Chapter 43 I Don’t Know Who I Am
Rowe’s home rises from the twilight with the quiet certainty of something the forest trusts.
It nestles against the curve of an ancient hill, windows aglow with softened moonlight.
There are no gilded gates or looming towers here, only vines that wind protectively across stone walls, their blossoms folding inward as if exhaling with the dusk.
I hesitate at the door, heart pounding. The last threshold I crossed led to silk-draped chains.
But Rowe simply unlocks it and walks inside.
No wards, no security. In a city where doorways conceal danger and entrances demand proof of value, this simplicity leaves me disarmed.
He’s built something rare—shelter without suspicion, safety grounded in choice rather than control.
Rowe moves with the unbothered ease of someone who belongs here, but I linger behind, uneasy, reluctant to disturb something that feels so intact.
When the door shuts, the sound catches me off guard, but the air that greets me is unmistakably his.
Dried herbs drape overhead in fragrant clusters: rosemary, lavender, and others I can’t name but remember from all those nights we spent studying healing techniques.
Their familiar sweetness makes my eyes burn. Time may have changed me, hardened me, but this place is exactly how I always imagined Rowe’s home would be.
His space feels honest. Books crowd every surface, dog-eared and marked with pressed flora, scribbled diagrams, and ink-smudged thoughts.
Half-empty teacups tell stories of late nights spent reading.
Drawings of creatures cover the walls, each one captured with such care and detail they seem about to leap from the paper, testament to the gentle soul I once knew so well.
No calculated displays of wealth, no perfectly arranged vignettes meant to impress.
A home, lived in and loved. Just . . . Rowe.
“The washroom’s through there,” he says quietly, searching through a wooden chest. There’s tension in his shoulders, restrained but unmistakable. “I’ll find something clean for you.”
I make it to the bathroom before my composure crumples, and my hands tremble so violently I can barely twist the faucet.
The reflection in the mirror looks haunted: shadows under eyes too hollow, features tight with exhaustion and grief.
This is the visage of someone who died and shouldn’t have survived.
I clutch the sink until my knuckles pale, battling the cold grip of panic climbing my throat.
Focus. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. I force myself to inventory the room: rows of labeled salves, creature-safe soaps sorted by size, a diagram on how to treat Teacup Dragon burns pinned beside the mirror.
Every detail is deliberate, gentle. Everything here belongs to him.
The steadiness in each choice becomes my anchor.
The hot water steadies me, but only at the surface, and my ribs ache from restraint.
I press my forehead against the cool tiles, trying to ground myself in the sensation.
But even surrounded by calm, I can’t escape the hollow throb of realization.
Everything I believed about myself has splintered, and every truth has teeth.
When I return, I’m wrapped in one of Rowe’s old shirts.
The sleeves fall past my hands, and the fabric is steeped in his scent of pine, ozone, and rain-soaked earth.
I clench the cloth to hide the shake I can’t quite control.
He’s left a pair of sleep pants too, oversized and uncooperative, the waistband cinched and still pooling at my ankles.
Rowe’s across the room, turning the couch into a makeshift bed with too-careful hands. His shoulders are stiff as he arranges the pillows. When he hears me, he turns, his eyes lingering on me for a beat too long before dropping again. Something unspoken flickers there; gone before I can name it.
Heat gathers at my throat as I adjust the hem of the shirt, searching for something to do with my restless hands. This quiet domesticity unsettles me. It’s more intimate and vulnerable than the rooftop nights we shared when the world still made sense. We were just children then.
Now we aren’t.
“I probably look ridiculous,” I murmur, breaking the silence that’s thickened between us. The oversized shirt slides off one shoulder and I tug it back hastily, as if modesty might shield me from falling apart.
“You look—” He clears his throat and focuses instead on smoothing the quilt. “There’s tea if you want some. Mint and moonflower. Helps with sleep.” He gestures toward the corner without meeting my eyes.
I cross the room barefoot, the wooden floor cool beneath me. The fabric brushes against my skin with every step, his scent lingering in the fibers, impossible to ignore.
“You’re not sleeping there,” I say, watching as he tries to make the couch accommodate his six-foot-three frame.
At five-seven, I could fold into it easily enough, but he’s already adjusting cushions like it might help.
