Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
Adelasia
“You’re holding it too tightly,” Rowan says from behind me.
I let out a frustrated groan. “Easy for you to say, bird boy. You let your magic slip and every woman within a mile gets on her knees. I let it slip, and I’ll burn this courtyard to the ground.”
“So burn it,” he says. “Trust me, I understand the fear, but clenching onto it won’t subdue it, it will only wear you out and make it easier to break you.”
He steps closer, boots soft on the moss-covered stones. I feel the shift in the air before I feel him. His magic is different than mine. Warmer. Older. Tempting in the way floating is—like if I surrender to the current, he might keep me afloat.
“Breathe,” he says.
I do. Inhale. Exhale. The magic shivers.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, voice low behind me. “Now again.”
Another breath. Another pulse.
It sings inside me, beautiful and wicked. I’m not sure which of us it’s responding to anymore. Me, or him.
“Good girl,” he whispers. “Now direct it outward, slowly, instead of keeping it coiled inside.”
I exhale, and a black tendril of magic lashes out and shatters the stone bench across the courtyard. I rub my face in my palms, exasperated. I was supposed to move the bench, not break it.
I look at Rowan, expecting to find him horrified or frustrated with me too. His expression is unreadable at first. Then, softly, he smiles.
“Try again,” he says. “You can do it.”
We train for hours. I lose track of time the way I always did when I danced—surrendering to the rhythm of movement and breath.
It’s not that I trust Rowan fully. But I trust this. The clarity he offers. I’ve never been able to use this magic around Kaius. I’m too afraid it’ll hurt him. That it’ll hurt us.
But Rowan doesn’t flinch. He never has.
Not when the rot darkens up my wrist. Not when I cry out in frustration and scorch the weeds growing in the courtyard. Not when I collapse to my knees, ready to give up, and whisper that I’m afraid of what I’ve become.
He just kneels beside me, breath slow, eyes soft.
“You are something new,” he says. “But new doesn’t make you unlovable.”
My throat tightens. I don’t know what to say to that.
Later, after I’ve washed the soot from my skin, I catch Rowan still watching me. Not like a predator. Not like a lover, either.
Like someone studying a new constellation he hasn’t yet named.
“You care about him,” he says.
“Kaius?” What a stupid question. “I love him. Of course I care about him.”
“And what about him?” he asks. “Do you think he still loves you?”
“What a cruel thing to ask. Of course he does.” I sigh. “But…I don’t think he sees all of me anymore. The parts that are new and uncertain. I think he’s trying to, but he doesn’t look at me the way he used to.”
Rowan takes a step toward me, leaning onto the cool marble. His wings twitch in the soft wind and I watch the pretty colors reflect onto the marble as if his wings were made of diamonds.
His presence is comforting and calm in an unending storm that has followed me since I crawled back from the grave.
“I see you,” he finally says. There’s no double meaning, no snugness in his voice. Just truth.
“And?” I ask. He doesn’t respond. He only meets my gaze for a moment, before the silence between us cracks like thin ice over a frozen lake.
My heart races when his soft lips touch mine. It’s featherlight–barely there, but the first thing that’s felt grounding in my life in weeks.
When he pulls away, I gulp. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Did you dislike it?” he asks.
I can’t answer him.
So I simply slip away under his wing and head inside.