Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(61)



Wren looks at her silently for a moment, studies her. Aurora feels pinned to the spot by Wren’s dark eyes, which seem suddenly like portals into a dream Aurora can never know. For the first time in a long time, Aurora is afraid. Afraid that Wren cannot love her—not after all that she has done. How she tried to kill Wren, allowing the evil that had been gathering within her to take over, all in the desire to win, to hurt, to conquer. How she has failed her in almost every way.

Finally Wren lets out a breath and looks away, shaking her head. “I can’t blame you for what you could not help.”

It is not the outpouring of forgiveness Aurora had hoped for; nor is it the fear and hatred she might have expected. Aurora nods. “Tell me everything. I will listen.”

She brings Wren back to her room, and as they settle onto her bed—not like old friends, exactly, but like how she imagines two soldiers must feel after they’ve fought side by side—she feels a zing of shock at how different this is from the last time the girl came to her room, stormy and cold, blaming her for the fall of Sommeil. Perhaps rightly.

Wren is usually right. That is one of the things Aurora has, in just a short time, grown to love about her. The word “love,” just the thought of the word, sends warmth radiating through her.

But when Wren has finished her story, Aurora swallows hard, her joy at reconnecting suddenly plunged into ice water. “The curse . . . the stone . . .”

Wren nods. “Yes. It is you. It must be. You’re the descendant of Belcoeur. You’re the reason I’m dying.”

Aurora gasps, still unwilling to believe it. “No. You can’t be dying. We’ve only just been reunited.”

Suddenly she wants—needs—to touch her. To feel the stone, to understand. To feel the life behind and within it. Could she really be the cause of such a curse? It’s too terrible to comprehend—the idea of Wren’s life ending when it feels like everything is only just at the point of beginning.

There is so much still to share with Wren—so many stories, so many memories. She wants to tell it all with her mouth and her breath and when those are tired and wasted, she will tell it with her skin against Wren’s.

But they may be out of time.

So instead, Aurora simply takes Wren’s hand. There is a whole world between her palm and Wren’s, she realizes—a world that feels bigger, full of more promise, than the real world and Sommeil put together.

She looks into Wren’s eyes. “Let me fight, then. I can give my life to save yours.” The words grate against her throat and she swallows hard, blinking down a sudden rise of emotion.

Wren lets go of her hand—a whoosh of coldness—mended, then, when her hand moves instead to Aurora’s cheek. Aurora could swear she feels a flush of the dark magic given to her by Malfleur seeping out of her at that touch. Wren’s breathing has become louder, labored, and Aurora suddenly wonders if it is because the stone has, already, begun to take over her lungs. Her lips are parted, just slightly. “Aurora,” she whispers.

And though there is so much to say and everything feels impossible, and though the castle is even now being bombarded from the outside, vibrations loudly thrumming through the walls, Aurora can think of nothing beyond this moment, beyond Wren’s eyes, the seriousness in them, and something else too—something that matches what Aurora is feeling.

She meets Wren’s lips with her own, sucks in a breath at the sudden rise of heat and pressure as Wren moves up against her, kissing her back. Aurora’s hands become lost in Wren’s hair, as though her hands are themselves two lovers running off into the woods.

When they pull apart, Wren carefully removes Aurora’s armor, and Aurora shivers. An explosion ricochets outside the tower walls, and she feels it echo within her as Wren touches her bare skin. All the stories until now have failed her. She doesn’t know what love is, or whether it is possible that it is anything other than the aching combination of touch and loss—but for the first time, she’s convinced that she doesn’t have to understand it.

They lie tangled together, the moment melting and seeping into a blur of moments, all of them urgent, until Aurora sits up with a rush of knowing.

She recalls the glass fox Malfleur commanded her to break. It was impossible—but why did Malfleur want to break it, and why couldn’t she? Aurora had been so focused on her need to kill the evil queen that she hadn’t thought much about it. But now the memory makes her think of the Hart Slayer, who was said to have possessed magical glass objects. Arrowheads, if she’s not mistaken.

“What is it?” Wren murmurs. There are tears at the corners of her eyes. Outside, the battle has still only just begun. It feels as though hours have passed when it can only have been minutes.

“The Hart Slayer may have been a woman, but she was not my mother,” Aurora says. “I know it. Queen Amélie was many things, but she was not brave.” An image comes back to her, of the queen in her dying days, lying in her bed, so cold and remote—how she failed to be everything Aurora hoped she’d be. “She had a weak constitution,” Aurora says, “and preferred never to be outdoors.”

Aurora knows the myth of the Hart Slayer. And by now she’s heard too of the rumors of Isabelle’s glass slipper.

“No, it was not my mother who was the Hart Slayer,” Aurora repeats with more confidence. She begins to dress herself, putting her armor back on, knowing there is much to be done before they can consider giving up. “I’m not the descendant Deluce needs.” Wren blinks at her in confusion, but for once, Aurora feels the strange kind of calm that comes with certainty. “But I think I know who is.”

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