Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58321 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Grace uses her fork to move her food around her plate. Finally she sighs. “Okay, you might have a point. My mother is dead, and has been for some time, I think. It’s been five years in the human realm, but time moves differently. Azazel is the only one who has the full story of what happened, and I want to know. I need to know.”
“Why would Azazel have answers about your mother—” I realize the answer before I even finish speaking. Her mother made a demon deal and then never came home. And now Grace has moved across realms to get the answers she craves. Would I do any less if there were questions about how my family had died and I was the last one left? No wonder she is so determined to leave my side and make her way back to the bargainer demon territory.
If I were a better man, I would release her from the fucked-up bargain we put in place between us. If I were a worse one, I would use this knowledge to ensure her compliance with my needs and demands.
I do neither. Instead, I find myself studying her. “Would you like to see more of the lands around the castle? I’d like to get out of here for a bit and I wouldn’t say no to some company.”
She lifts her brows. “Playing hooky? Surely someone will come looking.”
“These days the castle mostly runs itself and my company is hardly entertaining enough for most people to seek out.”
“Bram . . .” She presses her lips together for a long moment and then says, “I’d love to see the grounds around the castle.”
She’s likely only agreeing to better plan her next escape attempt, but I don’t care. I’m happy to spend more time with her. I nudge her plate back toward her. “Eat up. You’re going to want your strength for this.”
12
BRAM
I almost talk myself out of taking Grace along half a dozen times before she meets me on the roof dressed in so many layers that she looks a bit like a child bundled against the cold. Or, well, a child of some other people. Gargoyles are naturally resistant to extreme temperatures, even from the time we’re born.
I hold out my hand. “Shall we?”
“Do you have a destination in mind?”
I hadn’t when I made the offer, but now I find myself saying, “There’s an old keep in the mountains. It was used in my grandparents’ generation, but it’s falling into disrepair. I like to go out there regularly and make sure that it’s still structurally sound because there’s a superstition among my people that anyone who can spend an hour at midnight in the wine cellar without light will receive good luck and blessings.”
Grace raises her brows. “Not that old of a superstition if it was still used two generations ago.”
I understand how she sees things that way, but that’s not how my people operate. I shrug. “Superstitions are living things, and sometimes they can shift in the space of a few decades. Other times, they stretch back through the years to beyond living memory.”
Saying this the hot spring so high in the mountains that only the most reckless of people would normally attempt to reach it, where it’s said that immersing yourself in the water will result in a healthy pregnancy and a safe birth. Several times a year, pilgrimages are organized to visit it. It doesn’t matter how dangerous the trek—people always show up.
It seems foolhardy to me to risk life and limb in order to protect yourself from risking life and limb, but any faith I had died with my family.
Grace slips her hand into mine and allows me to lift her into my arms. She feels good there. If I didn’t know better, I might believe she was built to occupy the space. I do know better, though. She might be indulging me now, but this is still the same woman who lied to me and then ran from me. She didn’t talk to me about what she wanted or needed. She treated me like an obstacle to overcome.
Just like my people do.
I launch us into the air, flying far too quickly, as if I can outrace my dark thoughts. It’s never worked before. It doesn’t work now. And yet, they don’t cling quite as harshly as they normally do. Strange, that.
We make good time to the keep, and I touch down softly in the courtyard just as the sun reaches its peak in the sky. Part of me wants to keep Grace in my arms, to use the excuse of her potential shakiness to do so, but she’s much sturdier than she was last time. “You didn’t scream.”
“What?”
Why the fuck did I just say that? That’s not a normal thing to say. Then again, this is not a normal woman. I set her carefully on her feet and keep my hands out in case her legs buckle. Of course they don’t. Which means I have no excuse to avoid answering her question. I look away and fight not to hunch my shoulders. “The first time we flew. You were scared. But you didn’t scream. You didn’t scream with the spiders, either.”