Page 34 of Jinx

I waved her off with a wink. “Some true crime memoir. Too gruesome for your delicate ears.” It was a lie. The book was Tibetan wisdom on addiction recovery. It was still sitting dog-eared on my nightstand.

She opened her mouth to promptly call me on my bullshit when there was a crash in the background. “Orion!” she shouted, face morphing into a scowl as she shot to her feet and dropped her phone on the couch. There were footsteps, and then her voice was further away. “Bad! Get down, you naughty cat!”

There was a thump and a scamper of little claws before the camera shifted and I was looking at Cordie’s face again. She did not look happy.

“Orion knocked a plant off the counter,” she sighed. “The pot broke, and there’s dirt everywhere. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” My brow furrowed as a deep sadness ghosted across her eyes. “Hey, do you want me to come over?”

Her laughter was forced now, the sound grating on my ears. Even Bellamy winced. “To help sweep up dirt? No, it’s fine. Just…” Her words trailed off, gaze lowering.

“What?” I watched her with bated breath, both dreading and craving the possibility that she’d change her mind and invite me over.

She opened her mouth and shut it. Pulled her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Then, finally, she met my eyes again. “How’s Bel?”

I exhaled a sigh and flicked a glance at Bellamy as he stiffened. This needed to end, for all our sakes.

“He’s hurting,” I told her. “He misses you. He needs you.”

She flinched like the words had barbs. “Yeah.” She rubbed at the spot on her chest over her heart. “Me too.”

Bellamy coiled like he was preparing to lunge for the phone, and I raised a warning hand to him. “Are you sure you don’t want to try talking to him? Maybe there’s a solution that doesn’t involve torturing yourself.”

“I…” She caught her lip with her teeth again when it started to tremble. Then it was like she put a mask on. She shook herself with a hard exhale. “I have to go clean up this mess. Goodnight, Luce.”

She didn’t leave me any room to argue. “Night,” I echoed and forced myself to hit the red button to end the call. I dropped my phone and tilted my head back against the bed from where I was sitting on the floor beside it. There was a long stretch of silence, but I already knew what Bellamy was gearing up to say.

“We have to tell her.” He shoved his hand through his hair, tugging at it like he did when he was anxious. “We have to explain.”

“You say one word about it, and Rami will fucking skin your ass and leave you for the crows. We have to wait for Ric.”

It wasn’t like we had a strict hierarchy like some of the other drifts. We were a family, and we made decisions together. But Ric and Rami were the first, our foundation. When Bel and Quinn joined them, everyone thought the drift was complete. Four gryphons waiting for their Heart.

There were sidelong looks at Quinn, harsh rumors about his injury making his place in the drift illegitimate, but when I showed up, the focus shifted. A fifth gryphon was rare. A hybrid gryphon?

Unheard of.

Our drift defied what was considered typical in every way. That made certain members of the Conclave edgy, Alaric’s father chief among them. That bastard had tried over and over again to tear us apart, and Ric had been there to stop him every time. We all knew that Ric made sacrifices to protect us, even though he wouldn’t talk about it. That’s why he had our respect and loyalty. That’s why we were going to wait to tell Cordie anything until he was back.

“It’s been a week.” Bel wasn’t trying to argue. He was worried. We all were. No one had heard from Ric since he left to answer the sudden summons he got. We knew he was alive, but something was very wrong. Rami had tried reaching out to Alpha Hassan, but he’d had no knowledge of an official request from the Conclave being sent.

I wasn’t the first person anyone went to for comfort, but Bellamy was on a ledge. “It’ll be fine,” I told him, trying to believe my own words. “‘Trust Fate’. Isn’t that the gryphon motto?”

He huffed an unconvincing laugh. “‘Fate and Unity’.”

“Come on.” I got to my feet and offered a hand to pull him to his. “You need a distraction. I’ll let you make me a sandwich.”

“Fuck off.” His laugh was a little more believable this time. I held onto the sound because he wasn’t the only one who needed something else to think about. I could feel the shadows gathering around us like a sixth sense. Something dark was haunting me in the periphery of my mind, and if I focused on it too hard, it would swallow me whole.

23

CORDELIA

Something tugged me out of my dreamless sleep with an almost desperate yank, and when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in my bedroom. I wasn’t even in my normal dreamscape, though I could tell it was one. My vision was hazy at the edges, but everything was wrong. It was dark. Oppressive. The floor beneath my bare feet was cold and hard, nothing like the soft grass of my special meadow.

“Prince?” I called into the strange array of shadows. He had to be here. He was the only thing I ever dreamed about, just never like this. Never in a nightmare. I continued toward where a hunched shadow stood out a little darker than the gray mist surrounding it. “Prince?”

The shadow shifted. “Pixie?” His voice was broken, almost panicked. It became a little clearer that he was sitting in a chair, and he lifted his head at my approach before hissing a curse.