Chapter 5

MY FATHER AND I were still staring at each other in shock when people began pouring out of the auditorium. I took one last look at the floor, which wasn’t even marred with a drop of ninja blood as evidence of the battle that had just occurred, before my view of the hallway was obscured by the entire population of New Gargoyles.

Well, not quite the entire population. As Marisol had said, a handful of New Gargoyles had sworn fealty to the Spriggan king, and as subjects of Sebastian, they were no longer members of the Stone Order.

Oliver’s face shifted from confused to grim. He flipped his fingers at me, beckoning me to follow him back into the auditorium. I quickly sheathed Mort before the press of people made it too dangerous to be waving a sword around. My father went ahead of me, and I caught a glimpse of his expression before he turned away. I wasn’t surprised that the crowd parted to allow him to move upstream with me in his wake.

As we made our way toward the dais where Marisol stood with Maxen and two of her advisors, I tried to reason out who had sent the ineffectual assassins. The attacks were odd for so many reasons.

Oliver went up to Marisol and spoke in her ear. Her blue sapphire eyes widened and her mouth flattened into a tight line. When Maxen spotted me waiting just off the dais, he lifted his chin in acknowledgement, stepped off the platform, and strode over.

“We meet again,” he said, with the tiniest arch of one brow and a slow grin.

Ignoring the slightly sultry look in his eyes, which were the exact blue of his mother’s, I leaned in and spoke in a low voice, my words rapid. “Remember those ninja guys at Druid Circle? Oliver and I just killed a dozen of them out in the hallway. Then their bodies disappeared. Poof, there one second and gone the next.”

Maxen opened his mouth but didn’t have a chance to reply.

“Petra. Maxen.” Marisol called to us as if we were still seven years old, errant children giggling in the corner. “I need more details about both incidents with the shrouded attackers. But not until we can speak in private.”

She turned to Raleigh, the head of the Stone Order’s security and the only New Gargoyle larger than my father, and spoke a few words to him. He hurried off, as fast as a man of that size can hurry. Then she curled her hand at me, Oliver, and Maxen, indicating we should follow her.

We left the auditorium through the back with her personal bodyguard, a stocky expert swordsman named Jaquard, in the lead. I’d trained with him for a few years when I was a teenager. My father brought up the rear of our little procession.

We moved quickly through the hallways of the fortress until we reached Marisol’s circular office, a sort of Stone Order equivalent of the Oval Office of the United States president. The floors were inlaid with lines of opal that cut concentric circle designs through the square marble tiles. Linen curtains and wall hangings softened the stucco walls.

Jaquard closed both interior office doors and went to the door that led to a private courtyard to peer outside. Satisfied, he turned to Marisol and gave her a slight nod.

With urgency straining her face, Marisol faced us.

“Did the assassins’ corpses disappear after the attack in Spriggan territory?” she asked Maxen.

He nodded and slid a quick glance at me. “It was after Petra left, and I didn’t get a chance to tell her what happened.”

She turned her intense blue gaze on me. “And you think they were part banshee and part dwarf?”

“Lack of pigment in the skin like banshees, and narrow ears with peaked cartilage like dwarves,” I confirmed. I held my hand out flat about four feet above the floor. “Diminutive size, about this tall.”

I was substantially shorter than the average New Gargoyle, as that Elf bouncer at Druid Circle had so helpfully pointed out, and the shortest person in the room by a solid half foot. I was used to it, though, as I’d grown up around full-blooded New Gargoyles. Once I began training as a fighter when I was a child, I discovered I was ten times stealthier and quicker than any full-blood New Garg could ever dream of. Once I developed strength, too, I was almost unbeatable by my peers. That took care of any self-consciousness I might have had about my height.

Oliver shifted. “Petra’s right. I would have guessed the same. I assume we can rule out King Sebastian?”

Marisol nodded, but frowned at the same time. “It appears so. By Maxen’s account, the assassins were genuinely trying to kill Sebastian.”

It had certainly seemed so. The knife that had stuck in the shoulder of Sebastian’s guard had started sizzling and smoking, killing him almost instantly. And that blade had definitely been intended for the king.

“Then who?” Oliver asked.

