Stone Destiny (Stone Passion #3) (24 page)

Running his finger over the dragon, over Ferris’s smooth skin,
Marick had to take a moment and clear his throat before he could speak, “Your dragon is just peachy, love. He looks eager to leap off your skin and kick my ass.”

“I wouldn’t stop him,” she murmured with a crooked, half-smile. Her smile faded and the rest of the color fled from her face as pain exploded across her features. Squeezing her eyes shut, she let out a silent scream as her back arched off the bed a
nd her skin rippled beneath his touch.

Without any more hesitations,
Marick willed a blade into existence and cradled Ferris’s limp hand in his palm, carefully carving a line into her palm. Next, he pulled up his sleeve and made a thin cut in one of his palms as well. Taking a breath, he kept his eyes on her face as he pressed the cuts together, feeling his blood seep into her body. Closing his eyes in ecstasy, he became one with the girl he loved, knowing that without her bond to Fray, his blood would have instantly burned through all of her cells and killed her just as quickly.

He could only hope everything worked out like it was supposed to work out.

“How are you feeling?” he asked when she finally opened her eyes nearly an hour later. Tenderly, he brushed her damp hair from her face, knowing that the blood he gave her helped but it wasn’t enough. The child that grew in her womb was stubborn and powerful and all he could do was pray.

“You know,
Marick,” she gasped, barely able to keep her eyes open. “If you really wanted to help, you could come over here and let me rip off your freaking balls.”

“Ah, sweetheart,”
Marick murmured with a lazy grin, sitting on the edge of the bed, his testicles safely out of her reach. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t help in the least.”

“It would make me feel better,” she returned, her chest barely rising and falling with each labored breath she took.

He chuckled at her stubbornness, hoping she didn't simply vanish. "You know, if we were to make love…."

"No," she bit out.

"If we were to make love," he repeated, ignoring her glaring eyes. "It would make you feel better faster. You wouldn't needlessly suffer."

Her lips curved into a wry smile but she didn’t open her eyes, “I think that’s what caused my suffering in the first place. Perhaps you should keep your dick in your pants around me.”

He choked out an unexpected laugh, "Ferris…."

"I'll struggle through,
Marick," she said with finality, her blue-green eyes burning with determination.

Her distended belly rippled and Ferris gasped, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She wasn’t very far along, just over six weeks, but she already had a rounded belly because she had lost so much weight everywhere else. With each day that passed she could feel herself growing weaker and weaker, fading from the mortal coil. She knew
Ajreis was frantic with worry, begging her to accept the idiot Marick's offer and get better. Fray’s pleadings were silent but just as heartfelt and just as pointless. The dragon’s strength seemed to increase at the same rate that she was slipping away and nothing Fray did helped. Nothing Marick was doing helped, either.

She was so tempted to give in, have sex with him, but her heart truly belonged to Armand. As long as there was a chance for her to be with the love of her life she wasn’t going to screw it up even worse by sleeping with the gorgeous
Marick a second time. It didn’t matter that Armand was trapped in stone because if she survived this she now had the extended life she had been hoping for. She was going to be there when he woke, come Hell or high water, and she wasn't going to throw her second chance away to feel a little better.

If she survived,
which was still iffy. If she stayed perfectly still then the millions of phantom ants that crawled over her skin wouldn’t all sink their mandibles into her tender skin. Her kidneys were swollen to the size of watermelons and she was pretty sure her liver was liquefied and her lungs were made of glass. Everything hurt and she doubted sex with anyone could help. Even the thought of sex made her shudder because that would involve movement and breathing.

God, it was getting so hard to think. Her brain felt like it was on the edge of exploding, a billion needles poking into it, scrambling it up and dispersing her thoughts before she could hold onto them and figure them out. The only real thing was Armand but he wasn’t there. He had vanished in a wisp of smoke and she had lost his trail.

“Ferris,” Marick whispered, his lips next to her head, his spicy breath warming the cool shell of her ear, luring her back to her body. She didn’t want to go because her body hurt too much. “I’m going to make it easier for you to accept me.”

With a half-smile on her white lips, her eyes still closed, she shook her head, “Nothing you can do… is that honeysuckle I smell? It is spring already? I told you,
Ajreis, I don’t want to go to school today. The people there are awful and I’m miserable. No, they torment me even more if you’re there, telling me I’m a freak for having an imaginary friend at my age. Of course I know you’re real but they can’t see you, can they? Yes, Armand will listen, he always listens, but I hate burdening him with my problems. He’s so strong and protective but he’s a gargoyle, it’s what he’s supposed to do.”

“Ferris, my love,” a heartbreakingly familiar voice crooned. Her body twitched and she fought against the nothingness to open her eyes, to stir herself from the stupor that was clouding her mind. Tenderly brushing his thumb over her lip, her cheek, he begged, “Open your eyes, love.”

