Chapter 7 #4
Our combined force hits the ward like a breaking wave.
It shatters.
The glass case unlocks with a soft click.
Azrael releases my hand immediately, as if nothing just passed between us. He opens the case and retrieves the mirror fragment. It’s smaller than the first one, darker somehow, like it absorbs light instead of reflecting it.
He slips it into his jacket.
“We need to?—”
The windows explode inward.
Glass erupts across the room in a violent storm. I throw my arms up on instinct and feel shards bite into my gloves, my sleeves, the air itself turning sharp. Azrael reacts instantly. Shadows burst from him, curling around both of us, deflecting the worst of it.
Three figures drop into the room.
Not fully human.
Not fully anything.
Their skin is pale enough to look carved from ice, their eyes too bright, too sharp. Frost crystals form along their shoulders like armor growing from their bodies.
“The Frost Court,” Azrael says. His voice drops into something colder than before. “Of course.”
The way he says it tells me this isn’t a surprise. It’s confirmation of a problem he’s been expecting and hoping to avoid.
The one in the center steps forward. A woman with white hair and frost blue eyes. She smiles like she already owns the room.
“The Shadow King,” she says. “How fortunate. We will take that piece now.”
“Over my corpse,” Azrael replies.
“That can be arranged.”
They move at once.
There’s no time for thinking.
My body reacts before my mind catches up, shadows surging up through my arms like instinct made physical. They’re still unrefined, still wild, but they are mine.
The first attacker lunges for me. I dodge and twist, and my shadows hook around his ankle. He hits the floor hard enough to shake the room.
Azrael is already engaged with the others.
He moves like something designed for precision. Every strike is efficient, every step deliberate. Beautiful in a way that isn’t meant to be admired.
But the Frost Court is fast. Coordinated. They fight like a single organism split into bodies.
One of them breaks through his defense.
Coming for me.
I reach back. The glamour along my spine breaks beneath my fingers, and I draw the blade in one clean motion. Shadow-forged metal sings as it leaves its sheath.
The attacker hesitates.
Just once.
“She is armed,” he starts.
I don’t let him finish.
The blade drives into his shoulder. He screams as frost magic erupts from the wound, trying to lock the metal in ice.
My shadows swallow it whole.
He stumbles back, shock written across his face like he can’t compute what I am.
Behind me, the room shifts again.
Silence follows.
Azrael lowers his hand.
Two attackers remain on the floor in pieces of frost and shadow.
The woman is gone.
Fled through the broken windows.
“Leave,” Azrael says immediately. “Now.”
My grip tightens around the blade still buried in my hand. I’m staring at the man I just stabbed, at the way he looks at me like I broke something fundamental.
“Morgana,” Azrael says again, closer now. “We got what we came for. Move.”
Right.
Move.
We shadow-walk out.
The world folds.
We land back at my penthouse. Neutral walls. Neutral lighting. After the Met, its blandness feels almost obscene.
My hands are shaking before I even realize I’m safe.
Adrenalin crashes hard through my body.
Azrael locks the door. Deadbolt. Shadows creep over the windows until the outside world disappears entirely.
Then he turns to me.
“You are hurt.”
I look down. Blood seeps through the fabric of my gloves. Glass cuts line my arms like thin warnings.
“It’s fine,” I start.
“It is not fine.”
He’s already in front of me, peeling my gloves off carefully, like I might break if he’s too rough. “Sit.”
I sit without deciding to.
Azrael kneels in front of me and examines my hands. The cuts are shallow, but there are too many of them.
“This will sting,” he says.
His shadows rise gently this time, curling over my skin. Cold. Strange. Almost tender. They sink into the wounds and pull the glass out piece by piece, knitting flesh back together as if it were never torn.
It stings like fire under ice.
I bite down on my lip and don’t make a sound.
“You fought well tonight,” he whispers. His focus does not leave my hands. “Better than I expected.”
“You expected me to die?”
“I expected you to freeze,” he corrects. “To panic.”
He looks up at me then.
Something shifts in his expression.
“You did not.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“You had three days of training,” he says. “The rest was instinct.”
He moves to my arms, continuing the same careful work. Shadows stitching skin back into place.
“You are stronger than you think.”
The words land somewhere deep.
For once, I don’t have a joke ready.
His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist.
Right over the binding mark.
The connection flares instantly.
Heat, sudden and sharp, snapping through both of us at once.
He doesn’t pull away and neither do I.
“Azrael,” I start.
I don’t know what I am going to say.
I don’t know what I want.
He leans closer instead, one hand rising to cup my jaw.
And then he kisses me.
The world stops.