CHAPTER 29

IT WAS NOT as he remembered it.

He recalled a peak thrusting toward the stars in a clear, midnight blue sky. Now that peak was hidden by dark clouds that roiled with the movement of his wings. Fog stirred around him, a fine mist against his skin, almost rain. There was no easy passage, no welcoming sense of being a small part of a greater whole. He’d given that up centuries earlier, yet still found the lack unexpected.

No matter. Memory could be clouded, but never forgotten. He knew his own path there, and for over a century, Hajnal’s had run beside it. They were intertwined, and no mere fog could keep him away from her.

He banked and rolled in the air, closing his eyes against wind and spitting water, letting old familiarity guide him where vision could not. Shadows closed around him, mountains of memory belonging to those whom he had grown up among. Those peaks were to be trusted, no more changeable than the sun’s path in the sky.

But there was a bleakness to them that he didn’t remember. A sense, unfamiliar to him, of being worn down by time. Too many of those mountains no longer grew, he realized, their reaching peaks stunted by their creators’ deaths.

How many? The question lanced through him, a pang of regret. Deliberately avoiding his own people for so long had left him less knowledgeable about their numbers. Aside from the recent meeting with Biali, Alban could not clearly remember the last time he’d spoken with one of his own.

Which had been the point of exile. “The Breach,” Grace had said accusingly. Alban drifted in memory, tasting the wound of that word. It, too, was something he couldn’t clearly remember last hearing, though that may have been due more to a deliberate reluctance on his part. Biali was not above throwing cutting words, working to provoke a fight wherever he could.

Blackness boiled up in the clouds, a wall forming out of the fog. Nearby memory-mountains darkened, seeming to move closer, until the space in which he unfurled his wings felt tight and constricting. Alban inhaled, filling his lungs and broadening his chest, an act of defiance against claustrophobia.

“You don’t belong here, Korund.” The voice should not have surprised him, though it did: Biali’s gravely tones. The one gargoyle with whom he’d had contact was now the one to stand in his way. For the first time Alban wondered if the scarred gargoyle had been asked to stay near him, in order to provide just this kind of barrier from the memories. Certainly no one else of their people would be as enthusiastic about the prospect of thwarting him. It was not the nature of gargoyles to hold grudges, but then, neither did stone forget easily.

Clouds whirled in circles, black and gray streaming together with the beat of wings, and Biali’s thick form came out of the mist, his scarred face curled in a sneer. Weight came behind him, the ponderous weight of time and memory; of disapproval, as heavy as mountains. As the closest to him physically, Biali stood guardian against Alban’s intrusion into the memory of their people, but he carried the support of others with him. All around him, mist dripped and formed into solid streaks, building a granite wall between Alban and his destination.

“She was my mate, Biali. Don’t I have the right to visit her memories?”

“No.” The gargoyle gave no quarter, the sound of rock slides thundering in his voice. “No longer.”

Alban flexed his wings, feeling dampness catch and trickle down the membranes. “I defeated you once before.”

“Centuries ago. You were young. You had passion. You have nothing now, Korund. Turn back. You’re not welcome among us any longer.” Biali’s wings flickered, keeping him aloft in the memory of mind as the wall grew higher behind him.

“I would walk the path my mate knew,” Alban whispered. “I would see her last moments.”

“You could’ve done that two hundred years ago. Instead you made yourself something we had no word for. Your chance is lost. Leave this place.” Biali’s massive chest flexed, his hands curving into dangerous talons, every action a prelude to battle. “Leave, or make me force you out.” Dark hope infused the last words, so raw Alban backwinged, moving a short distance away.

The scarred gargoyle was right. Three hundred years ago he’d had passion and youth on his side. Two centuries of exile now made him a poor match against a gargoyle whose employ for the past fifty years had been thuggery. For a few seconds Alban hesitated, caught in the swirling mists and watching the wall betwixt himself and his goal grow taller. Easier, surely, to let it go.

And let Margrit die.

There was no surety in the thought; Margrit had not been threatened. Other women, yes, but not even women Alban had watched, making the connection tenuous at best. Tenuous, and yet they’d had a look about them…Dark hair, often marked with curls; flawless skin, pale to olive in tone. Vanessa Gray, with her straight brown hair, had been the least like the others, and she’d died for the game between Janx and Daisani. But more, she’d died because the killer who haunted Alban’s steps had created a circumstance in which Vanessa might be removed. For the one, Alban could have let it slip by. But for the other, and for the determination in Margrit’s gaze, he raised his eyes to look across heavy fog at his rival.

“I will pass.” Simply spoken, the phrase had the weight of ritual to it. Pleasure glittered in Biali’s gaze, the only acknowledgment that battle had been agreed upon.

He exploded forward, leaving behind the protective wall. Alban folded his wings and dropped, not a dive, simply a plummet that took him out of Biali’s space inside an instant. Wind and the weight of his falling body made his wings scream in protest when he snapped them open again, climbing below Biali, his goal the foreboding wall.

Biali slammed into him from behind, driving them both into the black barrier. It gave with the impact, shuddering around them. Memory, the stuff of its being, fragmented, shards flying loose to embed themselves in Alban’s being.

A woman’s presence shattered through his mind. Worn with travel, but proud, she had translucent skin, tinted gold and delicate features half-hidden by hair blackened and heavy with rain. Beautiful, delicate, she was a creature of obsidian and amber, carved by a master.

“Hajnal.” Alban’s voice broke even in the depths of memory. The woman lifted her eyes, meeting his with a dark gaze cold and empty as a winter night. There was no recognizable music to her memory, no hint that her path had lain with his for over a century. Only rage and betrayal shimmered in her eyes. She lifted a hand to strike, and Alban waited for the blow, too astounded at the bleakness within her to resist.

Memory shredded and tore away with Biali’s howl of anger. Wakefulness came back to Alban, rain lashing his skin as the fog seemed to respond to Biali’s cry, intensifying into a storm. Alban reached for the wall, clawing at it as if doing so would grant him access to the recollections that had been torn away. Biali’s weight hit him in the back and he roared, snapping into a ball-a vulnerable, dangerous position. He dropped again, skidding and bouncing against the wall of memory. On the third bounce he acted, straightening his legs as he hit. Momentum shoved him upward, hands clawed to sink into Biali’s shoulders as the other gargoyle dived toward him. Flesh gave more easily than he expected, Biali bellowing with pain as Alban tore skin and sinew, releasing not blood, but a flood of memory.

Amber skin and pale, locked together in the sky.

Rage and betrayal exploded in Alban’s breast, fury at the inconceivable. The laughter of pleasure rode on the wind, and for an instant Alban saw through memory to recognize a vivid sneer of triumph smeared across Biali’s scarred face. Then remembrance swept over him again, a barrage of impossible truths.