I look at the craggy, broken rocks of his exterior.
At the stone rubbed smooth beneath the iron shackles.
At the top of his head and the one broken remnant of a horn that rests there, and I realize what I should have known all along.
The reason Macy’s magic didn’t work on him.
The reason Jaxon’s telekinesis didn’t, either.
The reason Eden’s lightning and Flint’s ice didn’t so much as faze him isn’t because he’s all-powerful. It’s because, like me, he’s totally immune to magic.
Because he’s a gargoyle.
Not unkillable at all. Just a gargoyle—the last in existence besides me—chained up for a thousand years, if the lore is to be believed.
As I stare at him, this poor gargoyle, this poor, giant monster of a man—I put a hand to my own head, to the horns that have grown larger every time I’ve gained power, and look at him with new eyes. How many battles must he have survived, how many opponents must he have defeated to have grown as large as he is now?
The answer is unfathomable.
And we’ve only added to his agony.
Oh my God. What have we done?
What have we done?
I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I don’t know if I’m saying it to him or to Xavier or to Hudson or to all three. I just know that it’s my own hardheadedness that has brought us here, my flat-out refusal to listen to Hudson even when he begged me to, that led us to this exact moment in time. My inability to see anything in terms beyond black or white, good or bad. Savior or monster.
And now a moment I can’t change or take back, no matter how much I wish I could, stretches before me.
Behind me, Macy screams in agony, and I know what I’m going to find even before I look. Still, I turn around—keeping one arm extended to the beast to show that I mean him no more harm—just as she sinks to her knees, sobbing, beside Xavier.
I watch as she gathers him up in her arms and rocks him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“No!” Flint yells as he tries to limp over to where we are. “No! No, don’t tell me that, please don’t tell me that. No!”
Eden’s back in human form, tears streaming down her face and Jaxon…Jaxon looks broken in a way I’ve never seen before.
Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry, the voice inside me says. Wolves are bad. I must protect her. I must save her.
I don’t know who he’s referring to and right now, I don’t think it matters. All that matters is that Xavier is dead. He’s dead and this poor, broken soul killed him, not because he wanted to but because I wouldn’t listen. Because I refused to see.
The horror and the grief turn my knees to nothing—just like the rest of me—and my legs go out from under me.
I hit the ground hard, my shin scraping against a slab of rock that fell from the walls, but I barely notice. How can I when Xavier is right here, his sightless eyes staring into the distance?
He was alive. Two minutes ago, he was alive, and now he’s not. Now he’s gone, and I could have stopped it all if I had just listened to what Hudson had tried so desperately to tell me.
This is my fault. This is all my fault.
Eden drops to her knees behind Macy, wraps her arms around my cousin, and holds her while she sobs. I should be doing that, should be doing something, anything to fix this mess that I’ve created. But I can’t move. I can’t think.
I can’t even breathe.
“You have to finish it,” Hudson tells me. “You have to get everyone home. You have to let Xavier go and save the people you can save.”
“I don’t even know how to get home,” I whisper, and it’s true. Neither Flint nor Eden is in any shape to fly us back to Katmere.
And the Trial is in less than four hours. I have to be there, or we will all suffer more than we already have. The king and queen are just the type to punish all my friends—and Jaxon—for my perceived indiscretions.
Ironic, really, considering the many mistakes I’ve made here tonight, and they’re going to punish me for missing a mere game to see if I’m worthy. For being a gargoyle. For dating their son.
The hits just keep on coming.
“I’m sorry, Macy,” I choke out as I crawl to my cousin, hug her, and press a kiss to the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Hudson as I climb slowly to my feet.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I tell this ancient gargoyle as I cross the distance between us and put my hand on his giant foot.
He roars at first, tries to pull away, but he doesn’t try to hurt me again. He doesn’t do anything but watch me out of those centuries-old eyes and wait to see what I’m going to do next.
Who did this to you? I ask, running a hand over the shackle on his ankle. Who locked you up like this and made you into the Unkillable Beast?
He screeches a little at the name, and I don’t blame him. For centuries upon centuries, he’s been in this crater, hunted by all kinds of magical creatures trying to steal some precious object he only wants to protect.
The horror of it, the unmitigated depravity it takes to do something like this… I can’t even imagine.
I have to save her, he tells me. I can’t die. I have to save her. I have to free her.
Who? I ask. Who do you have to save? Maybe we can help.
I don’t know why he would believe me, considering my friends and I just tried to kill him, but I have to try. I owe him that much. The world that did this to him and perpetuated it for a millennia owes him so much more.
I look behind me at my friends, all of whom look like they’ve been to hell and back. All of whom are shell-shocked and bleeding and as devastated as I feel. I owe them, too.
At first the beast—no, the gargoyle—doesn’t respond to my offer. Not that I blame him—I wouldn’t, either. But then slowly, so slowly that I’m not sure I’m not imagining the whole thing, he lifts his wrist up and looks at the shackles.
Oh, of course. Of course we’ll let you go.
I turn to my friends—my broken, bloody, devastated friends—and though it kills me, I have to ask them for one more thing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I need your help.”
Flint looks from me to the gargoyle, and I can see what he’s thinking. Why should he help the monster who just murdered his friend?
“Because it’s not his fault,” I whisper before he can even formulate the question. “We came and attacked him. We tried to hurt him like so many of the people who have come before us. None of this is his fault. And because he’s a gargoyle like me.”