Carnelian. I’d always secretly believed Oliver had the most beautiful wings of any gargoyle. I must have tried to give myself a similar pair. I heard the question in Marcus’s voice, too, but I wasn’t ready to try to explain the baetyl’s power and the way it’d warped my thoughts.
The silence prodded my self-awareness, making me conscious of my prone position, of wearing little more than flimsy bandages and a strip of cloth across my breasts, of Marcus kneeling over me, close enough for me to count his lashes. I felt small and alone, unfamiliar with my own identity after sharing the baetyl’s ancient presence, and even my body, covered in ointment and bandages and new, alien scars, was a stranger’s.
I breathed through the vulnerability, focusing on Marcus’s face to ground myself. He looked good, his skin golden in the firelight and his eyes alert. I wasn’t surprised he’d recovered first—grateful and relieved, but not surprised.
“How are you?” I asked, hoping he didn’t hear the quaver in my voice.
“Alive, thanks to you pulling me out of the baetyl.” He finally met my gaze, letting me see his chagrin.
“It was the least I could do after almost killing you.”
He grunted. “You’ve apologized enough for that already.”
I flushed. How much did he remember of my frantic babbling when I’d been carrying him out?
“What happened in there?” he asked. “The gargoyles swarmed, and then . . .”
“You were stuck in your worst nightmare?”
He nodded. “When it ended, you were gone.”
“The gargoyles weren’t real. They were a warped version of the baetyl’s last attempt to protect itself from our invasion. I escaped the nightmares by using quartz element.” Talking grounded me, and my lingering sense of loneliness faded as I explained the fissures that had opened in the nightmare when I’d wielded quartz-tuned earth.
“Such a simple solution. I tried . . . a lot of other things.”
“I tried to wake you,” I said, seeing his haunted expression.
He shook his head. “You did the right thing. You stuck to the mission. Tell me how you ended up in control of all the baetyl’s power.”
“I healed the heart.”
I did my best to articulate my experience, but I don’t think I was successful. Describing the kinship I’d felt with the baetyl proved impossible. It’d been so natural and right at the time, but like the patterns it had shown me, the memory had faded. I settled for comparing it to being linked to an enormous gargoyle, and that seemed to satisfy Marcus.
I didn’t tell him about briefly possessing the pattern of life itself. Just thinking about it, knowing I’d lost the most precious knowledge in the world, made my breath hitch with yearning, and I wouldn’t be able to talk about it without crying or sounding like an idiot. Or both. I didn’t have to explain the power of the baetyl to Marcus. He’d felt it through his link with me, just as he’d been in the link when I’d repaired the enormous cave-ins and collapsed all the old mine tunnels.
“It was addictive,” I said. Unconsciously, I reached for my connection with the baetyl, finding only a hollow ache. Staring up at the stars, eyes unfocused, I relived the awe of holding all that power.
“Thank you,” I whispered, unable to meet Marcus’s eyes. “For not letting me kill myself. I would still be in there if you hadn’t linked with me. You saved me from myself, just as you promised.”
“Mika . . .”
I dropped my gaze to meet his. “Everything you said earlier was right. I haven’t been thinking about the risks or the danger. I’ve been trying to do what’s right, and saving gargoyle lives is right.”
The beginnings of a scowl clouded Marcus’s expression, emphasized by the flickering shadows. I almost smiled to see it, and I hurried to continue before he thought I wanted to resume our previous argument.
“But killing myself to do so isn’t in the gargoyles’ best interest. It’s not the way to protect them. You’re right; they deserve more than a martyr. They deserve a guardian who does everything possible for every gargoyle, the ones in front of me and the ones I can help in the future.”
He blasted me with The Smile. My heart flipped and I closed my eyes. I understood his point of view, and even agreed with it, but that didn’t mean it made me happy. I wanted to save every gargoyle. Letting a gargoyle die to save myself would be dreadful, and I prayed I’d never have to face that decision.
“I’m thankful you’re exactly the type of person you are,” Marcus said.
My eyes snapped open in surprise. He gave me a shrug.
“Not many people would have turned their back on the baetyl’s power.”
“It would have destroyed me if I hadn’t.” I would have killed him, too.
“But it didn’t. You did what you came here to do. You healed a baetyl.”
I smiled, and the triumph chased away my troubled thoughts. “Now we just have to get the gargoyles into it, and we’ll be set.”
I remembered setting the final barrier, sealing off the baetyl, and my good mood died as fast as it’d risen.
I struggled to sit up and Marcus tried to assist me without touching a bandage, which meant he was limited to guiding me up with a hand on a tiny patch of skin between my shoulder blades. My butt cheeks protested the extra weight on them, but I was pretty sure they were only bruised. Blinking, I stared at my legs. Marcus had cut away my pants, leaving me with barely enough denim to cover my hips for modesty. So many bandages crisscrossed down my legs that I resembled a freshly wrapped mummy. My boots, still on my feet, completed the ridiculous ensemble.
“How long have I been out?” I demanded. How much blood had I lost?
“Awhile. We can probably remove most of those,” he said, indicating the strips of lamb’s ear leaves on my legs. “Your pants did a decent job of protecting you. Better than your shirt. I still need to get these nicks on your face.”
I batted his hand aside. “Have you tended your own injuries?”
“The worst of them.”