Scene 13 · Dark gargoyle romance
The Stone Vow
“They carved him to guard the city and taught the city to fear him; I was sent up to prove he should be broken for the silver in his bones, and I became the only vow that can keep him whole.”
Heat: scorching · gargoyle guardian · he falls first
Amaris Coldren reads stone the way other people read a face. She was trained to know every mark a chisel leaves and every lie a carving can tell, until her master fell from the cathedral scaffold and the city called it an accident. Amaris never believed it, and she believes it even less once she takes up his unfinished work high on the Minster roof, among the stone guardians the Chapter wants struck down for their silver, and one of them turns its head in the dark and looks at her like a man.
His name is Malec, the last guardian the city was built to be kept safe by and taught to fear, four hundred years awake and alone on his high ledge. He is bound by a law older than the Chapter: a guardian keeps his own mind only through a vow given to him freely, and a vow taken by force rots him into a monster. Someone has been forcing that vow, sending a broken guardian out to kill in the night, and letting the whole city blame the one who never would.
Everyone in Calder loves the man behind it. The Archbishop. The Lantern of Calder, who feeds the poor and is about to be raised to Primate, and whose seal Amaris finds stamped on a collar in the dark beneath the cathedral. He owns the forged charter that damns the guardians. She knows where the true one is carved, in stone no ledger can burn, in a hand any mason alive can read. They think she is only the girl they let hold a chisel. They have not understood yet that a vow freely given is the one power no one can steal.
The Stone Vow is a standalone gothic gargoyle romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. For adult readers.
StandaloneHEA guaranteed18+