What I didn’t expect was Lilia and what she’d done.
As Mireille launched her devastating assault by hurling the mass at me, Lilia leaped in front of me and gasped out my name.
This tiny human who tended flowers and hummed to plants had just thrown herself between a massive gargoyle and a powerful queen. That had to be the bravest and most reckless thing I’d ever witnessed.
My greatest fear realized. I’d always thought it was when the curse finally claimed me and I eventually succumbed to my stone tomb. But now it became clear. I could lose Valgarde, my land, everything—but I couldn’t loseher.
Every instinct detonated at once.
Protect her.
Years of strategy and control in military operations dissolved in a heartbeat as something more primal took over.
Protect her. Whatever it takes.
My wings spread wide and snapped shut around Lilia as I soared up from the ground.
But it was too late. The queen’s spell hit hard, throttling breath from my lungs, and the force drove us down. My feet slammed the cobblestones hard, but I locked my wings around her, my body being the only thing to protect her from the darkness.
I crouched, pulling her close against my chest, as the queen shrieked, continuing her relentless assault. The world outside my wings was noise and fury, with her dark magic hammering at stone. Inside them, it was warmth and gentleness with Lilia’s breath against my chest, her hands wrapped around my torso, entrusting me to protect her. I roared as the spell pummeled my wings, the force so powerful it rattled my bones and set my teeth on edge, but I wouldn’t let go. Never. I couldn’t let anyone get to her.
But beneath the hammering, something was different. The queen’s magic was meeting a resistance inside my stone ithadn’t expected—something warm threaded through the cold, a living presence woven into me so recently I could still feel the shape of it. Hers. Whatever she’d done in the courtyard with her plant brew worked inside me, still holding. And the queen’s darkness was pouring against my wings, seeking a weak spot to penetrate.
Something pressed against the inner surface of my wing. Something small and warm and comforting. I’d recognize that touch anywhere.
Lilia’s hand.
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.
