I twitched a smile, watching as Kaden swung my case into the rear storage, and willed my feet to move forward. The large passenger door lifted, and Amanda waved me inside. I settled myself against the soft leather. A harness snaked over my shoulders and hips to click into a buckle below my breasts. I wiggled, trying to find a comfortable position in the padding and wanting to ignore the fact that Kaden had climbed in after me.
Amanda couldn’t hide the brief flicker of surprise that crossed her features. “Want to ride in luxury? All right.” Her palm pressed against the door and it began a controlled descent. I didn’t miss the hardness of her narrowed gaze just before the door clunked into its metal frame.
The soundproofed interior felt heavy, its silence a weight on my spinning thoughts. My gaze flicked over the smooth fabric of the walls, the wide tinted windows, anything rather than acknowledge the insanity of my emotions. I didn’t want to feel jealous, but the tight knot in my stomach wouldn’t loosen. Shit. At least a solid partition separated us from the driver. “Has she worked for Lord Sinon as long as you have?”
Kaden gave a soft chuckle and stretched his legs out over the pale carpet. “No one’s worked as long as me.”
I stared at him, at his profile cut with morning light from the window. Kaden Rhodes looked to be a man in his late thirties. Amanda looked the same age. But she was human. Some mythoi didn’t age at the same rate. Or so I’d heard. My meeting with others of my race was limited to the bar on the dockside, and they were hardly the best examples of my kind. “So how old are you?”
A wicked smile touched his mouth, and I forgot about the bar, about Amanda, hell, about my question. “Old,” he said.
The gryphon in me stirred, recognising his rise of power. She was becoming as fixated as I was. Shame I couldn’t use her as Kaden used his shadow…though it was doubtful her razored beak would be as welcome as his shadow’s clever tongue. I swallowed, trying to will myself to speak and not simply jump him. “How old?”
Humour shone in his eyes. He enjoyed teasing me. Bastard. “I was born in this reality.”
The knowledge that this precious time would be the last we had spiked me, but I fought it to play his game. “So…your top age has to be two hundred years old-”
“Secure your harnesses. We’re about to take off. Travel time to Wormwood Tower is forty-five minutes.” Amanda’s smooth tones cut through my words and the car lifted smooth, quick from the pad and swept up into the clear morning sky. “Enjoy the flight.”
Kaden pressed a panel stretching dark against the cream fabric. “Thank you, Amanda.”
“You’re very welcome, Kaden.”
He rolled his eyes and secured the panel. The car banked, and I grabbed at the armrests, wincing as the windows showed the familiar jumble of buildings and roads that made up the city centre. Squeezing my eyes shut didn’t block the knowledge that I streamed hundreds of metres above the ground in a tiny, black car.
“You were guessing my age.”
Kaden’s soft, deep voice broke into my panic, and his hand closed over mine. The heat of his palm soothed me, eased the cramp from my stomach. I opened my eyes. “Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” I pushed out a breath and focused on his face rather than the disturbing view of the snaking red-brown roofs of terrace houses far, far below. Shit, I was a gryphon. I could fly. But this…the lack of control terrified me. And I had to admit, for a fearless terror of the air, I was absolutely petrified of heights. “Two hundred is the cut off. So…one hundred.”
“No. Try again.”
“Higher or lower?”
His head tilted, and the spark in his eyes caused a quick smile to grow on my mouth. “Older.”
I blinked. “Older?” I couldn’t help it, I searched his face for signs of his age, but he still looked like a man in his late thirties.
“You won’t find a clue in my face.”
I laughed. “Or on the rest of you.”
“Did you look hard enough?”
“Funny.” I bit my lip, thinking. “You’re part gryphon, so that increases your longevity.” My half-breed status projected another two hundred years onto my life. Maybe a lot more. Maybe a lot less. There’d never been anyone like me. Gryphons didn’t breed outside their species. Except Kaden belonged to the rare gryphon-human group too. “Hundred and fifty.”
A smile curved his mouth. “Maybe once, long ago.”
“This is crazy. You can’t be older than that!”
“I’m two hundred years old this year.”
The words stopped my breath. He’d been born in the year of the emergence, probably one of the first. “Are you a gryphon-human hybrid?” I had to know, because his fate could be mine. My stomach turned over, excitement mixing with terror. I could live for hundreds of years. “Is that what you are?”
Kaden closed his eyes and shook his head. For too long a moment, he was silent. “No,” he said. “I’m a corruption.”
Chapter Seven
A cold shiver skittered down my spine, and my gryphon shrank away. I willed myself not to pull my hand out from under his. He was still Kaden Rhodes, the same man before he’d said the word that all mythoi feared. “Corruption?”
“My mother is a gryphon. My father…” His mouth thinned and he shook his head. “I can’t say. But I wanted you to know.” His hand slid from mine, and his fingers curled into a white-knuckled fist. “What I am should make it easier for you.”
“To what?”
His laughter was quiet, bitter. “You reacted to Amanda. You can’t do that.”
Heat flared in my cheeks. He’d noticed my stupid burst of jealousy. “Are you and she…”
“No.” He muttered the word with a sharp shake of his head. “Mixing with humans brings a harsh penalty.” He wiped his hand over his mouth and his eyes met mine. “And the morals of humans…” He cursed. “How the hell do I explain this?”
My gut twisted. What was worse to him than admitting that he was a corruption, the dreaded mixing of two species of mythoi? I put my hand over his and squeezed. “You don’t have to. I’ll be careful.” I stroked my fingertips over his straining hand as it pressed against his thigh. “What can I say? I can be possessive.”
“And now you can’t be.” He straightened and his chin lifted. Serious eyes held mine. “I’m sterile. Which makes me safe from repeating the mistake of my birth. If one of his gryphons performs exceptionally well, then Lord Sinon favours them.”
Lead sank into my stomach. “With you.”
“With me.”
I would have to watch as Lord Sinon farmed Kaden out to any and every gryphon he thought worthy. Pain knifed me and I breathed past it. The few words he’d spoken held so much. One stood out, more than the abuse from the First Dragon, more than my own bitter hurt. He was sterile. I closed my eyes, feeling the pain for both of us. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have to know this going in, Jaime. It’s rare, but it happens. Be prepared.”
“Yes.” It burned me to say it, but he was right. Ultimately, Lord Sinon decided who we slept with. Our lives weren’t our own. I sank back into the heavy padding of the seat, and my fingers laced through his. Silence hung heavy again, the muted vibration of the engines the only sound. We flew through wisps of cloud now, white streaks flickering against the windows. A chill came off the thick glass, and a shiver ran over my skin. I’d never flown at high altitude. Even with vast wings, I tended to be a groundling, happy to skim the tops of trees, but nothing beyond that.
I forced my mind to focus. “What happens when we reach Wormwood?”
Kaden let out a slow breath. “I’ll take you to the tower room, Lord Sinon’s office. We kneel. He will examine you and then you’ll be judged by the senior gryphon. It’ll be fast. They want all gryphons in the air.”