Page 26 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

I don't look up. I don't trust myself too. If I look at him now—at the gold beginning to simmer at the edges of his irises, at those enormous shoulders drawn tight with something he can't name—I will either break or I will fall back into him. Both options terrify me equally.

Because Flora is right. Because that's the trap. Because there is no version of loving him that doesn't make me a loaded weapon aimed directly at every person I have ever cared for.

He doesn't leave.

He stands on the opposite side of the chamber with his wings drawn in and his claws curled against the stone and that sound rolling continuously through his chest like a fault line waiting.

The silence between us is so heavy I can feel it pressing against my ribs.

14

TOVIAN

The great cavern smells like sulfur, cold granite, and the sharp, acrid bite of competitive pheromones leaking from every Alpha in the chamber — territorial chemistry that my body reads the same way it reads a drawn blade. A provocation. An invitation to establish hierarchy the only way gargoyle instinct truly understands.

Through blood.

I stand at the head of the vast cavern, between the twin stone pillars that once marked the threshold of Ashwing sovereignty, and I count seven rival faction leaders spread across the chamber floor below me. Seven sets of eyes. Seven different flavors of contempt. The murals on the walls watch all of us with the same ancient, impassive silence they have held for centuries.

I keep my face carved in stone.

"The Ashwing fortress." The one who speaks is Dravik of the Hollowed Crag — a squat, barrel-chested Alpha with smoke-gray wings and a mouth that has never learned the shape of caution. He turns a slow, theatrical circle and spreads his arms wide. "I expected rubble. I find rubble with pretension."

Several of his companions find this amusing. Their laughter bounces off the high vaulted ceiling and falls back down around us like broken glass.

My talons find the floor. Granite cracks beneath my grip. Deep beneath my skin, my earth magic surges. It doesn't ask permission. It simply rises, volcanic and furious, pressing hard into the inside of my bones like it intends to split me open from within.

Kill him. The instinct is primitive and absolute. Tear out his throat and let the others watch. Remind them what Ashwing means.

I breathe through it.

"The fortress has endured centuries." I speak in a flat, controlled tone. The kind that makes larger rooms smaller. "The same can’t be said for every clan that mocked it."

Dravik's amusement cools slightly. He doesn't sit down.

The second insult comes from Mael, a female Alpha from the northern ridge territories — silver-winged, elegant in the way that conceals malice well. She doesn't bother with the fortress. She goes straight for the throat.

"There are rumors," she says, examining one long talon with deliberate disinterest, "that the Ashwing Alpha keeps a human female. Not as a subject. Not as livestock." She pauses. "As a mate."

The chamber goes very still.

There it is.

"The First Blood Bond is not a rumor," I say.

"No." Mael's golden eyes finally lift to mine. "It is weakness wearing an ancient name. A biological malfunction that your bloodline apparently could not resist. How reassuring, for the rest of us."

"I keep the human," I say, "because I choose to. That distinction appears to confuse you." I let my gaze move acrossevery face in the chamber, slow and deliberate, the way a predator maps an unfamiliar hunting ground.

"I did not invite you here to discuss my private affairs. I invited you here because Tharros of the Cragborn is gathering numbers and every faction he absorbs becomes a problem you will share whether you acknowledge it now or not."

"You may sneer at my fortress. You may question my choices. But you will not leave this mountain without understanding that the alternative to my alliance is Tharros at your borders."

The hush that follows is a different quality than the one before, enough for the smile to drop Dravik’s face.

They retreatbefore the second bell — no formal agreements, but no formal refusals either. The faction leaders disperse into the tunnel mouths with the particular stiffness of creatures who came expecting to feel superior and left feeling watched instead.

I remain in the vast hollow of the great cavern long after their scent fades from the air.