He moved around in front of me, pulled his wrist from my grip only to cup my face and life my head.
“Roland, this is silly. You need my?—”
“No!” Birds scattered from a nearby bush at my shout, and there was something about the rustling of the last dry leaves clinging to branches that was more concrete than the screeching bugs.
I could feel Aderyn’s disappointment in the way his fingers curled against my face. “Let me take care of you,” he pleaded.
Knowing the sadness I’d see swimming in his green eyes, the same ache he’d shown when he found out the truth about me, I looked at him. I had to face it all.
“You have.” My eyes stung, and I blinked quickly. “You have, but I cannot cross this line, Aderyn. I’ll lose myself.”
Everything about the man I’d wanted to be would be gone if Ieverhurt him.
“It’s all right,” Aderyn promised, rocking forward on the balls of his feet so that he could press his forehead against mine. “I’ll be all right.”
I shook my head. My stomach rolled and the world tipped again. He was the only solid thing within it, but when I gripped his hips, I could feel the pulse of his heartbeat beneath his skin.
Claws sprouted from my fingertips, the shivering sensation of skin turning to scales.
I trembled, straining to hold the monster back.
Aderyn wasn’t for that beast.
Not him.
Never him.
I was desperate, reaching for something to anchor myself to other than my best friend. Anything to distract me.
Where had the bugs gone?
And then I felt it—clay buried deep, the song of soil.
For the first time in more than a decade, I felt the earth beneath my feet as something alive. It hummed under the soles of my boots.
It was the warmth of my childhood bed.
The safety of Tristram’s arms once I’d learned what a real father looked like.
The surety of a crown and a throne and the support of all Llangard around me.
It was the magic of the earth that had allowed Gillian to save us all, that I had barely touched before the blood had stolen it.
Now, I threw myself into it with everything I had. Not claws, but earth. Not scales, but stone.
Yes, that. A blessed stillness. A marvelous quiet.
And for the first time in so many years, not even the ghost of hunger haunted me.
24
ADERYN
Stone.
Roland had literally turned into stone, right before my eyes.
One moment he’d been trying to deny me, telling me he didn’t need my help—I wanted to think because he was trying to protect me—and the next he was made of pale, smooth, nearly translucent stone.
