Chapter 26
LILIA
Inside the darkness of his wings, I couldn’t see anything.
I could feel the blast hitting the stone—the grinding resonance of it, the queen’s fury coming again and again against a surface that refused to give. Each impact traveled through Hadrien’s body into mine, and he absorbed every one without loosening his hold by a fraction.
I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my face against his chest. Felt his heartbeat, enormous and fast.
Think.
The spell. I’d felt it settle into him in the courtyard, felt the warmth of it thread through his magic and take root before the queen’s arrival tore the ritual apart.
It was still there. I sensed it the way you note your heartbeat in a quiet room, once you listen for it.
A living presence woven through the cold of the stone.
Holding.
But the queen’s magic was pressing against it, searching for a way through, and the brew I’d given him wouldn’t hold her off. He needed something more.
I reached into my satchel and closed my fingers around the silvery leaf I’d taken from the courtyard—the one that had fallen during the ritual, and I’d picked it up to study it more. L’arbre miroir, the book had called it. I pressed it flat against the inside of his wing.
His wing was solid beneath my palm. And then—a vibration beneath it, deep and resonant. Magic. Ancient and powerful. It spread outward from my hand and through his wings.
The queen’s magic hit that point.
And had nowhere to go but back.
The silence came so suddenly it was physical. One moment the world was all fury and hammering cold.
The next, nothing—just Hadrien’s thumping heartbeat against my cheek and his breath in my hair.
He didn’t move.
Neither did I.
After a solid minute, his wings opened, slowly. I lifted my face from his chest. We were both alive. Unhurt.
My eyes adjusted to the moonlight flooding back in. “Hadrien?” I whispered, sounding astonished even to myself.
He released a relieved laugh, still holding me tight. “Are you okay?”
“Ye-yesss,” I stammered.
I pulled my gaze across the courtyard to where the queen had been standing. Mireille stood where I’d last seen her. Same posture. Same piercing, hate-filled eyes. Same expression of cold fury, preserved in every excruciating detail.
Gray. Every inch of her.
Stone.
I gaped at her for several seconds before my gaze traveled to Hadrien. The marble lines in his gray skin were—fading. They drew back across his chest, his arms, his abs, retreating the way frost melts beneath the morning sun.
“Hadrien,” I breathed out. “Your skin.”