Chapter 18
Rowan
Reece catches me before I can hit the ground, steadying me on my feet while power continues to course through me.
Like lightning trapped beneath my skin. It's so potent it hurts, but the headache I once felt is gone completely.
I stare at my hand, then at the rusted powder that once used to be steel.
“Nice trick,” Reece says quietly.
“Goddess help us.” Viera's face is pale as she lifts her chin, her golden eyes flashing between fear and hate. “Goddess help us wipe you from this plane.”
Before I can answer, Viera whistles loudly and shifts into wolf form, her and the other wolves melting into the trees.
The retreat is swift and coordinated, the entire cobalt vanishing completely into the forest's embrace before Logan reaches me a few heartbeats later.
His powerful frame moves with that predatory grace of his despite the blood streaking his clothes.
"Rowan." My name is a growl on Logan’s lips as he drops to one knee beside me, his hands running over my shoulders and ribs and hips. Reece steps away at once, putting a good two paces of distance between us. Logan’s gaze sweeps over me frantically, cataloging every tear in my dress, every scrape on my skin.
“Where are you hurt? What did that bitch Viera do to you?”
“What did Viera do?” a male voice demands. Talyn. He sounds displeased. Or maybe frightened. His patrol flanks him, hands and scabbards all empty of weapons. “What did that alchemist do?”
“More importantly, is she done doing it?” someone else calls.
“She better be,” another one offers.
“Is it even safe for us to let her remain conscious?”
Logan’s nostrils flare, his furious snarl so menacing that even Talyn takes a step away. “Touch her and die,” Logan twists to glare at every warrior still standing. “Is anyone less than clear on that?”
A muscle ticks in Talyn’s jaw. “I think the more salient question is whether the rest of our army has any steel left with which to fight. What the bloody hell did you do, Lady Rowan?”
“I…” I sigh and go with one of Ellie’s rules to live by: when all else fails try the truth. “I have absolutely no idea. Viera was about to strike Reece down. I was trying to stop her. Then… dust.” I hold up my hand, still covered in rust colored particles that were once a dagger.
“You’re shaking.” Logan’s hand curls around my wrist gently.
The way the magic keeps pulsing though me, the aftershocks sparking down my spine like live wires, I’m surprised I’m not spontaneously combusting. Every breath I take feels too big, too bright. It’s exhilarating and terrifying and exhausting all at the same time. “I’m fine.”
Of course my traitorous body chooses that exact moment to buckle at the knees. Logan wraps an arm around my back and rises to his feet with me cradled against his chest like I weigh nothing at all.
“I can walk,” I protest as Logan starts back toward the clearing with the ceremonial flame.
“Good to know.” Logan manages to brush a lock of hair from my face while still holding me against him. His heart pounds so hard that I can feel it where our bodies touch.
“So maybe put me down?”
"I would, but it seems that last time you went wondering you took away all the toys from Theron’s little army and they are still sore about it.”
Talyn glares at Logan over his shoulder.
I consider protesting again but the truth is that I’m not sure I can walk just now.
Not without face planting into the dirt.
Instead, I focus on filling the others in on the details while I still remember them.
The summoning voice I’d heard in my head, the pull to the clearing, the questioning.
By the time we reach the edge of the main clearing, Logan’s rage is palpable and Talyn…
Talyn has his face schooled into a mask I cannot read.
“You’re safe now,” Logan murmurs against my neck. “No one touches you. Not again.”
An important claim from a kidnapper, my mind supplies in answer but there is little heat behind the thought.
Maybe because exhaustion is now seeping into every part of my body or because Logan sounds like he genuinely believes his own impossible promise.
“Where is Kai?” I say instead, ensuring my voice is loud enough to be heard by the sentries.
“He and Prince Kyrian are flying with the draken patrol,” Talyn says tersely.
“They are on their way back,” Logan adds. “Nyx told their draken what happened.”
Right. Because draken and their riders have fireside chats.
My head rests against Logan’s shoulder, his warmth grounding me as the power inside me slowly dwindles from a storm to a simmer and the cold starts to sip into my bones.
The weight of what I’d just done—and what it might mean—is finally starting to crush down on me as well.
Not that the crushing brings any answers with it.
“This is a nightmare.” Talyn stops beside three dead bodies in ceremonial robes, his silver eyes moving from one corpse to the next. The soldiers have laid them out in a line, unveiling their faces. Talyn’s lips work silently for a moment before he speaks, his voice heavy with regret.
"I know these fae.” Talyn crouches down to close the eyes of a large male who I’m pretty sure was one of the strong arms holding my head underwater.
"Xaelen. He and his mate served under my father for three decades until some humans shot an auric steel arrow into her.
She begged Xaelen to put her out of her misery at the end.
And Mira..." Talyn crouches beside a female whose hood has fallen away to reveal delicate features.
"She lost two cubs to auric steel poisoning last winter.
" He straightens slowly and glowers. “Warriors who've bled for Flurry, who've sacrificed everything for our people, had to die tonight.
And for what?" His hand gestures toward me dismissively.
"To protect the architect of their children's suffering. It’s a travesty.”