“Someone with the power to create and command a large number of servitors,” Marisol said.

I stared at her. Servitors were made of very complicated illusion magic, but I’d always thought they were more like apparitions. Not solid-bodied figures who wielded knives that could kill. “You mean those ninjas weren’t real?”

“They were real, just not quite in the same sense as you and me,” she said. “They were created to serve a single purpose and then disappear. This is where the oddity comes in. In both attacks, no one of great importance was killed, yet the servitors dissolved.”

I wasn’t so sure the dead guards would agree with her assessment, but I tried to focus on the salient point.

“If that’s true, in the attack at Druid Circle their main purpose wasn’t to kill King Sebastian,” Maxen said. “And in the attack here, again they weren’t sent to kill a ruler.”

Marisol let out a tiny breath, not quite a sigh. “I believe the assassination attempt was just a distraction. Whatever their purpose was, they achieved it and then returned to their master. More reports of similar attacks are filtering in from smaller kingdoms.”

She and Oliver exchanged a long look. I could tell by their intent expressions that they were following the same thought train, perhaps something they’d whispered about back on the dais. But by their silence they weren’t in the mood to share.

“Petra, Maxen, I need to speak to Oliver privately for a moment,” Marisol said.

The two of them moved off to the far side of the office, behind her great oak desk. Maxen and I wandered over to the fireplace, which had a small fire lit. Even though it was summer in Faerie, the day was cool.

“What do you think they’re saying?” I asked, eyeing my father as he stood just a bit closer to Marisol than any of her other advisors ever did.

Oliver had sworn his allegiance to Marisol before I was born, and I’d always assumed he’d also shared her bed regularly. He wasn’t Maxen’s father, though. Except for Maxen’s sapphire blue eyes, he was the spitting image of Marisol’s deceased husband. I couldn’t help wondering if Oliver’s relationship with Marisol had preceded even the time he was with my mother. He refused to tell me who my mother was but had implied that their relationship was intermittent. She’d died when I was still a baby, so I had no conscious memory of her.

“She’s most worried about the breach,” Maxen said.

“Oliver was, too. Has anyone ever breached the fortress before?” I was fairly certain it hadn’t happened in my lifetime, or I surely would have known about it. But I wasn’t well-versed in fortress history. Growing up, I’d paid little attention to the lessons that didn’t involve some sort of combat or weapons training.

“No breach since we staked claim to this territory and sealed the doorways,” Maxen said.

Marisol had claimed the prison for our people when she was only eighteen. I did remember that. First, she’d had to acquire it from the State of California, which I imagined took some considerable persuasion, especially considering she had always resided in Faerie. Then, she had to come up with the funds for the very expensive magic that transmuted the interior of the prison into Faerie and formed the outer doorways into the fortress and additional interior doorways. She, like Oliver, was a first-generation New Gargoyle, meaning that both of them had started life as a different race of Fae. At the Cataclysm, the disruption in magic sent out a ripple, causing the spontaneous formation of our race. Magic is strange like that, occasionally causing sudden shifts that defy logical explanation.

Initially it was thought the features of New Gargoyles were a disease, like the VAMP viruses, and that attitude still existed in some circles even though it had long been proven false.

Marisol was sixteen when the Cataclysm hit, and Oliver was twenty-six, just a year younger than my current age. They’d both been born into a minor Seelie kingdom that had since been absorbed by larger kingdoms. Like most first-generation New Gargs, Marisol and Oliver said very little about their lives before the Cataclysm. I suspected my mother might have been a subject of a small Seelie kingdom as well, maybe even the same one as Marisol and my father, but of course Oliver wouldn’t confirm my guess. The only thing I knew about her for sure was that the Cataclysm caused only part of a change in her. She’d been part-New Gargoyle and part mystery Fae when she had me. She’d died in the tumultuous couple of years after the Cataclysm, just before it was determined that New Gargoyles were a legitimate Fae race and not diseased, and Marisol subsequently claimed the fortress.

Marisol and Oliver finished their whispering, and they rejoined me and Maxen.

“If you remember any other details of the attacks, you’ll inform me immediately,” she said to all three of us. “And of course you will report any word of these servitors appearing again.”

