House of Cards by C.E. Murphy

Author:C.E. Murphy [Murphy, C.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0373802633
Published: 2009-04-04T23:00:00+00:00

NINTEEN

AN UNACCUSTOMED PULSE of tension throbbed through Alban’s temple. It took a moment before he trusted himself to move; a moment of examining unfamiliar irritation welling within himself. Two centuries of solitude had not prepared him to rejoin the world. Memory seemed briefly faulty, unable to tell him whether small daily annoyances had once pricked his temper as easily as they did now. He thought not; it went against everything he imagined himself to be.

Biali’s shattered visage shot through his mind’s eye, a painful reminder that at least once, he’d been moved to violence. More than once, he recalled, as Ausra’s delicate amber features replaced Biali’s rougher face in Alban’s memory. What he was, and what he thought he was, lay further apart than he could have once imagined.

When he did move, it was to step back from Margrit, letting his hands fall from her shoulders. Denied hope slid across her face and she glanced away, making frustration leap anew in Alban’s chest. The space between them was hardly an insurmountable obstacle for a creature born to flight, and yet he’d insisted on furthering it. He was abruptly uncertain whether it was Margrit he’d tried to protect by doing so, or himself. His hand made a fist of its own accord and he turned toward Janx with a scowl.

“Temper, temper, Stoneheart.” Janx clucked his tongue, eyes merry with scolding. Beneath the veneer of good humor, though, lay a note of strain that almost no one would recognize. Daisani would see it, and Alban, and perhaps a handful of others not in this city. A surprising flash of sympathy scored Alban’s heart. He, too, was learning what it was to lose control, and liked it no better than Janx did.

The dragonlord shook his head, mocking solemnity in the motion. “You were always so steady, old friend. Time’s left a deeper mark than you’d like to think.”

“On all of us,” he growled. Janx would be no more pleased with a show of compassion than Alban would be offering it. He had always thought of Janx and Daisani as alike, and himself the outside third to their complicated friendship. In many ways it was true—the dragon and vampire’s relationship stretched back centuries before Alban’s birth. But for the first time in decades he recalled—let himself recall—that they had once, the three of them, shared a friendship that had set him on a path none of his brethren had ever taken. He most often let himself remember that with a kind of blame assigned to the others, but in truth, no one forced a gargoyle to a road he didn’t want to walk. Time had left its marks, indeed.

Alban wrenched his thoughts away from the past, bringing his attention back to the too-tense dragonlord. “Would you have me chasing Malik across half the city like a frantic parent watching a fledgling spread its wings?”

Janx pursed his lips, eyes wide as he considered the question, then spread his hands and smiled beatifically. “Yes.”

Another growl erupted deep in Alban’s throat, precursor to argument.

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