I messed up. This is my punishment. I need to accept it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Two nights later, I’m woken by Malric’s growl. I leap up, sending Jacko tumbling off me. Chikako—the chickcharney—peeps from her night cage, where she sleeps with my stuffed chickcharney.
Malric is nowhere to be seen, and I exhale with relief. My aunt’s dying command tasked him with my care, and I’ve been unable to persuade him to abandon his post, however much he hates it. This isn’t the first time I’ve woken to his growl and had this sudden image of the warg ridding himself of me with one clamp of his powerful jaws.
He is not, however, looming over my bed, slavering on my helpless sleeping form. Jacko chitters in mild annoyance at being woken, which suggests I’m the one who woke both him and Chikako. In other words, I must have dreamed Malric’s growl. Before I close my eyes again, I can’t help but glance over at Malric’s bowl…in case my dream was suggesting I’d forgotten to refill it.
His bowl holds only bones, meaning Malric has eaten. However, the warg himself is not in his spot by the smoldering fire.
“Rowan?” an unsteady voice says. “Could you please remind him I’m a friend?”
I look to see Alianor just inside my door…with Malric blocking her, a silent growl rippling his sides.
“Malric?” I say. “I’m awake now. But thank you for your concern.” I turn to Alianor. “He knows you’re a friend. That’s why you’re still in one piece.”
She lets out a wavering laugh.
“I’m serious,” I say as I swing my legs out of the bed. “His job is to protect me from anyone who comes in here at night. He’d block even Rhydd. He won’t hurt you, but he’ll make sure you stay back until I’m awake.”
“Wow. That’s some watchdog.”
“Bodyguard,” I correct. “Monsters aren’t animals.”
She walks over to where I sit on my bed. “You need to teach me more about monsters. All Clan Bellamy cares about is how to avoid them in the mountain passes, but I’ll need more if I’m going to be a monster healer.”
I arch my brows, and she bounces onto my bed with a grin.
“Yep,” she says. “I’ve decided to change professions. The kingdom is in need of a proper monster healer, because your current animal healer can’t do the job.”
“Doctor Tyesha does just fine,” I say. “Yes, her specialty is animals, but she’s learning to treat monsters, too.”
“Not fast enough. There’s a reason I’m waking you at two in the morning, Rowan, and it isn’t to tell you that I want to be a monster healer. The gryphon is about to give birth.”
I scramble up. “What?”
“Well, according to your Doctor Tyesha, it’ll be another week. But I’ve been telling her all day that she’s wrong—my healer training tells me the baby is coming much sooner. She’s been treating me like a silly child. Guess who’s right?”
“The baby is coming now?”
She nods. “I’ve been sneaking in and checking every hour. Doctor Tyesha is there, but she shooed me off and tried to say it’ll still be days, even when I could tell the gryphon had started her labor. It’ll be tonight. So I came to get you.”
“We already talked about this. I knew better than to ask Mom.”
Alianor grins. “Exactly. You never asked…so you aren’t disobeying. Realizing the gryphon was about to give birth, I ran to get your help. You’re the royal monster hunter, and this is a monster birth. Naturally, you should be there. Woken from sleep, you can’t be expected to stop and consider whether this breaks your punishment. It is an emergency, after all.”
“This is why you didn’t want me asking earlier, isn’t it? You planned this.”
“You get to see the birth of a gryphon. Are you actually arguing?”
I hesitate.
“Doctor Tyesha can’t handle it,” Alianor says. “She’s proven that. So I really do need your help. If the gryphon has trouble birthing, I’m not sure the doctor will know what to do.”
I push to my feet. “All right, let’s go.”
* * *
We tiptoe through the silent hall, stone floors icy under our bare feet. Malric pads along after us. Alianor grumbles about that. “How are we supposed to sneak around with a two-hundred-pound wolf following us?” Honestly, though, Malric makes less noise than we do. Leaving him behind wasn’t an option. During the day, I can wander the castle alone. At night, he follows.
As for the jackalope perched on my shoulders…well, he’s quieter up there than he’d be if I locked him in my room.
The gryphon is being held in the hay barn, which is almost empty in the summer, when the horses can graze. She has a small pasture, too, and we keep those doors open so she can walk outside. She can’t fly, though. A huge steel leg band chains her to a massive stone. This is a gryphon who has already killed my aunt and tried to kill the rest of us. Given the chance, she’d finish the job.
Dr. Tyesha is temporarily living in the head groom’s quarters, and I ask Malric to stay outside while I make my way to her room. He agrees with a grunt that warns me not to leave his line of sight. I set Jacko on the ground and ask him to stay, too. He’s still considering the request when Malric lifts a restraining paw, and Jacko lies down with a sigh.
Alianor and I approach the darkened rooms attached to the main stables. Alianor whispers that there’d been a candle burning earlier as the doctor read or worked late into the night. I’m about to peek through the window when jackalope paws thump the ground, and I look to see Jacko hopping my way. I lift my gaze to glare at Malric, but he’s on all fours, watching. He let Jacko run to me, which means…
“Someone’s coming,” I whisper to Alianor. Before I can pick up Jacko, he runs back toward where Malric waits in the shadows. That’s when I see what I’d missed before—light seeping around the heavy hay-barn door.
“That was dark when I left to fetch you,” Alianor whispers.
I hurry to the hay barn. There aren’t any windows—no need for them in a storage building—but I know a secret way in. The castle is my home, and I know all its secrets, especially those that take me places I’m not supposed to go.
When the barn is full, Rhydd and I like to play in the hay, building slides and obstacle courses. I’m old enough now to realize the grooms can’t help noticing their bales are suddenly in the form of a giant ship, but they’ve never complained to Mom. We don’t damage the bales. We just…rearrange them.