Page 72 of Even Angels fall
“What is she doing?” I mouth to Cassiopé.
They were gone for hours this morning, but they came back a while ago. There is no reason she shouldn’t be here by now.
As if I had summoned her, the double doors from theparvisopen, and here she is.
Oh. My. Freaking. God.
Here. She. Is.
I wasn’t prepared.
I had thought she would look perfect in one of the dresses that Cassiopé helped me pick, but I definitely didn’t know what I would be missing out on.
I don’t think anyone else was prepared, either.
Because the Angélique who walks into Notre Dame is every bit the queen that she is.
She’s wearing a low-cut bustier, with a long skirt flowing around her legs, and as she walks, the slit shows me glimpses of her toned legs.
But what is truly astonishing is what she did to the dress. And there is no denying that she modified the dress, because I recognize it.
It used to be white, but it’s a dress that I had picked for her. It hadn’t been my favorite, but now that I see her in it, I know the image will haunt me every day and every night.
Because how could it not? She’s dyed the dress to the darkest black I’ve ever seen, swallowing all the light around her and making the gold in which she dipped the bottom of the dress shine brightly. It doesn’t help that her wings are still out, too, and that they’re shimmering under the midday sun through the rose windows of the church.
She looks like an apparition, and not for the first time since I saw her on theparvislast night, I want to tear off her clothes and mark her as mine.
It might be the first time that thought belongs only to me, though.
My dragon has been awfully silent since her father arrived. Boiling inside at the thought of what she threw at me when she was only covered in my clothes.
Michaël is the reason for all her torments, but I can’t kill him on sight. And oh god, do I wish to do exactly that, but that’s not an option for now.
He came prepared for any kind of threat; the bride’s side filled with an army of birds is proof enough of that. Keeping Léandre right next to him might be proof, too.
But at least he kept my dragon busy, and what I thought was only due to the beast feels like my own need now.
I’ve found Angélique pretty. I’ve found her fragile, and I’ve wanted to protect her, even if it was from myself.
All of that with or without dragon instincts.
But right in this instant, all I can see is a fierce woman that I’d like to fuck on every surface of this church, and that single thought shakes me to my core.
Because she’s not just a pretty doll, no, she’s so much more, and I might want my wife, after all.
Which means I’m doomed.
I’m doomed, and I might not want to be saved,I think to myself as I hold my hand out for Angélique to take as she joins me in front of the priest.
He’s human and was warned in advance that Angélique might arrive with her wings out, but that didn’t prevent him from crossing himself twice since she had entered Notre Dame. Still, he acts as if nothing is amiss for him and starts talking to the people present in the cathedral about our wedding.
“Nice colors, Little Devil,” I whisper to her, keeping my voice so low that I know the birds won’t hear it from where they stand. The bats will, but that doesn’t matter much.
She turns her head slightly to her right to catch the profile of her father before she mutters as low as I did, “I hate white.”
There is a hint of fragility in those words, and I realize it must have cost her to say those words out loud.
The archangels.
