Page 168 of A Reign of Roses
My talons tingled beneath a rising sun, my palms stretched as if awakening from a good, succulent sleep, my wings burning with white flames as they spread wide across the clearing.
I screamed—wind and light and fire burning up as it rose inside my throat. Clearing my chest, bracing myself. And then I shuddered ferociously, shifting and shaking, angling my head, flexing every tendon—
Until all was quiet.
And just a little too cold. Gooseflesh rippled along my stomach and legs as a winter wind swept across me. My face lifted gently from fresh, clean snow. It tasted rich like the morning.
“Arwen…?” Kane’s hoarse voice sliced through my senses and my eyes sprang open.
Watery silver filled my vision.
Tears slipped down his dirtied cheeks. My hands found them and held his face close to my own. “You’re alive,” I murmured.
“Me?”He laughed, raw and rough.
Someone chuckled behind us through tears. It sounded like Griffin.
Kane sat us both up a bit and brushed the ash and snow from my cheeks. But I couldn’t let go. Couldn’t stop grasping at him. When I convulsed involuntarily against the cold, Kane’s eyes left mine and fell elsewhere. Whoever he’d looked at rushed over and placed a warm cloak across my bare body.
The soft reddish fur smelled of clove and cinnamon and…
“Mari,” I croaked, sitting up a little.
Mari’s brown eyes were wide. Wider than I’d ever seen them. “Welcome back.”
I scrambled from Kane’s lap, wrapping the cloak tighter, and threw myself at my friend.
“How is this possible?” Griffin murmured somewhere behind us. “We watched her…”
Mari released me long enough to turn to him and Kane. “Her shifted form—a phoenix—will always rise from its ashes.”
“So I…can’t die?” I was in too much shock to wrap my mind around the gravity of those words.
But Mari shook her head and held me to her once more. “Only in your shifted form you can’t.”
And this time I didn’t ask her how she knew so much. I only held her tighter.
When we’d held each other so long my tears had frozen on my face, Kane insisted on taking me somewhere warmer.
Through a tumult of cries for the dead and victory songs, past barrels of ale being rolled across snow and moaning bodies hefted on stretchers, we marched home. Women cried as children embraced their fathers at the knees, and boisterous teens, hanging from the remains of the sentry towers, rained liquor down onto soldiers below.
Shadowhold had survived.
Not without loss. Not without mourners and wheelbarrows filled with fallen men. But when I couldn’t tear my eyes from the blood-spattered brick walls or our beautiful wrought iron warped by salamander flame, Kane took my hand and said, “We’ll rebuild.”
“Ravenwood.”
I turned at that familiar voice, as did Kane.
Aleksander appraised us, ice-blond hair stained red, rusty eyes glowing brighter than usual. “You look like death itself.”
Kane only shrugged his shoulders smoothly.
I said nothing. Too tired to snip with the Hemolich. I knew how much power coursed through his veins with all the carnage surrounding us. I had no energy left for a fight. I wanted to see my siblings.
But Kane spoke first. “The deal we made, you must know—”
Aleksander interrupted with a raised brow. “What deal?” His ruby eyes finally left Kane’s to land on my own with cold curiosity.
