Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,45
regardless of who was delivering the message?
Perhaps, knowing my kind, that was a foolish question. Of course it was.
I ignored the sting of the word “betray” and focused on the now. “The existence of all life in both realms may be at stake. This isn’t a matter of my own wants but of the greater good.”
“So you say,” the man remarked. “We have no one’s word for it but yours and this one you’ve already deluded.”
Frustration prickled up from beneath the guilt. “If you’ll come with me, you can speak to others who can assure you the impending disaster is far too real. It would merely—”
“No,” the woman interrupted. “You will not appear out of nowhere and demand an even greater sacrifice from us, you who sacrificed so little. If you truly wish to atone for the offenses of centuries ago, you will honor those fallen, including Haze, now.”
Some part of me wrenched at the thought that there might be something I could do for those who’d met their deaths in my stead, as difficult as I found it to imagine what that might be. “How would you have me honor them?” I asked.
“We had a box…” She looked down at her hands. “Of mortal make, but as fine as anything you ever saw. It held what fragments we could gather of those who fell completely, including my greatest brother at arms. But a pack of griffins sensed the power lingering in those remains and flew off with it. In our deficient state, we haven’t the power to challenge them and win it back.”
A pack of griffins. The creatures with their mix of eagle and lion features could be formidable foes, but no match for an uninjured wingéd unless in immense numbers. “I could see to that. Where has this pack absconded to?”
“We know not,” the man replied. “It was some years ago, and we weren’t able to continue pursuing them. They are territorial creatures, though. No doubt they are still somewhere in this region.”
By region he might have meant all of Italy or even the Mediterranean. “Years ago,” I repeated, my heart sinking.
The woman let out a sharp huff. “Far less time than you’ve spent skulking around offering nothing in recompense. Are you only willing to lend your strength when it’s easy?”
The words gnawed at me even though I knew they weren’t true. But—what had I offered to make up for the losses my brethren had suffered in my absence?
“The matter we are currently engaged with is urgent,” I said, groping for a middle-ground. “If you would see that through with us, as soon as we are sure of the security of the realms, I would gladly—”
“Ha!” the woman said again. “I see how it is. No, you go back to your playing at honor while we remember how the world truly is. Do you think our own matters have no urgency? The griffins tear at the remains and devour them scrap by scrap… I can feel even from a distance Haze’s last fragments of energy fading away…”
Her face twisted with such agony that my stomach twisted alongside it. How long could it take to track down a roving gaggle of griffins for the sake of my old comrades? To show I hadn’t abandoned all concern for them as I’d abandoned our battle?
But what might happen to Sorsha and the others if I left their sides for long enough to see to address this issue?
Flint was watching me with obvious uncertainty. I took in the ruin of my brethren’s bodies again—the ruin I’d been able to escape by shirking my duty, regardless of the purity of my motives—and an oath tumbled out before I could rethink it.
“I swear I will help you in the best way I can, as I owe and have always owed those who fought and fell.”
13
Sorsha
Omen had been right about one thing: Tempest cared about him enough to agree to another meeting. It’d have been nice if she hadn’t insisted on holding that meeting a three-hour drive away, but hey, why shouldn’t we get in some more sightseeing now that we’d come this far from home?
We parked the Everymobile and our restless companions a couple of miles from the site she’d chosen, because Omen had promised he’d “deliver” me to her on his own, and the sphinx would sense any other shadowkind who ventured nearby. As we got out, the hellhound shifter caught Thorn’s eye and pointed toward the night sky.