Darkest Knight. Karen Duvall

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      seven

      I DON’T REMEMBER GOING BACK TO BED, but I wakened there, my head pounding while sunlight stabbed into my corneas like ice picks. Closing my eyes to block it out didn’t help. I buried my head beneath the blankets, where I noticed someone had removed my muddy clothes and left me wearing nothing but panties and a T-shirt.

       “Xenia, I told you the light hurts her eyes,” my grandmother said from somewhere in the room. “Close those drapes right now.”

       “It’s almost noon,” Xenia said. “None of the rest of us is allowed to sleep in.”

       “The rest of you didn’t almost die last night,” Aurora scolded as she stepped into the room.

       When I heard the sound of the drapes being closed I peeked outside my cave of bedcovers.

       “How are you feeling, Chalice?” Aurora asked, her voice not as warm as I would have liked. “Can I get you anything?”

      You can get me my gargoyle boyfriend. But of course I didn’t actually say that. So I asked for water instead. My throat felt like I’d gargled with sandpaper.

       After downing the full glass, I said hoarsely, “About last night…”

       Aurora sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

       I leaned forward and forced out a wheezy breath. “I know. But it’s not what you think.”

       “It’s exactly what I think. That gargoyle tried to kill you.”

       “Aydin? That’s ridiculous,” I said. The stern look in Aurora’s eyes told me she thought otherwise. “He’d have no reason to kill me.”

       “Then how do you explain what happened?” She stood and stepped to the window, and I was suddenly afraid she knew where I had buried the heart. But its glow was hidden, I’d made sure of it. “A gargoyle is a creature of darkness, a trained assassin. Its nature is to kill people like us. I realize it was only doing what came natural, but that’s no excuse. It has to be destroyed.”

       “Grandmother, you’re not listening to me.” I gritted my teeth to stop myself from saying something bitchy. “Aydin cares about me, about all of us. Being our knight’s protector has been his calling since the day he helped Saint Geraldine birth her child nearly a thousand years ago.”