Page 54 of The Stone Curse
His eyes twitched. “Cameron…”
I didn’t like his tone, soft and almost pitying. “No, but wait. How do you explain the dream and the bench?”
Yarrow pressed his lips together. “Grief plays tricks on the mind, Cameron. Now if you two had consummated your mating, then maybe Serath would be able to reach out this way to you,ifhe was alive somewhere.”
“But she’s a halfblood,” Touron pointed out. “Willowman always said it was a gray area with them because of that. They couldn’t be sure how a fated mating worked for them.”
“True,” Yarrow said. “But it’s a long shot. I don’t want you to get your hopes up just for them to be dashed.”
But if my father could hope and believe that Romi was alive after all this time, then why couldn’t I hope that Serath was too?
“Didn’t a graynite rip through his chest?” Yarrow continued.
I sucked in a sharp breath as the image filled my mind once more.
“That was cruel,” Touron said.
“I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I’m merely stating a fact. An injury like that, from a graynite, with the toxin it would have put into Serath’s system, isn’t something he’d recover from. It would kill him.”
But now that Touron had helped ignite this fire, I wasn’t letting it burn out. “We can’t be sure of that. Serath could be alive. They might have healed him so they can then feed on his soul.”
The room echoed with silence as the meaning of this fact settled in my bones. Lionel had told me the truth of how graynites were made. That they were just gargoyles without a soul, but did Yarrow know this?
We eyed each other warily for a moment or two.
“You know, don’t you?” Yarrow said finally. “You know what that would mean.”
I shook my head. “He’d fight them. He’d resist. He’s strong.”
But even as I said it, doubt crept in. Romi was a Basque, and the graynites could use him as a bargaining chip, but Serath…Ulrickson had made him an orphan, and whatever information he had, Romi had it too…
“Look, Cam, I’m not trying to hurt you, but it’s obvious they intended to kill Serath in order to undo you. They wanted toeliminate your mind, your ability to take Romi’s place on the team.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Forget it. Please. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Cameron…” Touron lightly touched my arm. “Nothing is certain. Don’t lose hope.”
I wasn’t. I couldn’t.
Yarrow’s jaw tensed, his gaze hardening as it settled on Touron. “As her friend, you should be helping her come to terms with her loss, not feeding her delusions.”
“As her friend, I’m being honest about what I believe,” Touron said.
“Even if Serath is alive, there is no way to get to him. No way through the wards around graynite territory.”
His words were a fist to the gut because of course there was no way in. How had I not considered this? But then why did Lionel say he wanted me to save Romi?
“The alpha will emerge, and when we take him down, the wards will fall too,” Touron said with confidence.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Yarrow pointed out. “No one knows for sure, and false hope is toxic. We must work with the facts. The elite team is vital in the event of the alpha emerging. That is all we can say. Whether the wards will fall or whether Serath is alive is all speculation.”
“Enough. I didn’t come here to talk about Serath. I came to check in about Melanie.”
Yarrow was kind enough not to remind me that I’d been the one to bring up the topic in the first place. He released Touron from his golden gaze and fixed his attention on me.
“Flora and I found something in your room. Something that explains why your ghostly friend is unraveling.”
The black crystalwas smaller than the others Yarrow had given us to place in Melanie’s room.
