Chapter 22
Elodie
Rowan insisted we wait until nightfall, when we were less likely to be spotted.
Of course, venturing out into the forest in the dark was bad enough, but we had to find a giant crack in the earth without being spotted by any guards too.
He asked me to hide at Mara’s, but after a minor argument, Bryn agreed I should come with them.
Rowan wasn’t able to use the hearthstone to contact the castle either, as it would alert them of our location.
I’m guessing the king missing his High Warden and the girl working on finding his cure has likely raised some alarms already. Rowan thinks guards will be at Mara’s by the evening sun, searching for us.
So that leaves us here, walking towards the edge of the forest where night has already settled.
The trees turn into silhouettes as the path, which is normally manageable in daylight, is now a ribbon of pale dirt, barely visible beneath the shadows of the trees.
The forest is almost silent. Only the soft sounds of rustling and animal noises break it apart.
Rowan is walking close to my side, his hand on his sword since we left Mara’s.
His other hand hovers near the small of my back every time the ground turns uneven.
“Stay on the path, Hawthorne,” he whispers next to me.
“I am,” I reply.
“You drift.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“Well, unfortunately I wasn’t trained to move through forests in the dark so I —” I’m cut off when my foot catches on a loose root, sending me flying forward.
I don’t even have time to gasp before Rowan’s arm lashes out, catching me across the ribs.
He hauls me back against his chest, lifting me back onto my clumsy feet as he leans down into my neck.
I can feel the soft tug of his lips turning into a smirk.
“If you needed an excuse to get back into my arms, you could have just asked, Hawthorne,” he breathes.
“I wasn’t—” my face betrays me once again, flushing a bright red. Thank God it’s dark. “It was a root. I tripped.”
“Well, then, case in point. Stay on the path.” His arm remains locked around my waist, and whilst I can barely make out his face under the night sky. I can still feel his eyes on me.
“While I’m glad to see you two have clearly made amends. You are leaking tension like a cracked hearth. It’s a miracle the woods haven’t started humming with the static of it. Seriously,” Bryn’s voice cuts in from behind.
“What? No — we’re not. I tripped on a branch,” I stumble over my words, keeping my voice low. Rowan lets out a small chuckle at my side. I expect him to back me up or share the embarrassment, but he doesn’t. He says absolutely nothing, only giving me a wide smirk.
“Right. Keep telling yourself that,” she laughs. I turn back to Rowan, but he’s already moving past me. His shoulder clips mine, a lingering contact that sends a fresh jolt of static through me.
“We’re here,” he says in a hushed voice.
I thought it would be hard to make out this deep abyss set into the earth, but the pure void of darkness makes the forest appear almost lighter.
It’s like a fracture in the land, as if something tore upward and the ground never forgave it.
It’s not a slope, just a straight drop. The edges are uneven, serrated like broken bone, the stone darkened and black in places.
Thin plumes of mist rise from the split. Rowan steps slightly in front of me.
“Do not lean,” he says.
“I won’t,”
“You will.” His hand wraps around my forearm as I step closer to the edge, peering down into the void below. “This is where you send your dead?”
“Yes.”
“God, how awful. Can you not bury them?” I whisper in disgust.
“Bury them?”
“Yes, in the earth. You know? Flowers, a gravestone… somewhere peaceful?” He doesn’t respond, only giving me a confused look. What an awful way to go into the afterlife. I couldn’t imagine not having a gravestone for my parents. My grandmother. It’s the only way I feel I can still talk to them.
“Why guard it?”
“It’s unstable ground. We guard it to protect people. It also contains rare earth minerals and gems. Many people attempt to abseil to collect them.”
“So… what we’re doing now?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
Bryn mumbles behind us, waving us to follow. “I can form an anchor from this tree. I just need someone to help lower me down,” she says.
“Yeah, well, that’s not happening,” he says, grabbing the gear from Bryn’s hand. “Bryn, you watch for guards. Elodie, you stand back. I can lower myself down.” He wraps the rope around the tree when Bryn cuts him off.
“You want me… defenceless and completely useless… to stand guard?” she says. “Rowan, it makes more sense for you to stand guard and for me to go down. I can do this, trust me,” she says, taking the rope in his hand. He looks between me and Bryn before landing his eyes finally on mine.
“Fine. But you’re in and out. If you can’t find the Black Heel, I'm pulling you out. The guards will move around this area soon.” She nods in response, wrapping the gear around herself and tying her hair into a high ponytail.
I almost offer to be the one to go down, but then I think better of it.
There’s no way Rowan is letting me go down, and I would likely create more of a problem than actually be of any help.
Bryn steps to the edge of the stone, pressing her tiptoes onto the rim and leaning back.
She tests the rope a little before nodding at us as Rowan helps lower her down.
“I can do that if you need to keep watch,” I say, moving beside him. Handing me the rope, he talks me through what to do before pacing around me.
“You know, if this works and we actually get the Black Heel, it means your knights are pretty bad at their job.”
“They are excellent at their jobs, but unfortunately, I trained them, so I know their every move, and they don’t know mine.”
“Did you train Kael?” I don’t know what makes me ask it.
I suppose I wonder what he would say if he could see us now.
Rowan pauses before answering. The mention of his friend clearly causing something in him to falter.
“No, we trained together as juniors. They never paired us together. We were hell to train,” he says, chuckling to himself.
“You? A rule breaker? I don’t believe that,” I tease.