I’ve seen him stiff and sore after nights in the Academy library. This won’t be any better.
“I am,” he replies, already pulling out extra blankets from a nearby chest. “You’re taking my room. Don’t argue, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”
Instead of moving, I sink onto the couch and draw my knees beneath me. The sleeve slides again, but this time, I don’t bother fixing it. “Bold of you to think I’ll listen just because you said so.”
A faint curve tugs at his lips as he settles on the opposite end of the couch, putting space between us like a line neither of us knows how to cross. “Bold of you to assume I won’t simply carry you to bed if you fall asleep out here.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” The thought of Dom surges up, a reflexive ache, and I dig my nails into my palm, forcing the pain to tether me.
“Try me,” Rowe says, his voice too soft to challenge and too firm to dismiss.
Sitting this close to him, it’s harder to maintain the careful fiction I’ve constructed over the years.
The lie that we were nothing more than classmates, with shared interests and scheduled study sessions.
That I didn’t memorize the way his fingers moved when tending to fractured wings, or how his rare smiles made something flutter in my chest long before Dominic Blackwood tore through my world like a storm and reduced everything tender to dust.
“What happened?” I ask quietly, driven to break the heavy silence. “After Kane took me away. I remember you on your knees, fighting against the enforcers, and then . . .” I swallow hard, twisting my trembling fingers in the hem of his shirt. “Then it’s blank.”
Rowe presses his lips into a thin line. “They sedated me. I was out for two full days.” His tone is restrained, but fury threads through it.
“When I woke, I asked everyone—nurses, enforcers, staff. No one would say a word. Alexander eventually appeared and claimed you were ‘fine’, as if that word could erase everything. Like it wasn’t his lab, his hybrid, his—” He cuts himself off, taking a deep breath.
“He tried to apologize and patch it over. As if anything could undo what happened. I couldn’t even look at him. ”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I’m not sure which part I’m apologizing for. Maybe all of it. The legacy. The silence. The irreparable damage his father inflicted. “Are you okay? I mean, nothing strange happened to you after that, right?”
He turns toward me, confusion pulling at his brow. “Strange how?”
I hesitate. “On the way to the estate, I started hallucinating. Visions. Voices. It was bad.” I don’t mention that I saw him in the haze.
That my mind conjured memories of us with eerie clarity, blurring the line between reality and buried dreams. “By the time Dom got to me, I was . . .” My throat tightens.
“I couldn’t breathe. Everything felt wrong and heavy.
I think Kian was there at one point. I heard him talking about punishment and disobedience. Then it all blurred and I blacked out.”
“They didn’t . . .” Rowe’s fists clench, the tendons in his hands standing out in stark relief. “You weren’t taken to the hospital the way I was?”
“No. It was orchestrated, I’m sure of it now. Kian wanted my magical essence degraded and . . .” I choke on the words. They’re acid, but I force them free. “I was clinically dead for a full minute. At least, that’s what Dom told me.”
“What?” He moves closer without hesitation, all restraint forgotten, real fear in his eyes. “That’s not—Dr. Vale said if the toxin spread any further, the effects would’ve been permanent. And they . . .” He breaks off, looking sick. “How are you even breathing?”
My hands begin to tremble uncontrollably, and this time, there’s no concealing it. “When I woke up, something was rewired.” I stare down at my fingers, willing them to steady. “I’m still me, but not completely. As if another presence moved in and took root. Nothing is the same.”
His eyes narrow, scanning me. “What changed?”
“I see and feel things differently. Colors, sound, magic. Emotions hit strange. Sometimes sharp, sometimes too far away. And Dom’s touch . . .” I break off. “It felt wrong. Everything about it did. Like my body knew something before I did.”
“What aren’t you saying?” he presses. “Aria, talk to me.”
“I have a bond with Astrafel.”
The words fall out of me so softly they barely register, but the silence that follows rings deafening. I finally lift my gaze, bracing for rejection, for horror, for anything but the stillness I find in Rowe’s eyes.
“Did you know?”
“That you’re bonded to him?” His voice is hoarse. “No. I didn’t know. I swear to you, I didn’t.”
“But you knew about him.” My voice frays. “About what he is. What blood magic is.”