When he asked so sweetly, how could she say no?
"Only because you're pretty," she replied, making him laugh.
Maia stole another kiss as Azrail climbed off the bed and she got up in search of clothes. Everything in the drawer she'd been given was second hand, and none of the pieces were trulyhers, but she couldn't complain no matter how badly she wanted her own wardrobe. She was free, she didn't have a cuff of iron on her wing, and she wasn't dead. She really ought to have been dead after everything she'd been through, but somehow she'd gotten lucky.
Or rather, she had saints on her side.
Az helped her with the awkward task of dressing with her wings on display—and one severely poisoned by iron, blackness spreading from the piercing site—and he very gallantly opened the door for her when they were both presentable.
Within seconds, it became clear that something had happened, and something big. Maia and Az exchanged a look, tension hanging in the hall between them as they headed to the ground floor and the courtyard where his rebels congregated for training.
"What is it?" Azrail called the second they were outside, wind blasting cold at them through the open top of the square.
A knot unravelled in Maia's chest when Jaro jogged over, the sight of her elegant, red-headed mate instantly calming. But her peace evaporated when he said, "It's Ilysen in Venhaus."
"What?" Maia asked, touching his freckled arm to ground herself. "Have beastkind gone missing from there, too?"
"No." Jaro's beautiful face was pale, his jade eyes wide. "It's gone. It's been completely decimated."