“I don’t need to break rules anymore, Elodie.
I make them,” he says, moving towards me, his fingers grazing the skin of my arms. The words have barely left his lips when a sickening clatter echoes through the silence.
A loose chunk of rock dislodges under the tension of the rope, causing it to tumble over the edge.
It hits the bottom of the abyss like a gunshot in the still of night.
Rowan’s playful smirk vanishes instantly, replaced by a mask of cold, lethal intent.
His hand firmly clamps over my mouth, pulling us both back against the nearest tree.
“Don’t breathe,” he mouths against my temple. I spot the beam of two torchlights moving towards us in the distance as my breathing picks up. The rhythm of my breathing pushes against Rowan’s body. A muffled voice drifts from ahead, “Just a rockslide. Been a few this week. It’s the weather.”
“Check it anyway,” a second voice grunts. The light moves closer to us as the footsteps get louder and clearer. Rowan leans in, brushing his lips against my ear.
“If they find us, you run. You don’t look back for us. You run. I cannot protect you if the king has you.” I nod my head in understanding as the rhythmic thud of boots crunches closer and closer.
“I see something,” the guard mutters, his voice only feet away. My fingers are white-knuckled around Rowan’s forearm as I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m ready to bolt, my muscles coiled like a spring. Then, a sudden, sharp crack echoes in the opposite direction.
“Over there!” the second guard shouts, and the footsteps shuffle away from us. Their voices growing distant once more, as Rowan finally lets out the breath he’s been holding.
“Too close,” he rasps, his voice thick with adrenaline. Just as I open my mouth to whisper back, the rope jumps up and down.
“She found it,” I breathe, the relief making my knees weak. Rowan’s hand stays firm on my waist, his thumbs digging in with a quick, hard squeeze. The cocky smirk is back.
“Rule-breaking looks good on you, Hawthorne.” He leans in, his nose brushing mine as my body falls into his.
“Rowan,” a soft call comes from below. “Help me up.” We pull away quickly, moving towards the edge of the stone as Rowan lifts Bryn up and over the edge.
She scrambles over the edge, her clothes filthy with dirt as if she’s been through a coal mine.
But when she opens her clenched fist, multiple shards of stone as dark as the night sky.
She stares at us both, narrowing her eyes at us as she hands the shards of rock to Rowan.
“Well, you two look like you’ve been productive whilst I was down there risking my life,” she says with a smirk, rubbing her hands together and brushing the dirt off her clothes.
“If you’d gone a little longer down there, we could have been really productive,” Rowan says under his breath, but it’s loud enough that we both hear it. My hand flies out to slap his shoulder.
“Rowan!” I whisper-shout at him as he smirks to himself. “God, you might be worse than Kael.”
“Worse than Kael? Low blow, Hawthorne. Low. Blow.” His smirk falters for half a second before shoving the Black Heel into his pocket.
“Let’s get out of here before they come looking again,” he says. Bryn gathers up the rope as we set off back to Mara’s. Rowan comes to my side, whispering low enough that only I can hear it,
“For the record? Kael’s all talk. I actually do what I say I’m going to do.” He brushes past me, catching up with Bryn and leaving me flustered once again.
The trek back to Mara’s feels longer than the walk we took to the maw. We have mostly been in silence, only talking to warn each other of uneven ground or rogue tree roots.
“The unbinding itself is volatile,” Bryn whispers, “I can’t do it at home. I can’t be sure what damage it may cause.”
“We can’t do it at the castle either. The king will surely look for us by now,” I say. “What about the meadow?” I ask, turning to Rowan.
“That would work.” Bryn says. “Can you get me there?” she asks.
“I can,” he says, his voice low. “We do it as soon as the sun is up.” Rowan’s hand finds mine at our sides.
He pulls me close but keeps his head forward.
“What will the king do if he finds out what you’re doing?” I ask him. A sudden, sharp sting flares across my arm.
“Ouch—” I hiss out, my hand clutching at the pain instantly.
I look down at my arm, seeing a thin slice across my skin.
A single bead of blood wells up, dripping down and landing on the wet moss below.
What is it with this forest attacking me, sure, I’m clumsy, but seriously?
Rowan pulls me into him, assessing my arm as he rips a strip of cloth from his shirt. He ties it carefully around my arm.
“I’m going to run out of clothes to wear if you keep cutting yourself, Hawthorne,” he mutters, his gaze dropping to the blood below. Once again, my blood glows a vivid blue.
“Still think it’s nothing to worry about?” I ask him, my eyes narrowing into slits. He looks at me with genuine concern, and I know he’s hiding something. This can’t be normal, this is the second time it’s happened now.
“Bryn?” She is still staring down at the moss, her eyes wide with shock.
“I’ve never seen that before, Elodie. I have no idea what it means.
” The sound of guards ahead causes the conversation to cease.
Mara’s cottage sits in the clearing, no longer the peaceful sanctuary we’d left it.
Half a dozen orbs of light linger in the dark, illuminating the several men in armour.
They are shouting orders, storming in and out of the cottage.
“Bryn, take Elodie to the meadow. Now,” he says, his expression terrifying.
“Rowan, wait. No. What are you doing?” I ask, attempting to pull him back towards us.
“They can’t hurt me, Elodie. I’m the High Warden. But they can hurt you. Both of you leave. Now. I will meet with you as soon as I know Mara is safe.”
I don’t get the chance to argue before Rowan steps forward and Bryn pulls me back.