Page 34 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

“ S moke .”

Nix jerked awake from the dream only to wish this were the dream.

Because her dorm room was on fire.

Flames licked up her bed frame, lighting up the painted letters of WHORE. She jolted away and tumbled off the bed to avoid any burns.

On the floor, she saw the cloud of smoke accumulating at her ceiling. Stunned and fumbling to stand, she froze when she saw how many flames danced in front of her door.

She would have to walk through several feet of blazing fire to get to the doorknob to escape.

I would be covered in burns. Possibly not even make it out.

She quickly bolted to her window. A burst of air would grow the fire, but she needed to get out. She fingered the latch of the window and found there was a bolt missing. Shit . Had it always been missing? Was it part of the damage from the gang breaking into her room earlier?

What if they had come back while she was sleeping and lit the fire? Suddenly, the paint and torn clothes were laughable in comparison. Is someone trying to kill me?

Frantic, she pushed and shoved, trying to lift the bottom window to get out. The broken metal latch made it nearly impossible to open the window.

I won’t die here .

She was all out of tears as she screamed at the thick glass and charged at it. Her shoulder ached instantly from the impact. Turning, she grabbed her desk chair, pulling it from the spreading flames.

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 will not die 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 was her voice. 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.

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 as her .

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. She was 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.