Page 86 of Wings of Ashes
Fuck. No, not now, he begged his body. He took Professor Bowen’s daily potion to slow his inner organs from transforming into lifeless stone. He had never had pain at night before.
Étienne Thierry clutched a hand over his left pec and groaned as something inside him shifted. An internal earthquake followed by an avalanche. “Not now,” he grated, slumping over slightly.
Panic-stricken, Nix asked, “What?”
A burning sensation occurred behind his ribs, and the professor fell to his knees. “Fuck.”
It had never felt this close to his heart before. Could he really be minutes from fully turning to stone? Seconds from never taking another breath and losing everything?
He grabbed Nix’s hand and weaved his fingers with hers.
If these are to be my last moments…
He gazed upon her and blinked in mild, pained confusion. “Your hair is…red.”
Moonlight highlighted Nix’s form in her light blue nightgown and shone a haze of reddish orange over her frizzy hair. Wavy, mussed curls of fiery amber red. Her blue eyes were now circles of bronze, speckled with liquid gold.
Even her face looked entirely different, but he recognized her still asher.
A goddess stands before me.
The sight of her felt bewitching.
Étienne’s heart wrenched.If I have seconds left… On his knees, he pressed the back of her palm to his lips, kissing the smooth skin.
“I vow to protect you, even if only in the afterlife,” he rasped.
Her scent perfumed onto him and buzzed over his skin, where the silver sheen darkened.
“Afterlife?” she gasped out and fell to her knees in front of him. “Étienne, no,fight it.”
That strawberry marshmallow scent was different tonight.
A third hint of something new. Something palpable and powerful and…
Ginger and cardamom. The addition to her scent pierced right through him.
His heart clenched and stopped beating.
MATE.
He sucked in a deep breath of her newly spiced scent and was again slammed with the sensation of every bone in his body breaking and mending itself.
His heartbeat sounded again, different this time. What had always resembled ticking now sounded more like a lively drum.
MATE.
His stone wings stretched out and vibrated as he felt the constant chill withdraw from his veins, leaving him warm.I have found her. My curse is lifted.He would live.Shewas his reason to live.
“Miss Oadess,” he mumbled on his knees before her. One of his palms shot up to cup her face. “You have no idea what you’ve just set free.”
MATE.
His pupils dilated into big spheres of charcoal gray. Inhaling more of her spiced, tart, and smoky scent, he leaned forward and slid his hand into her hair.
As a gargoyle shifter who had finally found his mate, he now knew what it really meant to be hard as stone.
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