“They died because you have a cabal of Dark Wolves roving around your ranks that you knew nothing about,” the venom in Logan’s voice is palpable. “Led by one of your top captains.”
“How far did that magic of hers extend?” Talyn asks. “Is our entire army without steel?”
Everyone’s attention turns to me and I swallow. I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. Not even close. Didn’t even know this was possible.
“Why don’t you go check,” says Logan and tilts his head, as if he’s talking to someone else.
Probably the owner of the huge shadow that’s flowing over us.
I dare a glance up and see the shimmer of wings above the canopy of trees.
Logan condescends a glance back at Talyn.
“And while you are at it, have Rowan’s tent brought over to the draken fields. We are done here.”
"Now look here—” Talyn starts, but something in Logan’s face makes him change his tone mid-word. "Prince Theron's accommodations are perfectly—"
"- compromised," Logan shifts his grip on me. “Those were his people—his captain—attacking knee deep in illicit magic. Rowan isn’t stepping a foot back in your camp until Prince Kai himself says so.”
He walks off with me without waiting for an answer, only snarling softly when Reece falls in step beside us. The blood on his face has dried to dark crimson streaks and he limps as he walks.
“That was more magic than I’ve seen anyone—and I mean any immortal—use at once,” Reece says.
“Fascinating.” Logan gives Reece the kind of look usually reserved for excrement. “When I want to know more about your vast experience, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Stop.” I put a hand on Logan’s shoulder, the one that he is keeping stiff despite trying to give an appearance of full health. “Him healing you is probably the only reason I’m still alive.”
“You turned steel to sand,” Reece says. “You’d have been fine. Though I do wonder why Logan’s draken left him to die. Perhaps the draken finally realized the kind of male he’s bonded and wants out.”
An angry screech sounds from the sky.
“Rut off,” Logan tells Reece. “Or don’t. Nyx is hungry and you look crunchy.”
Reece opens his mouth, then glances to the sky and turns.
“You are going to be exhausted," he tells me over his shoulder before walking off, his gaze brushing over me with concern. “That’s normal. But if it’s worse than just that, if you get a fever, you need a healer. The amount of magic you used—it could have burned you out.”
“What’s with you two?” I ask once Reece is out of earshot.
Logan says nothing for a few heartbeats, his attention seemingly consumed with picking his way through the trail.
Now that we are alone, I feel his body relax slightly.
Just when I think I’d do better to let the question go, Logan finally speaks.
“Wolf shifters live in packs, with a kind of hierarchy that makes the Spire’s convention seem like children’s games.
I’m what’s called a stray omega—a wolf without any pack at all. A shamed outcast.”
“Or a pack of one.” I nuzzle his shoulder, taking in Logan’s familiar woodsy scent.
“That’s not how it works, rabbit.” Logan’s voice is quiet. “I had a pack once. But we were weak, so we were prey. A stronger pack caught and culled us. I was too small to fight but instead of culling me with the others, their alpha kept me alive.”
“As a kindness?” I ask, though I have a feeling I know the answer.
Moonlight sharpens the angles of his face, the tension in his body bleeding into mine. “As a warning to the others. “A breathing symbol of my pack's failure, existing solely to showcase the consequences of weakness.“
Fuck. They kept a child alive as a trophy. And I thought my mother was brutal. “You couldn’t leave?”
“Not until I was old enough to challenge the alpha. Which I did. And lost. More than once.” Logan’s attempt at a smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Turns out being the pack’s punching bag doesn’t prepare you for singleton combat.”
He stops talking as the path opens onto a wide, sloping meadow ringed on three sides by low hills and copses of silver-barked trees that shimmer faintly in the moonlight.
The air is thick with the scent of musk and wildflowers and something undeniably primal—sulfur and scale and sky.
“Turns out it does prepare you for other things though.” A corner of Logan’s mouth twitches and this time the emotion is real.
“Turns out it’s great training for the draken trials. ”
Before I can follow up on that, the giant thing in the sky that had been keeping us company, swoops down toward us, his massive wings blocking out entire constellations as he banks.
“So… Nyx is a friendly sort of draken?” I ask, trying to convince my suddenly racing heart to slow in case fear was a kind of condiment the draken enjoyed.
“Eh… no.”
The draken comes in for its landing, powerful haunches bunching as it settles onto the ground with surprising grace for a creature the size of a small building. Nyx’s scales shimmer with an iridescence that seems to absorb rather than reflect the moonlight, creating the impression of a living void.
I grip Logan’s shirt, preventing him from setting me down.
Nyx folds his wings against his body with a sound like canvas snapping in a gale—a gesture that flattens a nearby sapling with casual, terrifying strength.
"Nyx," Logan says, his voice carrying a note of weary affection. "This is Rowan."
The draken's great head swivels toward me, steam hissing from between dagger-like teeth. Golden eyes narrow to slits of molten fire and stare at me with the kind of assessment usually reserved for potential threats.
Or meals.
So this is the little alchemist who's caused all the fuss, a mental voice dripping with disdain suddenly says inside my mind. She looks half-dead already. Hardly seems worth the effort of keeping her breathing.
"Nyx-”
What? I'm simply observing that your mate appears to be defective. Perhaps you should have chosen better.