But he hadn’t remembered just how stunning she was until she’d taken off her hood earlier, and it had struck him stupid.
These weeks apart had been a brutal reminder of what life had been like until he had found her drunk and broken on that rooftop in Varese. The nightmares had started the very night she’d left—such relentless dreams that he’d nearly vomited when he flung himself out of them, Lyria’s screaming ringing in his ears. The memory of it sent cold licking down his spine. But even that was burned away by the queen before him.
Aelin was well on her way to wearing a track in the rug before the fireplace.
“If that’s any indication of what to expect from our court,” Rowan said at last, flexing his fingers in an attempt to dislodge the hollow shakiness he hadn’t been able to master since his magic had been smothered, “then we’ll never have a dull moment.”
She flung out a hand in a dismissive wave of irritation. “Don’t tease me right now.” She scrubbed at her face and huffed a breath.
Rowan waited, knowing she was gathering the words, hating the pain and sorrow and guilt on every line of her body. He’d sell his soul to the dark god to never have her look like that again.
“Every time I turn around,” she said, approaching the bed and leaning against the carved post, “I feel like I’m one wrong move or word away from leading them to ruin. People’s lives—your life—depend on me. There’s no room for error.”
There it was, the weight that had been slowly crushing her. It killed him that he’d have to add to it when he told her the news he carried—the reason he’d disobeyed her first order to him.
He could offer her nothing but the truth. “You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won’t be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don’t need to tell you that you can do this—you know you can. I wouldn’t have sworn the oath to you if I didn’t think you could.”
She slid onto the bed beside him, her scent caressing him. Jasmine, and lemon verbena, and crackling embers. Elegant, feminine, and utterly wild. Warm, and steadfast—unbreakable, his queen.
Save for the weakness they both shared: that bond between them.
For in his nightmares, he sometimes heard Maeve’s voice over the crack of a whip, cunning and cold. Not for all the world, Aelin? But what about for Prince Rowan?
He tried not to think about it: the fact that Aelin would hand over one of the Wyrdkeys for him. He locked that knowledge up so tightly that it could escape only in his dreams, or when he woke reaching across a cold bed for a princess who was thousands of miles away.
Aelin shook her head. “It was so much easier being alone.”
“I know,” he said, clamping down on the instinct to sling his arm around her shoulders and tuck her in close. He focused on listening to the city around them instead.
He could hear more than mortal ears, but the wind no longer sang its secrets to him. He no longer felt it tugging at him. And stuck in his Fae body, unable to shift … Caged. Restless. Made worse by the fact that he couldn’t shield this apartment from any enemy attacks while they were here.
Not powerless, he reminded himself. He had been bound head to toe in iron before and had still killed. He could keep this apartment secure—the old-fashioned way. He was just … off-balance. At a time when being off-balance could be fatal to her.
For a while, they sat there in silence.
“I said some appalling things to him,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, unable to help the growl. “He said some equally appalling things to you. Your tempers are evenly matched.”
She let out a breathy chuckle. “Tell me about the fortress—what it was like when you went back to help rebuild.”
So he did, until he got to the knowledge he’d been holding in all night.
“Just say it,” she said, with a direct, unyielding sort of look. He wondered if she realized that for all she complained about his alpha nonsense, she was pure-blooded alpha herself.
Rowan took a long breath. “Lorcan’s here.”
She straightened. “That’s why you came.”
Rowan nodded. And why keeping his distance was the smarter move; Lorcan was wicked and cunning enough to use their bond against them. “I caught his scent sneaking around near Mistward and tracked it to the coast, then onto a ship. I picked up his trail when I docked this evening.” Her face was pale, and he added, “I made sure to cover my tracks before hunting you down.”
Over five centuries old, Lorcan was the strongest male in the Fae realm, equal only to Rowan himself. They’d never been true friends, and after the events of a few weeks ago, Rowan would have liked nothing more than to slit the male’s throat for leaving Aelin to die at the hands of the Valg princes. He might very well get the chance to do that—soon.
“He doesn’t know you well enough to immediately pick up your scent,” Rowan went on. “I’d bet good money that he got on that boat just to drag me here so I’d lead him to you.” But it was better than letting Lorcan find her while he remained in Wendlyn.
Aelin swore with creative colorfulness. “Maeve probably thinks we’ll also lead him right to the third Wyrdkey. Do you think she gave him the order to put us down—either to get the key, or afterward?”
“Maybe.” The thought was enough to shoot icy rage through him. “I won’t let that happen.”
Her mouth quirked to the side. “You think I could take him?”
“If you had your magic, possibly.” Irritation rippled in her eyes—enough so that he knew something else nagged at her. “But without magic, in your human form … You’d be dead before you could draw your sword.”
“He’s that good.”
He gave her a slow nod.
She looked him over with an assassin’s eye. “Could you take him?”
“It’d be so destructive, I wouldn’t risk it. You remember what I told you about Sollemere.” Her face tightened at the mention of the city he and Lorcan had obliterated at Maeve’s request nearly two centuries ago. It was a stain that would forever linger, no matter what he told himself about how corrupt and evil its residents had been. “Without our magic, it’s hard to call who’d win. It would depend on who wanted it more.”
Lorcan, with his unending cold rage and a talent for killing gifted to him by Hellas himself, never allowed himself to lose. Battles, riches, females—Lorcan always won, at any cost. Once, Rowan might have let him win, let Lorcan end him just to put a stop to his own miserable life, but now … “Lorcan makes a move against you, and he dies.”
She didn’t blink at the violence that laced every word. Another part of him—a part that had been knotted from the moment she left—uncoiled like some wild animal stretching out before a fire. Aelin cocked her head. “Any idea where he’d hide?”
“None. I’ll start hunting him tomorrow.”
“No,” she said. “Lorcan will easily find us without you hunting him. But if he expects me to lead him to the third key so he can bring it back to Maeve, then maybe …” He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. She let out a hum. “I’ll think about that tomorrow. Do you think Maeve wants the key merely to keep me from using it, or to use it herself?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Both, then.” Aelin sighed. “The question is, will she try to use us to hunt down the other two keys, or does she have another one of your cadre out searching for them now?”
“Let’s hope she hasn’t sent anyone else.”
“If Gavriel knew that Aedion is his son …” She glanced toward the bedroom door, guilt and pain flickering on her lovely features. “Would he follow Maeve, even if it meant hurting or killing Aedion in the process? Is her control over him that strong?”
It had been a shock earlier to realize whose son lounged at the kitchen table. “Gavriel …” He’d seen the warrior with lovers over the centuries, and seen him leave them at Maeve’s order. He’d also seen him ink the names of his fallen men onto his flesh. And of all his cadre, only Gavriel had stopped that night to help Aelin against the Valg.
“Don’t answer now,” Aelin cut in with a yawn. “We should go to bed.”
Rowan had surveyed every inch of the apartment within moments of arriving, but he asked as casually as he could, “Where should I sleep?”
She patted the bed behind them. “Just like old times.”
He clenched his jaw. He’d been bracing himself for this all night—for weeks now. “It’s not like the fortress, where no one thinks twice about it.”
“And what if I want you to stay in here with me?”
He didn’t allow those words to sink in fully, the idea of being in that bed. He’d worked too damn hard at shutting out those thoughts. “Then I’ll stay. On the couch. But you need to be clear to the others about what my staying in here means.”
There were so many lines that needed to be held. She was off-limits—completely off-limits, for about a dozen different reasons. He’d thought he would be able to deal with it, but—