“He told me he was fifty!” Jenks exclaimed.

Etude’s wings opened, and I backed up in alarm, but he was only making the jump to the flat slab of cement. My expression blanked as he came forward on widely spaced toes. My God. He was huge. I froze, and Jenks darted away when the gargoyle put a sinewy, lightly furred arm over my shoulders, towering over me. “You and I both know that Bis is a good kid, but he’s just a kid,” he said softly, shifting his wings to block the other gargoyles’ sight of us.

Unnerved, I let him move me forward back onto the softer ground and away from the others. “They’re calling him the world breaker,” I prompted, and Etude snuffed, his pricked ears going flat for a moment. He smelled like an iron bell, and somehow it made my teeth hurt.

“He’s my son,” he said. “He’s bonded to you—a demon. I can see it in your aura. This isn’t what I wanted for him. Everyone wants their child to grow up a little better than they are,” Etude continued. “Settle down, raise a few goyles. Sing songs that resonate with the universe.”

“That’s not what I want for my kids,” Jenks said.

“I accept his choices,” Bis’s dad said, far too reasonably to make me comfortable. “Even if it means that he might have to live in the ever-after and never see the stars again.”

“I wouldn’t make him do that,” I protested, and his hand on my shoulder tensed, his claws pinching me for a bare second in warning.

“But you and I both know that Bis is not a great hero. He is a lob-winged klutz.”

My mouth dropped open, and I pulled out from under his wing. “Etude, I think you have sold your son short,” I said, facing him squarely, not liking that I had to look up at him. He was the size of a small elephant. “Your son, at the tender age of forty-seven, found and pulled my soul out of the ley lines when I had hardly a scrap of aura left to find it.” I jabbed a finger up at Etude’s bare, well-sculptured chest, and the gargoyle took a step back. “He jumped me to the only person possibly able to keep me alive,” I said, following him, chin raised as I got into his face. “He sang me two resonances that exist in one line so I could repair it!”

“Ah, Rache?” Jenks said, hovering over Etude’s shoulder, looking worried.