Rise of the Gryphon (38 page)

Naked.

A bulge started developing under Boomer’s lower feathers.

Evalle snapped at Kizira. “Clothes!”

Gray sweatpants and a matching jersey top covered Evalle in the next instant. Her face felt just as naked
without sunglasses, but she hadn’t really needed them since shifting into a gryphon.

Did that mean she could go out in daylight?

And watch a sunrise or a sunset?

Yearning to do that with Storm hit her hard. She clutched her stomach and forced her mind back on track.

With a look up at Boomer, who still sported a rod under those feathers, she warned, “Don’t give me a reason to test my new strength.”

Kizira rounded on Evalle and Boomer. “Listen up, you two. None of the gryphons are to be killed more than one time. Break that rule and you’ll face Flaevynn. Trust me, you don’t want to annoy the queen.”

Boomer spread his wings and made a half bow in reply.

Kizira ordered him, “Go train until I come for you.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand and Boomer disappeared. Then she told Evalle, “Coach Bernie later. Tristan’s waiting to brief you.”

“On what?” The room around Evalle disappeared and another location took shape. This one had wood paneling, a thick Persian rug and a polished wood desk with a sleek office chair that Tristan sat in.

He stood up. “Looks like you survived the hardest test.”

“I don’t want to go through that again anytime soon.” She hadn’t decided how she felt about being a gryphon, other than enjoying a more attractive beast form than she had as only an Alterant. “Have you died more than once?”

“No. The Medb are adamant about one time per gryphon.”

“Why?”

“They have future plans for us and don’t want to use up our other two get-out-of-death-free cards right now.” He walked around the end of the desk and leaned back against the front.

Evalle took one of the two cushioned chairs facing him. “You’re supposed to be briefing me. What about?”

“Attacking Treoir.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Yes, you will. You haven’t been compelled yet. Once you are, you’ll cut off your own arm if they tell you to.”

Evalle scoffed at him. “You would kill your sister if they told you?”

“I did. That’s how she went through her first power change.”

That shocked Evalle. “Did you know you were fighting Petrina, or did they trick you like they tricked you into believing I’d killed her?”

His eyes hooded with shame. “Yes, I knew I was attacking Petrina. That was the point. To let me know just how much power they have over me.”

Her heart broke for Tristan. He’d gone through battles and horrors to protect Petrina. “I will fight them if they compel me.”

“I know you want to, but fighting isn’t the way around the compulsion.”

Evalle glanced at the walls and ceiling, then back at Tristan. “Aren’t you worried about them hearing you?”

“I figured out the strange ward Kizira placed around this space. The walls actually glow when anyone approaches or if Flaevynn tries to watch us through her scrying wall. Once Kizira bonded me to her, I could see the same changes in the room that she saw when someone wanted to eavesdrop or visit. She allows me to visit with my sister here even though we’re supposed to be kept apart.”

“What a considerate hostess.”

“In spite of all that I’ve been through with Kizira, I’ve come to realize since being here that she’s Flaevynn’s puppet, just like I’m now Kizira’s.”

“There has to be a way to get you out of here.”

“No, I’m screwed. I won’t be allowed to travel with you to Treoir, but I’m trying to convince Kizira to send Petrina with the rest of you. If she does, I’m hoping you pull one of those maniacal stunts out of your ass and save her.”

Not flattering, but a compliment coming from him. Evalle would not attack Treoir or leave Tristan here. “What’s the attack plan?”

“I can’t tell you that.” He opened his hands in apology. “Part of the compulsion spell.”

“Then what are you supposed to be telling me?”

“How the attack is going to function. First, the gryphons will follow the one person who is the strongest.”

Evalle interjected, “Like the alpha in a wolf pack.”

“Right. Kizira is that person as she’s the one who holds power over the bond. Five of you will have specific
targets, since you’re more powerful than the other gryphons.”

Reaching up to her head, Evalle stopped before stroking over her hair as if she still had feathers. “The golden heads? I saw four others.” She looked at Tristan, recalling that his wasn’t, which he must have read in her gaze.

“Nope. I’m not one of the”—he lifted his fingers to make air quotes—“chosen five.”

“You can teleport. Why wouldn’t they want a gryphon with that power?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Anyhow, once you all arrive on Treoir, two will sweep a one-mile-wide perimeter around the castle, torching everything to tighten the fighting zone. Two more will be inside that zone using kinetics and streams of fire to mow down Beladors who won’t be able to link. A gryphon can easily kill one Belador, which would destroy everyone linked.”

“You’re sure?”

“Our kinetic strength alone is far more powerful than a Belador’s.”

Envisioning the potential massacre made her sick. If she couldn’t stop the attack from happening, she had to find a way to warn her tribe. “I know you hate the Beladors, but they don’t deserve this.”

“I don’t hate them. Not anymore. After talking to Kizira, I’ve come to realize I was wrong about our origins as Alterants.”

Forgetting everything else, she zeroed in on the question
that had plagued her life as a half-breed. “What’s the other half of our blood?”

When he didn’t answer, she shoved to her feet, fingers curled into fists. “No more stonewalling me, Tristan. What are we other than Belador?”

“We all have Belador blood and that of an ancient warrior called Cú Chulainn. In battle he would turn berserker and change into a beast. That’s where we get the beast traits. He was a celebrated warrior during the time of the original Cathbad the Druid and Queen Maeve.”

“Maeve, as in the first Medb?” When he nodded, she raised her hands in the air in a frustrated motion. “That was like . . . forever ago.”

