Alice froze.
Every part of her stopped at once, wings, legs, breath, because his fingers were closed around the root of the wing where the red-gold thread met her back, and there was only one reason to take hold of a wing there.
Then she fought like an animal.
She kicked against the rubble, thrashed her whole body against his arm, and the feathers along both wings snapped rigid and lashed back at him, dozens of black edges whipping at his face and chest. Every feather that touched the air around him came apart. They disintegrated in rings, ash bursting off her wings with each stroke, and his grip never moved.
James pulled.
The wing came out of her back.
It tore from the base, wet and heavy, the malformed bone and the red-gold tissue and the joint that had grown back wrong, all of it, and Alice's scream went through the hall and up into the dark above the throne and hung there. James threw the wing aside. It hit the floor near the ruined statues and lay twitching.