After a concerted effort, she finally opened her eyes and blinked. Slowly, she blinked again and again, unable to believe what she was seeing. Tears welled in her eyes as a brilliant smile curved her lips. With a great deal of determination, she raised her shaky limbs up to embrace him. “Armand.”

Without hesitation, he went into her embrace, breathing words of love against her throat, “I’m right here, love
, I’m right here.”

She held onto him like a lifeline, ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her that it wasn’t right, that Armand wasn’t Armand. It didn’t matter because for the first time in five years she was able to breathe. She was so tired of fighting and now she no longer had to fight
. She was back in Armand’s arms, she was with her destiny. Everything was going to work out.

The
War Rages On

It was different this time.
Armand shouldn’t have had such vivid sensations, awareness, while he was frozen but he swore he knew the moment Ferris was near. It was impossible because he had given his nights to Felicity but somehow, someway, he was painfully aware of the girl he had to forget.

He could feel her growing older, every heartbeat another heartbeat closer to the end. When he awoke she was going to be old, with withered skin and sunken eyes and he would love her until the very end. It was going to kill him if she fell in love with someone else but he couldn’t imagine Ferris growing old without a dozen children surrounding her. She had too much love to squander away waiting for him, hoping for the impossible.

Time was different as well, at times going so slow he was sure thousands of years had passed and at other times disappearing as soon as the moment came. It seemed as if time moved the quickest when Ferris crawled into his stone arms and pressed her ear against his heart, searching for a heartbeat that beat too slow for her to hear. He cursed his stone body because he couldn’t wrap his arms around her and comfort her, he couldn’t whisper in her ear and thank her for everything she did for him.

She made a frozen gargoyle love again.

He was going to watch over her children and her children’s children until the end of time. It was the least he could do. If necessary, he would guide them through the pitfalls of living in a world that no longer needed gargoyles. Maybe he would find his place as well, as a protector to the descendants of Ferris.

There had been a time when gargoyles had a purpose, protecting the humans that would never remember
them moments later, and he knew his place. He made love to many, many women, gifting each of his temporary lovers a measure of protection even if he didn’t recall their names or faces. It was what gargoyles did but then along came Ferris, burrowing beneath his walls when she wasn’t a threat and then becoming this intoxicating woman who was nothing but a threat.

A
dmittedly, after the first time he had made love to Ferris he had panicked. There were so many things wrong with what he did, what he felt, he had to flee, hoping to find solace in London, with his gargoyle brothers there. He wasn’t proud that he had, in essence, run away, but what he had experienced with Ferris had been… it had been transcendental. Staying with her would have changed everything and he wasn’t prepared for it. Hell, he wasn’t prepared for her.

Yet she was never far from his thoughts, plaguing him at all hours until he thought he would go mad. While prowling the streets of London one night, he came across a hidden door along the gallery of shops. With a wry smile, he stepped through the door, wondering what treasures he would find in the unexpected gift from the Fates. As he looked around the eclectic room, he had to smile
because the shop reminded of his father’s magical trinket shops.

He wound his way through the labyrinth aisles, barely paying attention to the variety of magical paraphernalia on the shelves. Something was guiding him and the moment he saw the golden egg he understood: the pocket dragon was meant to be found by him. Laying his hand on the shining orb, he closed his eyes and saw the dragon on Ferris’s shoulder as she smiled beneath the sun.

Opening his eyes and ending the vision, he slowly moved his hand away from the treasure, the gift he was going to get for Ferris. He hadn’t lied when he told her the dragon was very rare and wanted to be hers but he hadn’t told her everything. If the headstrong girl had ever learned about the dragon bond she would have pursued it relentlessly, getting destroyed by the dragon's fire in the process.

His fifth night in London he sat sprawled on the roof with his London brothers,
Artaire, Bar, and Rowan, as well as one of his Greek brothers, Leander, and a French Brother, Etienne. The six of them drank copious amounts of wine and discussed the world in which they now lived. Leander didn’t care for he embraced everything with an exuberance that was exhausting. Etienne was more prosaic, figuring he’d adapt because there was nothing else to do. As long as he had good wine and beautiful women he didn’t care that the rest of the world was in free fall. His London brothers didn’t give a damn one way or the other, already bored with the whole situation.

It wasn’t until nearly dawn that he brought up the subject of Ferris, after he was sufficiently drunk enough to dive into that can of worms. It had taken a lot of wine to unleash the madness
that was known as Ferris but he had come to London because he needed his brothers’ advice. The window of opportunity was very narrow and by the time he opened his mouth he could already feel the effects of the alcohol wearing off.

“There’s this girl,” he slurred, staring at the bottle he held in his hands, as if it would have the answer he was looking for. His brothers guffawed and he smiled slightly, “She’s too young for me but I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Fuck her,” Artaire mumbled, taking another swig of wine. Flipping his blue-black hair over his shoulder, he pointed the bottle at Armand and continued, “Get her out of your system.”