Chapter 28
Rowan
I’m done waiting.
My boots thud against the floorboards as I surge towards the cottage door. I have no plan, no escape route, nothing.
All I have is a desire so strong it burns through me.
I want her back.
Every second I spend breathing the stale, pine-scented air of this cottage is another second Elodie spends in the clutches of a man who has gone completely over the edge of madness.
If she’s hurt, I will burn that castle to the ground.
“Rowan, get back from the door,” Kael’s voice is like a slab of stone, heavy and immovable. He stands directly in my path, his frame blocking the exit.
“Move, Kael,” I growl.
I don’t even sound like myself.
My vision is swimming with pure red.
“Now!” I shout.
“What’s your plan, Ro, huh?” he asks, shaking his head at me as he pushes me back from the door. “You’re just going to show up and what… you can’t kill him. And you wouldn’t take the life of one of your knights. But I sure as hell can tell you the King will have you hung for treason.”
“I don’t care,” I roar. “I will tear everything in my path to get her back to me, Kael. Please, let me go.”
“He’s right, Ro. You know it too. You’re just too blinded by rage to see it,” a soft voice comes from behind. I turn to find Masen, his arms crossed, a tired expression on his face.
“I cannot just sit here whilst she suffers, Masen,” I seethe.
“Look, we’re going to get her back, I promise. But we need to do this right, otherwise we all die trying.”
He’s right.
I know he is.
I’m the High Warden, hell, I teach advanced extraction and siege warfare to the king’s own elite units. But right now, all I feel is anger laced with a fear I’m not sure I have ever felt before in my life.
“What the hell do you suggest we do if none of us can even harm the bastard?” I question him, my anger flying off me as he takes the full force of it.
“Neither of you can harm him,” he says. “But I can.”
“What do you mean, you can?” Kael asks for me.
“He’s a king, Masen. You were standing beside me when you took the knight’s oath?” I glance down at my wrist, the oath-bound rune firmly etched into my skin. A bleak reminder of the promise I made to a crown I should never have agreed to serve.
“When I couldn’t return home, I was cut off from Greyhollow. I’m guessing it broke my oath? Either way, the mark disappeared,” he says, holding his wrist out for us both to see. Kael glances at me as we share a knowing look.
The fucker is going to die.
“Where’s Elodie?” Bryn whispers from the sofa.
Her voice is still fragile, catching on the stillness of the room.
Outside, the rain is picking up as the raindrops create a soft drumming against the window.
I can’t look through the glass window without seeing Elodie, her tears falling down her face as she turns herself in for a family that isn’t hers to save.
I look back at Bryn. She looks a hell of a lot better than she did earlier.
Masen says it was the rune purging her of the magic she absorbed from the seal.
Earlier, when her breath had been rattling and her skin had felt like ice.
I felt a part of me dying. Bryn was as much a sister as Kael and Masen were my brothers.
We weren’t bound by name or lineage, but by something far more permanent.
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
That was the truth of our lives. She was the sister I had chosen, the girl we would tease as kids until she threw dirt at us, the one who kept the heart of this group beating whilst the rest of us were out playing at being soldiers.
Watching her slip away whilst Elodie was dragged away in the dark felt like being torn in two.
I was forced to choose who to save. It’s a choice I hope no one ever has to make.
“She’s...” I clear my throat, finding the right words to answer her.
“She’s at the castle. Aldric has her.” Bryn’s face instantly washes with dread.
She doesn’t know the inner workings of the castle, the fear of the King’s curse, or the way it drives most to madness.
But she has lived through enough to know Elodie will not be in that glasshouse warm and safe.
“He’ll hurt her,” Bryn whispers. “You have to help her,” she says, looking at the three of us. We all share the same look.
“We’re going to get her back. Don’t worry,” I say, willing myself to believe my own words, to get through each passing moment without threatening to storm forward in a blaze of fury. Mara returns to the room, a warm bowl of soup in hand, as she passes it to Bryn.
“Eat, baby. You need food after that.” Bryn sits up slightly, Kael helping her up as she takes the soup, cradling it in her lap.
“I can feel the anger pulsing from you in waves, Rowan,” Mara says to me, taking a seat next to Bryn. I look up at Masen now, willing him to come up with some way to get us into that castle and get to Elodie, unharmed.
“I have a plan. It’s not a good one, but it might work.”