“He sounds as if he’s choking,” she said, and almost giggled.

They were looking into each other’s eyes. It went on too long.

“I’ll…” he began, cursing himself for ten types of a fool.

“I have wine,” she said. Her voice was husky. “In my room.” Her eyes never left his.

He reached out his hand.

She took it. “I want to see your—griffon,” she whispered.

He laughed. She had no idea why. But he took her to the door and produced a key made of wrought steel.

“Will he scream?” she asked. Suddenly she was appalled—that she’d offered him wine, that she’d been so bold about the monster.

He shook his head. “Perhaps when we leave. Let me go first.”

He opened the door and she was shocked—immediately—to find that the room revealed, which had once been a fine solar, was now roofless to the open night, and a canopy of stars rose above her. There were two chairs, and a heavy iron chain, and a—a—

A monster.

Gabriel went forward, crooning, and it—It was huge. It seemed to fill the very large tower room, as big as the whole home she’d grown up in with her mother. It put its head on the ground.

And rolled on its back like an enormous cat.

“Come on,” Ser Gabriel said.

She breathed out and moved forward. And then, almost without thinking, she went straight up to the great thing. She reached out a hand and touched it. “How big will he get?” she asked.

“He’s only half grown, aren’t you, laddy?” Gabriel crooned. “He’ll be big enough to ride in a month or two.”

It had feathers on its head and an enormous, vicious beak, downward and backward curved like a scimitar of horn, and wickedly sharp, and two great black eyes that seemed fathomless. The feathers of its wings marched in endless organic rows, green and black and white and gold—true gold, as if all the gilders in the world had united to work on its feathers. But just behind the mighty muscles of its wings there was a line where downy, almost misshapen feathers marched along with hair, and then, from that line back, it looked to have a coat more like that of a horse or cow—except for the barbaric talons.

It should have seemed ungainly and ugly. Instead, it was—queerly beautiful, like a much-scarred tomcat or a favourite old shoe. She scratched the place on the great belly where the fur and the feathers met, and the great monster made a noise somewhere between a purr and a screech.

“Oh, he likes you,” Ser Gabriel said.

With the purr came some other emanation. Blanche had little experience of matters aethereal—none, really. So for the first time, she felt the tickle of something unseelie in her head.

Ser Gabriel gave the beast a slap on the side of his beak. “None of that,” he said.

Blanche suddenly felt a terrible, wonderful upwelling of love.