Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,161

lying.”

His eyebrow arched a little higher, but then his face turned serious. “I truly am sorry, Gemma. I hope that you can forgive me someday. I bungled everything so very badly.”

Yes, he had bungled things, and I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him—or especially myself for being such a blind, stupid fool. So I changed the subject. “There is one more thing I want to know.”

“What?”

“Why did your mother call me the gargoyle queen? What did she mean by that?”

Leonidas’s brow furrowed in thought. “Obviously, the Ripleys are known for their connection to the gargoyles, but I think she meant something else by it. Something more. I don’t know what, though.” He paused. “But you seem to have made her . . . happy.”

I threw my arms out wide. “I killed her guards and drove back her son. Why would any of that make Maeven happy?”

“I don’t know, but she’s already scheming something else. She’s been in her personal library all week, studying old books about courtly etiquette. Part of me doesn’t want to know what she’s plotting.”

Part of me didn’t want to know either. Whatever it was, Maeven’s new scheme would most likely be sly, complicated, and put me in mortal danger again.

Leonidas stepped closer to the mirror. “I have something for you.”

He held his hand up to the glass. A silver chain was wrapped around his fingers, with a bejeweled disk dangling off the end—my gargoyle pendant.

My breath caught in my throat. I’d found my dagger in the debris, but I hadn’t seen the pendant since Milo had torn it off my neck and tossed it aside during the plaza fight. “How did you get that?”

“The night of the fight, we camped on the Mortan side of the mountain. I snuck back over to the plaza and used my magic to fish it out of the rubble.”

I frowned. “Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s yours,” Leonidas replied. “Milo already took so much from you. I didn’t want him to have this too. Here. I’ll send it through the mirror to you.”

I froze as the mirror started rippling, and Leonidas’s hand stretched through the glass and out into my room. My gaze dropped to the pendant. He was right. It was mine, and I wanted it back. So I stepped forward and wrapped my fingers around the snarling gargoyle face.

He let me pull it and the chain out of his hand, but when I started to step back, he reached out and curled his fingers into mine. I froze again, both enjoying and hating the heat of his skin against my own.

Leonidas stroked his thumb across the scar on the top of my hand, bringing more and more heat to my body. For a mad, mad moment, I thought that he might step all the way through the mirror and come to me, here in Andvari, into my bedroom. That he would keep his promise and show me how real this attraction between us was. Part of me ached for him to do that and more—so much more.

But the other part of me remembered his betrayal. I would not be a fool again. So I iced over my heart and yanked my hand out of his.

Disappointment flickered across his face, but he didn’t reach for me again. Instead, he drew his own hand back through the mirror, so that he was standing on the other side again.

Leonidas dropped into a low, formal bow. Then he straightened, his gaze burning into mine. “Until we meet again, Gemma.”

He waved his hand, and that bright silver light flared once more. A moment later, he was gone, and the mirror was cold and still again.

I let out a breath and raised the necklace up to the light. Leonidas had cleaned the dirt and grime off the pendant and had fixed the broken chain. I rubbed my thumb over Grimley’s snarling face, then went over to my writing desk, placed the gargoyle pendant on the corner of the wood, and sat down.

Several books were piled on the desk, along with papers, maps, and more from the Ripley royal library. Ever since I had returned to Glitnir, I had been trying to find out everything I could about tearstone, its magical properties, and how it could be used as a weapon. I might have sent Milo running back to Morta, but he was far from defeated.

Maeven was right. We were all playing capture-the-crown, although the stakes were much, much higher than in any child’s