I stared at her. How dare she use battle analogies on me? After what I’d been through. After what I’d lost. After a thousand nights of staring down at the soldiers whom I was supposed to protect.
“You are infuriating!” I turned and stormed away from her back toward the castle. It was a mistake to even try with her. A mistake.
“Where are you going?” She rushed to catch up to me.
“Anywhere else.” I unfurled my wings, pumping them as I prepared to ascend. Let her find her way home in the dark. See if I cared what happened to her out here in the forest. Let it swallow her up. A groan rumbled deep in my chest. With seething rage, I muttered, “Away from you.”
Lilia gasped. “Hadrien, no.”
The gentle plea in her voice crawled under my skin. She reached my side and placed her hand on my upper arm.
I glanced at her small hand on my biceps and paused, struggling between the urge to take solace in the sky and the unexpected response to her touch.
CHAPTER 11
HADRIEN
“I’m sorry if I said something that upset you,” Lilia said in a gentle tone.
I took seven deep breaths while my hands trembled at my sides. “Never. Tell. Me. About. Battle.” My voice sliced with a sharp edge.
“You’re right,” she agreed with a resigned sigh. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She lowered her head. “I was trying to find a way to relate to you, but I guess it backfired.”
“Splendidly.” I huffed. The back of my neck tensed. The problem was that a part of me knewshewas right—and that enraged me more than anything.
But I couldn’t leave her out here alone. It went against everything in my nature as a protector.
And beyond.
Don’t look at her.My eyes betrayed my command and traveled over to her.
She’d pushed some of her dark hair back and let the rest fall loose over her shoulders. Her eyes, when she glanced at me and quickly away, caught the moonlight and held it a moment before she looked toward the tree line instead. Her hands were at her sides, the darkness concealing fingertips stained green from her hours in the garden. I’d watched those hands and the way she worked them through the herb beds, pressing into soil, turning a leaf, cupping a root. The same hands that had just touched my arm as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
A pang of yearning struck me. I’d been alone for so long, and even if we were arguing, I didn’t want to pull away from her. That perplexed me most of all.
My hand twitched to rise and touch her face, to see if her cheeks were as soft as they looked. Her chest rose and fell with quickened breaths, whether from arguing or rushing to catch up to me—maybe both. Would her skin feel hot beneath my fingers? Would she tremble beneath my touch?
And her fragrance. That in itself was its own kind of calling—wild and mysterious.
Before I did something stupid that I’d regret and scare her away, I forced my hands to my sides.
“Come on,” I said in a gentler tone with a nudge of my head. “Let’s go back to the castle.”
What Lilia had saidlast night replayed in my head while I resumed my watch from stone the next day. I’d moved to a turret closer to her room and didn’t want to think too hard about that.
It’s just natural gargoyle instinct, I rationalized.
What tormented me most was how she’d called me out—rightly so—and what she’d said wasn’t entirely wrong. I’d mocked her optimism and her stubborn refusal to accept defeat.
I hadn’t expected to hear that lecture from a tiny human woman. And although she was arguing in the forest with a gargoyle twice her size, she didn’t cower.
I didn’t want to admit how much that landed. How right she was. How long it had been since anyone had spoken to me that plainly.
When she came outside later that morning, she looked up and gave me a small wave. Locked in stone, I couldn’t do so much as blink to acknowledge her. While she pulled weeds and tended vegetables, I watched her. That was all I could do—watch and wait, watch and think. Maybe fantasize…
No. I couldn’t think about her in that way. She was human, I was a gargoyle, and we couldn’t stand each other.
Right?