“Right. She and the original Cathbad created a prophecy, to take down the Beladors. They set into motion a perpetual changing of the guard where a female blood descendant of Maeve became queen and mated with a druid descendant of Cathbad, of which there were different lineages. Those two always produce a female child, who becomes the next Medb queen six hundred and sixty-six years later, upon her mother’s death. This has gone on for generation after generation, but Flaevynn refuses to play by the rules.”

Evalle tapped her finger on her lip, thinking. “What’s supposed to happen
now
that hasn’t happened before or won’t in the future?”

“That’s the one question no one has been able to answer.”

“Or won’t tell you,” Evalle pointed out.

“No, I think they really haven’t figured it out, because
the curse is written as a riddle. Flaevynn doesn’t care. She’s determined to be the last queen standing even though the prophecy doesn’t actually designate her as such. Word is that Flaevynn’s rushing the time line and risking everyone’s life to beat the prophecy, which she calls a curse, so this may blow up in everyone’s faces.”

“Do you believe she can do this?”

“Unfortunately, yes. And you have no idea what creatures she and Cathbad have accumulated here in six hundred plus years. If she destroys the Belador power base, she’ll be able to unleash things worse than demons on the mortal world.”

“But how can she beat the curse if the other queens didn’t before they died as scheduled?”

“By becoming immortal. Once Brina is dead and a Medb—Kizira—has control of Treoir, Flaevynn and Cathbad believe that either the cycle of the curse that imprisons them in TÅμr Medb will be broken or Kizira will bring back water from the river beneath Treoir that will turn them immortal. Either way, they expect to be able to leave here at that point.”

“I will die before helping turn those two immortal,” Evalle declared under her breath, then ran back over something he’d said a moment ago. “If we all have the same blood, what makes five of us different?”

Tristan seemed reluctant to answer, but he said, “Your father was in the military, right?”

“Yes.”

“So were mine and Petrina’s. We’re not blood brother and sister. We were both captured by a troll when we
were teens and stuck in cages. Together, we figured out how to escape.”

Evalle nodded. “I can see why you’re close.”

“Before I was captured,
again
, by the Beladors and stuck in a spellbound prison, I was searching for other Alterants. I found out about three more, all with fathers in the military. I’ll bet your mother got pregnant after your father was stationed in one of a handful of places.”

“Don’t know. I told you she died at my birth and my father’s never spoken to me.”

“Right. I
had
thought the Beladors had found men with Belador blood and cast a spell on their offspring while we were in the womb. That was before the Medb brought me here. Now I’ve finally put it all together. The Medb figured since Beladors are born warriors, they would gravitate to the military. The women who didn’t were alphas and attracted to alphas, thus they were drawn to the military environment.”

“Reasonable guess, since we have a lot of Beladors in militaries in allied countries.”

Tristan chuckled softly, a sarcastic sound. “They didn’t guess. Their depth of planning over many centuries and amount of resources would scare you.”

“Why would they let you know any of this?”

“I’ve worked hard to convince Kizira that I’m on board with her plans as long as my sister is safe. I’ve been on the outs with the Beladors for a long time, so convincing Flaevynn and Cathbad of my loyalty wasn’t that hard.”

Evalle hoped he really was only acting loyal. “You
were saying about the Medb knowing where to find Beladors in the military,” she said, prompting him to continue.

“Alpha males are drawn to strong women. Kizira said the sperm of male descendants of Cú Chulainn and a Medb witch had been held in a spelled cask for all these years. Thirty years ago, a druid with Medb warlock blood traveled to fertility clinics located near military locations where Beladors were known to reside. As a Celtic druid, he could identify Belador descendants, even those who were not warriors.”

“Let me guess. This happened around the time we were conceived.”

“Right.”

She waved him on.

“The druid used majik and compulsion to guarantee only Belador descendants were impregnated, plus he placed a spell over the non-Belador husbands of Belador females so that those humans could not impregnate the women. Kizira said the Medb speculated that not all inseminations had taken, only those destined to become Alterants.”

Evalle was sickened. “So using the sperm of descendants of Cú Chulainn and a Medb witch, unsuspecting Belador women were inseminated without their knowledge.”

“That’s the way I understand it.”

Had Evalle’s mother gone to a clinic without her father’s knowledge? Evalle had once read in a magazine where a woman desperate to get pregnant had gone to be
inseminated without telling her husband because he’d refused to consider the problem was his and go for testing.

She’d never known her father, but he’d abandoned her, so she had no problem thinking that might have been what happened to her mother.

If that was true, Evalle’s mother had been wrongly accused of infidelity. Only guilty of wanting a baby.

Tristan kept explaining. “Kizira has the ability of precognition. She saw that five children, or Alterants, would be more powerful than the others.”

“What makes the five of us with golden heads so special?”

Regret darkened his gaze. “The five mothers who would bear powerful Beladors were inseminated with sperm from the only descendant of Cú Chulainn and Maeve, the original Medb queen.” In the sad voice of someone delivering news of a death, he said, “You’re one half Belador, but you’re also a direct descendant of the most powerful Medb queen ever, and that blood rules you.”

Evalle couldn’t form a thought past the idea that she was Medb.

E
valle can’t be trusted!”

The walls shook with Flaevynn’s outburst. Kizira didn’t flinch, having endured much worse ones in the past. To be honest, she’d initiated this conversation and raised the doubt in Flaevynn’s mind about Evalle.

Kizira glanced at Cathbad, thinking her da could step in any time and help. No such luck. “If the proph . . . curse calls for those five to lead the charge, then you need all five.”

“You just said Evalle is already trying to fight the simple compulsion spell,” Flaevynn argued. “She’ll find a way to screw up our plans.”

“Not once she’s fully under our control. Tristan has followed orders without a problem.”