With that, she turned and strode over to her desk, dismissing us. One thing I appreciated about Marisol was her tendency to get straight to the point. Many found her too brusque, but I thought it was refreshing.

Jaquard stayed behind while Maxen, Oliver, and I headed to one of the interior doors to make our exit.

“Oh, Petra,” Marisol called.

I cringed internally at her voice as my boots squeaked to a halt on the tiles.

Maxen pulled the door closed behind him, a little smirking smile on his face.

Grudgingly, I turned and went to stand in front of the wide desk, feeling oddly like I was facing a judge even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I settled my weight on one hip, trying not to look as if I couldn’t wait to spring for the door. “Yes, My Lady?”

“The invitation to join the Stone Order’s fighting ranks still stands,” she said. She’d set a postcard-sized piece of stationery in front of her. Without internet, cell phones, or phone lines that stretched between kingdoms, communication in Fae was still fairly archaic, and much of it had to be hand-written and then transported by ravens. She put down the pen and folded her hands on the desk. “Your father would welcome you into the legion, and you’d be a great asset to your people if you served here in the fortress.”

“I’m fine with my position in the Guild,” I said evenly. It was a considerable compliment to be invited to the fighting ranks outright, but flattery wouldn’t draw me in.

She regarded me for a moment. “Once the Stone Order becomes the Stone Court, you won’t have the freedom to work and reside on the other side of the hedge. Your people will need you here. You’d best get used to the idea sooner than later.”

I ground my teeth in annoyance. The implication that I’d be totally under her control and would regret not cooperating with her demands echoed King Sebastian’s threat, and it made me want to pick up something breakable and toss it against the wall.

“I understand that,” I said tightly. I waited to see if she had anything more to say.

Her nostrils flared slightly, but she lowered her lids and waved me away, dismissing me.

“Oh, and Petra,” she called after me. I turned. “Stop parking your damn scooter on the marble.”

I saluted and quickly slipped out. I wasn’t sure how she’d even known Vincenzo was out there in the lobby of the fortress.

I had to hand it to Marisol. Her conviction and confidence when it came to establishing a Stone Court was admirable. Or maybe it was blind stubbornness. Either way, she clearly didn’t put any stock in the assumptions of the rest of Faerie that New Gargoyles would eventually succumb to a larger kingdom.

I wasted no time leaving her office, and I found Oliver waiting for me in the hallway.

“I didn’t get a chance to finish before,” he said.

I blinked up at him, at first unsure what he meant. “Oh yeah, the changeling you were telling me about. The one King Periclase took.”

He glanced at the closed door and flicked his eyes down the hall, signaling that we should walk. He wanted to get away from Marisol’s office, and that meant he had something to tell me that she didn’t know.

I walked beside him down the hallway, expecting him to pause and fill me in on this secret changeling. But he continued through the administrative wing, and we crossed over into the residential quarters. As we moved through the fortress, people skirted glances at us, some of them wary but most of them respectful. Oliver was Marisol’s champion and her first sworn follower. But aside from all that, he was pure badass from head to toe. He looked like an ancient warrior, with almost impossibly broad shoulders, cropped hair with horizontal stripes shaved into the sides, and searing intensity that never dropped from his aventurine-green eyes.

We finally reached his apartment, and the door opened automatically under his touch, having been charmed to recognize him. His quarters were sparse, not unlike my own apartment. He didn’t ask me to sit down or offer me anything.

I crossed my arms, waiting for him to do a sweep of the place. This check wasn’t just about the ninja breach. He did it every time he came home. Oliver wasn’t a trusting man.

After he finished, he rejoined me in the tiny living room that was furnished with only an easy chair, ottoman, side table, and floor lamp. Not only did he tend to not trust others, he also wasn’t interested in playing host.

He pulled out his phone and held it so I could see the screen. On it was a photo of an attractive, smiling girl with blond hair pulled up into a sleek bun. It was a tight shot, one that had probably included other people but had been cropped down to her face. In it, I could clearly see the tawny yellow-flecked brown eyes that were strangely similar to mine.

He was watching my face. “The changeling’s name is Nicole. She’s your sister.”