each sound of pain, becoming bloated, like a tick feeding on a dog. Despite that, I was never able to stop myself. The sounds that were rent from me were the rawest expressions of pain: ofbeing awake, being alive, yet caged within this hell hole, trapped within the sight of all of the worst agonies I’d suffered…

And those that I’d perpetrated. That was the worst pain of all.

As my mindless screams were torn from me they echoed through the peaceful grounds of The Eyrie.

I didn’t expect to be heeded. I never had been before. Master Ashley and all the others that had come before him had slept on peacefully, no matter what I did, so why would anyone answer now? I screamed until it felt like the flesh was torn from my throat, only to be answered by the sound of voices; one in particular that was known to me.

“Jade was not born from Luther.” My stone brother’s voice carried me forward, from beyond my cage, the door so helpfully left open by the last humans in here. “She carries none of his taint. He—”

He was here? Graven was here? What the hell would bring him forward? Years, more years than I could count, had passed since we’d last shared the horrors of this place, then, after Luther was deposed and the doors of Z Ward were locked tight, I’d seen him but rarely. In the early days, he’d come to try and talk to me, to reason with me, to be a silent witness to my pain, but the gaps between those visits had grown longer and longer until the next master was installed in the house, then another. Each one of them was weaker in power than the last, no longer able to wake all of us. And when they were forced to choose, why would they select me? A bound gargoyle, trapped like a bird in a cage, I was no use to anyone, so one morning I had sunk down into the silence of stone, not to return.

Until now.

It wasn’t my stone brother’s voice that kept me moving forward, though. The need to scream at him, shout out my complaints about my continued existence was still there, but it was pushed aside by something else.

Jasmine, night-blooming, heavy and narcotic and clogging my nose; I caught the scent of it, but no flowers grew here. Z Ward itself stank of dank stone, mould, rotting leather and rusting iron and little else. It wasn’t even the ever-present rose scent that came from the gardens around The Eyrie. There was a singular scent in amongst a sensory carpet of others, the only bright note in any of it.

And that wouldn’t do.

My tail lashed as I strode through the central foyer of Z Ward, past the frozen forms of Caraxes and Axton, two of my brothers who’d been forced to share my incarceration. My wings flexed, not able to fully extend in the space, the ache in my shoulders a reminder of that. But I shoved all of that aside as I walked up to the gate.

Graven, Carrick and Seneca all stood between me and whatever it was that drew me closer. No, not what: who. My heart felt like it stuttered in my chest, then beat faster and faster, the strain making the whole area ache, right as I saw her. Just a tiny glimpse, in the gap between my brothers’ wings. She was pale as the moon and twice as lovely. Eyes that shone like stars, lips like rubies that begged to be kissed, skin that would show every mark if not touched with care…

And that’s what had me throwing myself against the gates of Z Ward, despite the power of the magic that pulsed against me, making every muscle jerk and convulse. My heart began to beat erratically, unable to continue when subjected to the power of the wards Luther had so carefully built into the foundations of this place.

I didn’t care.

“Free me, Graven!” I shouted, wings working, tail lashing. “Free me, brother!”

Becauseshelay beyond. I’d spent thousands of years tied to the castles and houses of men, bartered and sold like aslave by rich warlocks, sought after for my power, hated for my recalcitrance, and in all that time, I’d never felt something so strongly as this.

I needed her.

Whoever this woman was, she was like the air in my lungs. No, like the currents under my wings, sweeping me up into the blessed night. She was the waters of an ice-cold loch, right before I dived down under its surface. She was the moon itself, life giver, making the blood pump through my veins.

“Brother?” she said, her voice the sweetest of music. “Anyone want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

I would. I’d tell her anything she wished. Of the days when the great cities now were little more than small hamlets, of the ways the world had changed. Of when the dragons retired back to their caves, never to return. Of magic and betrayal and fiercely fought wars and—

“We need to go, Mistress,” Graven said, his words a knife turning in my chest. I could feel every inch of the blade as it was driven deep. “Mistress—”

“No!” My claws wrapped around the bars, but even though my fingers were forced open as the wards pulsed through me like a bolt of electricity, I clung on. “No, Graven, brother, you can’t!”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice was as crisp and clear as any highborn lass and her bearing was that of a queen as she pushed past the three of them. I saw then just how lush and beautiful she was. Her form was sweetly rounded and would grow fuller when she was heavy with my child, because now that I saw her, I dared to hope. Perhaps everything I’d endured was for just this moment. She was my mate, I felt that pulse hot and hard in my chest, something that felt like pure agony after such a long time, but I was used to confusing pleasure with pain. “Who…?” she said, staring up at me. “Who are you?”

But that’s when I felt it, that steady pulse of shame that beat inside me, outpacing my own heart. My brows drew down as I felt it rise, like a poison that had been injected into my core. This was the moment I’d been waiting for my entire life and I… I wrenched my claws away from the bars, the feeling of relief turning suddenly to a sense of wrong. What right did I feel to feel any sort of reprieve after what I’d done? I stared down at my hands, seeing the blackened marks that came from clasping the bars of my cage, now and all the nights I’d been awakened since the death of Luther Whiteley. They criss-crossed my palms, my mark of Cain. Because there were no other signs of my sin, none that I didn’t make myself.

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