2
What Lavinia didn’t understand was,Surah had given up on the research long ago. Dumped it in the lap of her lab assistant and walked away. She put on a good face whenever Malin came by for an injection and refill of his pills–but Surah could no longer bear to do the research herself. She felt like a failure; and now she felt like a coward. It seemed as if her assistant was about to save themall.
Surah swirled the wine in her glass as she sprawled on a plush, leather couch big enough for three. She still refused to buy a car, preferring to utilize Seattle’s public airtran and avoid the hefty fines for traveling solo in ground transportation, so the trip to the Palace had lasted long enough for her to zone out to her newest audiobook download. The walk up the base of the steep hill–because no airtran was cleared to land within a quarter mile of gargoyle territory–served to ensure she was awake by the time she reached the stonygates.
Geza’s great-grandfather had usurped entire human neighborhood blocks decades ago, tearing out housing and leaving only the native trees, replacing them with the three cloud-piercing towers connected on the ground floor to create a stone complex worthy of any gargoyle ruler. A small, private market and large kitchen garden, as well as fields for training on foot, and a park for royal relatives were laid out over the years. The Palace was, in reality, a small city within a larger one. Gargoyles rarely had to leave the complex if they made it theirhome.
The structures made the humans uneasy, but over time, they’d realized gargoyles had no interest in wingless culture–and everyone left everyone else alone. For the mostpart.
No one tried to sit next to her once she arrived. She might be a half-human runt, but she was still half-sister to the Prince, and that meant something. A little something, anyway. So she was given space to sit alone if she sochose.
Geza held court in the epicenter of a hub of carnal activity, with the bored cynicism of someone who’d seen it all before. Male, female, human, gargoyle, and any combination thereof found succor in the Prince’s welcoming arms. Women offered to her brother, in exchange for some possible favor, draped themselves around Geza in an effort to gain more permanent attention than a night’splay.
A cool evening breeze, scented with rain, caressed the back of her neck. Geza’s suite was the highest in the tower, the ceiling of domed glass showing a moon hiding behind thick grey clouds. Dozens of flameless candles of various sizes were scattered about the open-air room, and gargoyles lounged on the railingless balcony, nearly blending in with the black marble. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but she stayed away from the edge. Drunk creatures who could fly–many of whom held several childhood grudges against her–might be inclined to push her off for a giggle, and claim intoxication in the morning, while everyone stared sadly at her brokenbody.
She ignored the phantom itch in her wingless back and rose to peruse the offerings on the buffet table hovering in the center of the room, saw nothing but bloody meat and sugar and tapped a few buttons on the digital menu to send a request to the kitchen for actual food. Something green, with nutrients, and a healthy carb. Returning to her couch, a warrior stepped into her path. Not completely–Surah’s temper was as uncertain as Geza’s and she wasn’t beneath doing her damnedest to drop someone to thefloor.
“Petru,” she said,stopping.
He was tall–well, they all were–and more serious than most. The seriousness hid a self-indulgent, nastily arrogant attitude she’d seen him use to verbally slice both male and female members of the court who approached him.Hechose his lovers, not the other wayaround.
“I’ve asked Geza for you,” hesaid.
She appreciated his bluntness, though she often wondered if blunt speech was indicated a lack of complex thinking skills. “Why would you dothat?”
He stared at her, brows drawing down. She supposed he was handsome, a striking face and well-toned body. Shorter hair than she liked, and more of a dark ash-brown than the typical gargoyle black. It was probably because there was human in his veins somewhere, though he’d deny it.Vehemently.
Petru was very sensitive about his hair color. So why he’d want her made no sense–she’d just foul his bloodline with humangenes.
“You’re the only living Ioveanuprincess.”
“What? I’m not Ioveanu. Why do people keep forgettingthat?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Not by birth–but by adoption is good enough. Your status will not shame myfamily.”
“Well, yippee for me. But I’m not in the market, brah. And I don’t like youanyway.”
His stoic expression didn’t change. “You’ll learn to like me–and you must obey Geza. He is happy a warrior of good family has offered to marry you, rather than just take you as aconcubine.”
She didn’t have the energy to even get mad. Surah sighed, and walked around him. “Right. Happy,happy.”
Her mother had been one of those girls, a concubine, bearing Surah at the tender age of sixteen. Legal in their culture, but what was legal and what was right were two different things. The former Prince, Ciodaru, father of Geza and Malin, had given Adagia to a human dignitary one night, and Surah had been the result. She didn’t know her father–had never seen him and had no interest in doing so. If she ever saw the man, she might just smash his face in. Surprisingly, when her mother fell pregnant, the Prince allowed Adagia to remain in the palace under his protection, and to raise her half-human daughter alongside her full-blooded gargoyle son born to him two years later–who was nowPrince.
Throughout the suite, Geza’s friends and favored warriors cavorted with their picks from the available men and women. Surah refused to deliberate on the nasty quirk of fate that had made Geza Prince instead of his elder half-brother Malin, the son of Ciodaru’s only legal Consort. Refused to dwell on the fact that she’d be better off in her lab, working on the solution to that quirk of fate rather than here, intoxicated and idly watching her brother fuck. Dimly, she realized she was as tainted as he by this court–humans would think them mad, maybe even a little twisted. Surah took another long sip of wine, chest tight. She couldn’t dwell on the feeling. Here, she must always walk a tightrope, and Geza could sense discontent in awatermelon.
“Lady Surah, bring me a bottle,” Prince Geza called, not bothering to push aside the mass of bodies to actually make eyecontact.
“Get it yourself,” Surah said, unmoving. “I’m not your handmaid. You have employed servants forthat.”
“Disrespectful runt,” one of the warriors muttered. “Like to see that mouth out on the trainingyard.”
Surah sniffed. As if. She’d trained with Kausar, as a royal child, growing up. She could defend herself just fine. But these days, she was more interested in work and her collection of rarevintages.
She smoothed a hand over her curves. “Does it look like I’m going out on the training yard anytimesoon?”
A smatter of laughter. Some at her, some with her. A few at court enjoyed her snark, at ease around a pseudo royal, who didn’t take herself seriously and appeared to have no ambition. They were wrong–she had plenty of ambition. It was just all tied up in getting Malin better. If it weren’t for him, who knew what she might have become? Probably something like Lavinia, twisted with frustrated desires, stymied by being female in an unapologetically patriarchalsociety.
Geza laughed. Surah knew her brother was drunk enough to find the defiance amusing rather than insulting. If it were the clear light of day, Surah might have had a fight on herhands.
