Biali grunted, Margrit recognizing the sound as something as close to a thanks as she would probably ever get. Then he looked beyond her. “Korund.”
“Biali.” Alban’s voice sounded unusually soft in the empty chamber. After a long moment Biali nodded and stumped out of the room, leaving Margrit alone with Alban.
CHAPTER 20
Margrit put her elbows on the chess table and slid her fingers into her hair, massaging her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off about Sarah, but they weren’t going to let it go with no answers, Alban. I thought it’d be easier if I broke your promise for you. God, my head hurts.”
“Are you so certain I wouldn’t have spoken?” Mild amusement filled the gargoyle’s voice.
Margrit lifted her gaze, still rubbing her temples. “I could tell you wanted to, but you take your promises seriously.” She stood, taking a deep breath, and wiped her hands against her jeans. “How angry at me are you?”
“Angry?” Alban spread his hands helplessly. “You’re the most principled, bravest, foolish woman I’ve ever met. You just challenged an entire host of gargoyles to combat.” Laughter shook his shoulders and he extended his hands toward her. “Thank you, Margrit. Thank you for my place among my people, for breaking promises I no longer wished to hold, for risking your life for mine. For ours.”
“Oh, stop it.” Margrit lurched from the chair and took the few steps to him in a clumsy run, crashing against his wide chest. He was warm, like well-sunned stone, the sour scent of iron fading from his skin. “I’m not the principled one,” she mumbled. “You stick to your guns even when you’re wrong. I make compromises and wheel and deal. We’re hardly birds of a feather.”
Alban flared his wings, chamber lights glowing through the translucent membrane. “I have no feathers at all. Margrit, you’ve paid a high price for what’s transpired tonight.”
“What I’ve paid isn’t anything like what’s coming.” She tilted her head up, twinging again at the movement, and saw concern come into the gargoyle’s pale eyes. “I’m okay,” she promised. “My head’s been throbbing since Eldred took my hands.”
“It was the bruises that concerned me.” Alban traced taloned fingertips just above her skin, outlining bruises that she hadn’t noticed until he followed their shape. Even then they were merely uncomfortable, nothing compared to the still-shouting static in her head.
“They’ll be gone soon. I meant it when I said Grace couldn’t beat me. I was healing during the fight. I could feel it. Alban—” Margrit broke off, wanting to say so many things they tangled her tongue. “Your chains are gone,” she finally said, awkward with not knowing where else to begin. “I didn’t think Biali’d let you go before the trial.”
“He didn’t.” Alban shook his head as Margrit’s eyebrows drew down with confusion. “Grace freed me.”
Fresh static burst in Margrit’s skull, whitening her vision. “Grace? How?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated, a gentle touch against her cheek felt before Margrit could see clearly again. “She touched me—touched the chains—and there was a terrible coldness and a great deal of pain, and then I was free. My people will want to know how, once they’re made aware. We haven’t often been enslaved, it’s happened, and someone who can free us…”
“You didn’t ask?” Margrit’s voice shot high. “I thought she was human. I thought—”
“I did ask,” Alban said. “But she didn’t want to tell me, and given that I was in her debt, I chose not to press her.”
“And you can just live with that? You can just live with—with not knowing how she did something impossible and took iron that had bonded with your flesh out of your body? You can just live with the vampires saying they’re not from this world at all, and you can just live with whatever the hell it is that makes you all jump when Chelsea Huo says to? Alban, do you have any answers?” Margrit pulled her voice down from a shout, half aware she was trying to drown out the white noise within her own mind. “How can you live with not knowing?”
Bemusement crossed Alban’s stony features as Margrit put her hands against her head. She closed her eyes against the gentleness of his expression, trying to gather herself, and only spoke when she thought she had control. “Sorry. My head hurts a lot.” It was another moment before she dared open her eyes to find sympathy in Alban’s gaze. “I have so many questions, and nobody wants to answer any of them. Janx said I can walk away from the Old Races much later than I could ever imagine, and I can see where it might be tempting, if I’m always going to be standing here on the outside, looking in. Why does everybody kowtow to Chelsea, Alban? Why can you simply accept that Grace pulled iron out of you without wanting to know how?”
“I do want to know,” Alban said mildly. “But I said I wouldn’t ask, and I’m not as bedeviled by curiosity as you are. I don’t want you to walk away from us, Margrit,” he added more softly. “I don’t want you to walk away from me.”
Margrit sighed and put her forehead against his broad chest. “I’m not planning on it. But don’t think I haven’t noticed you didn’t answer any of my questions just now, either.”
Alban chuckled. “You notice everything. Most of your questions aren’t mine to answer, or I have no answers. Even the gargoyle memories tell us nothing more about the vampires than that they claim to be not of this world. It’s an affectation, but…” He trailed off, and then a smile came into his voice. “You may have noticed that we Old Races, as a rule, tend a little toward affectation.”
“No, really?” Margrit tipped her head up, mouth twisted into a smile that faded away. “Will I ever get answers? Am I always going to be the human stuck in the middle of a fairy tale?”
“You can route any comer, defend any stand, argue any case. The Old Races fall before you, and no,” Alban said with a lift of his brows, “I am not teasing you. I think you’ll get your answers in time, Margrit. You may have to earn them from each of us as you go along, because we aren’t prone to sharing secrets, but give us time. Give yourself time.”
“Easy for a four-hundred-year-old gargoyle to say.”
“Almost five hundred,” Alban said lightly. “Your haste has already shaped our world. You can afford a little patience. It’s been barely three months since you discovered us at all.”
Margrit opened her mouth and closed it again, surprise washing out the ache in her head for a moment. “Okay. All right, you’re right. I can probably stand to wait another three or four before I know everything about all of you. But I will want to know, Alban. I have to know everything I can. I’m never going to be one of you. Understanding who I’m dealing with is the only compensation I’ve got.”
“I rather think you might understand us better than even I do, who have stood apart for so long.”
Margrit shook her head. “You’re not alone anymore. You’re with me. You’re part of your community again. Just—don’t pick any fights with Biali.”
Alban brushed his knuckles against her cheek and a thrill of warmth suffused Margrit. Still damp, exhausted and hoarse from arguments, she was more fully at home within the circle of the gargoyle’s arms than she could ever remember being elsewhere. It went beyond sensuality, beyond happiness, into something so complex and profound it seemed absurd that a single word could encompass it, yet one did. Content. She was content, and had never known that emotion could fill her so completely.
Seeing her smile, Alban dipped his head to touch his lips against hers, then his forehead to hers. They stood that way, both smiling, as he spoke. “As you so assiduously tried to tell me, and I so fervently refused to hear, I have not been alone since you came into my life, Margrit. I believe I will stop trying to convince myself I am, for fear you’ll move whole mountain ranges to block my way when I try to leave.”