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.

Inside her head, Gabriel’s voice said, “Stop that.”

Just for a moment she saw him, in a red doublet and hose, standing on a parquetry floor in some sort of cathedral, with statues and numbers all about him, and a beautiful woman on a pedestal behind him, dressed like the statues in churches.

“I’ll do my own courting,” the voice in her head said. “Down, Ariosto!”

The great creature raised his head and both her eyes met both of its eyes. Its impossibly rough tongue brushed her face. She laughed, although she trembled, and although she suddenly had the most intimate—erotic—picture of Ser Gabriel, and she blushed.

She started to turn away and her shoulder met Gabriel’s.

His lips came down on hers. She didn’t feel as if she was controlling her body, but she fit herself against him from her knee to her head. She had never done this with any boy. She felt wanton, deliciously so.

The griffon watched them, unblinking. Gabriel took his lips away from hers and brushed them against her neck, and then his hand tightened and he pulled her—gently—towards the door.

The great monster made a sound very like a sigh.