Griffin
Nothing existed but pain and fury, and a bleak world that had hurt us.
Other creatures stirred around us—the cruel ones, who went on two legs and had no feelers, misshapen and horrible and wrong.
But they called us wrong. Said we were nothing.
“Such creatures don’t really feel things the way we do,” Scarrow said.
And Jack: “You said th-things like him don’t have friends.”
And worst of all, Pa, condemnation in his voice: “It’s just pleasures of the flesh, and the worst kind at that.”
Your Pa is dead. Heart trouble. Don’t come for the funeral.
We were abnormal, twisted, monsters. Too horrible and broken for anyone to believe we could feel. Only Ival had understood, and now he was gone, they’d taken him, and we would do as I’d promised.
We’d burn down the world.
“Griffin, stop!” One of them stood before us, hands outstretched, a pleading look on his face. And we should have known him, but we didn’t.
We looked through another of our eyes, saw a limp figure stir slightly atop a building. And another, her face white as she crouched behind a balcony, her finger pulling on a trigger—
We recoiled, shrieking. The nearest creature ran toward us, but we lunged forward, feelers reaching, and he fell back.
“Griffin, please,” he begged. “Look at me! You have to stop this. I know she has you, I know it seems like you can’t possibly break free, but she’s going to hurt our friends. You’re going to! Please.”
“There is fire in your blood,” we said, because we could see it so clearly, like a flame burning inside him. Our soldier, the one who had devoured Turner, moved up behind him. He flinched, but he didn’t flee. Didn’t do anything but hold his hands out to us.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s what the ketoi call me, my sea name. Fire in His Blood. But I don’t care about that. I just care about what you call me.”
The soldier stretched out its feelers. It was almost on him now. “Why don’t you use your fire?” we asked. “Unleash it against us!”
He shook his head. He looked unspeakably tired, his coat filthy, one sleeve burned away, his face smeared with blood and soot. “You know why, Griffin. You know. Say my name.”
It trembled on the edge of my tongue. But the pain was so great, the loneliness, the fear. I struggled to remember something, anything. “Pa didn’t want me.”
He blinked, and water made tracks through the grime on his face. “I know, darling. But I do.”
“Ival?”
A tremulous smile touched his face, even as the umbra closed the final few inches. “I love you.”
“So do I,” said another voice. And I turned, we turned, and saw Jack, just as he thrust the Lapidem into its cradle on the plinth.
~ * ~
The world exploded as the Mother of Shadows reached through the gem and into us.
Pain and grief.
But most of all, love.
The queen who shared my mind was malformed, birthed too soon. Broken and hurt, and she would never be a Mother of Shadows herself. Never lay eggs, or sing to beautiful children. Never be what she should have been, had Turner not interfered.
But it didn’t matter. Because the Mother of Shadows—her mother—loved her anyway.
We cried out and fell forward. Ival caught us—me—and crushed me to his chest as we sank to the ground.
The Lapidem blazed with light within the plinth, ancient magic flowing through it, and through us. I felt Ival. Felt his love for me, that didn’t care if I was broken. All the pieces of myself I’d laid at his feet over our years together, all the cracks that still showed where he helped me heal, didn’t matter. He loved me, beyond my ability to understand.
Then Jack’s arms locked around us both, and his lips pressed against my forehead. “I’m sorry, Griffin,” he whispered. “I’m sorry your father couldn’t love you the way he should have, but I do. I love you, brother, and I want to be a part of your family, but you have to let this pain go. You have to let it go and let us care about you.”
We were all linked, bound to the Mother of Shadows and the pain of the newborn queen above us. Tears slicked my cheeks, but I didn’t care. I wept for Pa, because he’d never been able to let his love for me overcome his fear of an angry God. And I wept for Christine, whose parents wouldn’t embrace the man she loved because of the color of his skin. I wept for Ival, and all the pain bound up in his father and his brother, and for Iskander, whose mother chose duty over family, and never told him why. For Ma, who asked me not to stand by her side when they laid Pa to rest.
And finally for Jack, because some part of us still stood there together, on the orphan train. He turned to me, struggling to be brave, and draped his own coat around my shoulders.
“Stay warm,” he said. And walked away into a future where everyone who should have cared for him failed to do so.
The queen didn’t move for a long moment. The gem burned like a flame now, and the Mother whispered through it. Because it didn’t matter if her daughter was broken, or deformed, or hurt. It didn’t change her love at all.
The little queen reached out, her feelers gently cradling the Lapidem, lifting it from the plinth. Her pained cries had died away without my even noticing. She slowly coiled back into herself, hugging the gem as a child might a favorite doll, as a talisman against the monsters in the dark.
A pair of remaining soldiers slid forth from the shadows. They gathered her carefully, supporting her as her stunted wings never would. I could sense workers moving toward us, coming to help now the danger had passed. They’d found Scarrow and begun to tend him, even as he stared at them in a mix of revulsion and fascination. And Iskander, groggily coming around after his fall, with Christine at his side.
The soldiers hesitated, and the queen stirred within their grasp. I looked up, to see her holding the Lapidem out to me. I reached out automatically, and she placed it in my hands.
“In case you have need in the future, my child,” whispered the Mother of Shadows. “You can always call upon us.”
Then they were gone. I sat blinking, held by my husband and my brother.
My husband.
“Ival?” Realization dawned. “You’re...you’re alive!”
“Clever of you to notice,” he said. “I see why you’re so successful a detective.”
I shook my head, then dragged him down and kissed him. And we held each other and wept, while the city came to life with umbrae around us.