Page 85 of Wings of Ashes
She flung the chair into the glass window. Again. And again.
“Break, damn you!” she yelled.
The flames spread in her room, seeming to create a trail right for her.
“I willnotdie in here.” She threw the chair at the window.
It broke. Barely.
The second a shard fell and formed a wide hole in the window, the fire intensified in the room. It was so damn hot.
Nix sweated as she chipped away at the glass with the chair. Finally, she broke a wide enough section that she could crawl through.My dorm is on the fifth floor. She shoved the thought away to deal with after she got halfway out the window.
Then, she remembered.
“Professor Thierry,” she screamed as she maneuvered halfway through the window.
The professor had admitted to standing on the top of the academy buildings, late at night, unable to sleep.
Shards of broken glass bit into her stomach and hips as she yelled, “Professor Thierry! Help!”
She hated to scream for his help, but she felt heat settle near her ankles. She quickly raised her legs from the flames.Helplessly, she crawled further out of the window, trying to grip onto a ledge or anything, so she would not fall immediately.
“Professor Thierry! I take back what I said before. Help,” she shrieked in fear. “Étienne,” she desperately called out his first name as she began to slip.
Gravity pulled her down.
“Professor Thierry!”his name was screamed from a blanket of darkness. It washervoice. Shrieking in fear.
Where?Was she in the forest again, alone? Being attacked?
No, the sound was coming from…
He jumped from the tower of the west wing roof, and his stone wings shot out from his back, ripping through his dress shirt. Incredibly fast, he swept down and shot forward to fly around to the east dormitories.
“Étienne!”
His first name?
I am coming.
He saw Nix Oadess, tumbling out of a fifth-floor window, falling in scraps of a nightgown. Falling toward the ground. She was not an alpha predator shifter with supernatural healing abilities; she was a prey.
She could die.
His wings expanded and shot him forward as he reached for her.
She cannot die.He would not let her.If she dies, she will fail my class.
Her body slammed into him upon impact as he scooped her falling form into his arms and shot up in the air to avoid crashing into the hard ground.
With several swoops of his stone wings, defying gravity, he lifted them both onto the roof of the dorm building.
“Are you hurt?” He set her down on her feet. “What happened? Why would you try to jump from your window—”
“Fire,” she yelled and pointed down to where he had grabbed her. “My room is on fire. We need to stop it. It could grow and burn other rooms!”
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry, I will—” Something painfully cramped in his chest.
