The Shadowed Path

16. Lawrence

16

Lawrence

“No way but forward, huh?” Kestrel sighed and eyed the stream. I couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling. I’d caught her staring at me, which reminded me that she’d never seen me in my gargoyle form. While I didn’t know what she and her father had faced before we rescued them from the lake, the encounter with the water wolves had terrified me. And due to my gargoyle form, I had more power and strength…theoretically.

Now Kestrel watched the stream, her expression the carefully neutral one she must have learned to cultivate in her training for the PBI.

John gave his daughter a smile of mingled weariness and pride. “No, I suppose not.”

Standing here wouldn’t do us any good. “I suppose we should go.” I released John, and, holding tight to Kestrel, waded into the stream. My feet found purchase as the burbling water and the smooth stones beneath welcomed me as a water and earth elemental. It tricked me, however. Once we reached the middle of the stream, a rumbling vibration made the water froth and foam, and I looked upstream to see a wall of water rushing toward us.

“Hang on!” I gripped Kestrel’s hand so tightly she cried out. The wave narrowed to a wedge and ripped her from us, carrying her away.

Both John and I shouted, and I had to half-fly to grab John before he dove into the stream, which had suddenly deepened, to go after her.

"Kestrel!"

The raw pain in his voice broke my heart, but I didn't let him go.

"Did you see that? The water wanted only her."

"Yes, I saw that." He stopped struggling, and we made our way to the opposite shore. Then, when we tried to go in the direction Kestrel had been taken, an invisible wall blocked us. Both of us kept looking downstream to see if we could spot either the mini-tsunami that had taken her, or her dark red hair bobbing along the surface. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared except for a shadow swooping low over the stream in the far distance. A sliver of relief made the tension in my chest loosen. The grimalkin hadn’t abandoned us completely, after all. Had he known something like this would happen?

"I can't tell with certainty, but I think Sir Raleigh is following."

John slumped in partial relief. "Good." Then he sat on the bank and cleaned his glasses with his shirt-tail, which left wet streaks along the lenses. He didn't seem to notice as he put them back on. "I feel so helpless, Lawrence."

"I suspect that's the point." I sat beside him on the grass but kept one foot on the path so we wouldn't lose it. "The Gray Zone has a price, but I can't believe it would be that steep."

He shook his head. "When it comes to the Fae and their institutions and magic, I could believe anything."

We waited for several more minutes. A warm breeze stirred the grass, and the clouds parted overhead to reveal the famed sunshine of Faerie.

"What are you looking at?" John asked. He squinted up.

"There are legends—again, based on who knows what?—that the sunshine in Faerie has magical properties. Like, it can heal those who are injured and worthy."

He snorted. "There's always the worthiness bit, isn't there?"

I turned to him. "Don't let yourself be bitter, John. You've done what you can."

John leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Have I? I keep going over and over what happened. Could I have fought harder for Kestrel, for Beverly to let her be a normal girl? Or should I have reassured Kestrel more about her shifting powers?" He shrugged. "At the end of the day, would it have mattered? You know how stubborn Beverly could be."

I recognized what was happening. I'd seen it in my mother after my father's murder at the hands of… No, I wouldn't let my thoughts go in that particular direction. "After my dad was killed, my mom seemed fine for a while. She had to make plans, figure things out quickly because we didn't know if more Fae would come along and finish the job, kill the family. They could be vindictive like that."

"Not helping, Lawrence."

"Sorry, that's not the point. The point is that once we escaped, went elsewhere and had the chance to breathe again, that's when she broke down. Some people call the first stage of grief denial, but for a lot of us, it's more like shock."

"So, you think the shock has worn off, and now I'm starting to really grieve?"

"Yes. I mean, I'm a veterinarian, not a therapist, but I've seen this before."

"You have it wrong, though." John looked down the river again, and sorrow tugged the corners of his mouth down. "I've been grieving for a long, long time."

Before I could ask about what, the sun fully broke through the clouds above us, and something made us scramble to our feet. A figure in a blue robe with its hood pulled up appeared on the path in front of us.

John and I looked at each other, and I asked, "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"The truth." The voice, pitched too high for a male and too low for a female, spoke with the finality of the wind. "You each have something you're hiding from yourself." It pointed to John with a genderless hand. "You have an old suspicion that you fear voicing as evidence points to its truth." Then it turned its attention to me. "And you, gargoyle, are ignoring more than your animal instincts. If you want the girl returned to you, to move along the Path, you need to admit these things to yourself."

My gut twisted. What could I have been ignoring? That stab of joy when I'd seen Reine? The way it killed me to leave her in danger to protect my friends? The growing glow of understanding and forgiveness that she'd been doing what she needed to protect herself and her brother, and she hadn't intentionally hurt me?

The fact that I had fallen hard for her and wanted to see how things could go between—

My inner gargoyle emerged with a full wing spread and roar, and I had to fight to keep him from fully taking over. As he had just a few days earlier, he wanted to find her and claim her for his—our—own.

Down, dammit. Things don't happen like that anymore. She has a choice.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, fighting for control as the memories flooded through me. Gods, I couldn't keep myself from needing her, from wanting to finish what we'd started in the hotel room, to having more intimate candlelight dinners where we spilled our secrets and stripped away the things that kept us apart.

Could I trust her? She was a Fae princess, after all, and returning to Faerie was what she'd been working toward the whole time. The painful truth was that even if I decided I wanted to explore the possibility of a future together, I couldn't stay, and she might not want to leave. Troubadour seemed to be interested in her, and the woman in the caves had called him a prince. Would Reine choose to make an alliance between light and dark Fae? Even if her heart wanted otherwise, it might not matter. If there was anything the past few days had proved, it was her loyalty to her people. And it might break my heart, but that characteristic made me fall for her even more.

"That's it, gargoyle." The being's voice vibrated through the air around me. "The Gray Zone may be a place of deception, but there's no hiding from oneself."

Then the clouds returned, and John and I stood alone once again. We looked at each other, and I suspected that the pain in my eyes mirrored that in his. With the understanding of long friendship, we both nodded, a silent agreement that we'd talk about these things when we were ready.

The air around us vibrated, and Kestrel appeared, eyes closed and mouth open. I caught her just before she tumbled to the ground, and John cupped her face.

"Kestrel, sweetie? Please open your eyes. Please be okay."

Her eyelids fluttered open, and she grinned. "Dad, Uncle Lawrence, guess what I just did?"

"What, sweetie?"

"I just teleported." She wrinkled her nose. "And I lost it, but I caught it for just a second."

We helped her to her feet, and we looked up the path, which had become shrouded in fog.

John pulled the straps of his pack over his shoulders. "Well, I guess we should get going."

I looked behind us once again, hoping to see Reine and the others, but the mist swirled too thickly for me to see more than a few feet beyond the stream, which burbled merrily again.