Chapter 55
I t was freezing.
Several heartbeats passed before I realized why that was unusual, why it had been enough to wake me up. For such a small person, Rowan emitted a surprising amount of body heat.
But she wasn’t here.
I bolted upright in my bed, forcing myself to take a breath as I scanned for her. The lavatory door was open, ruling out the obvious possibility. A frigid draft swept through the room, pulling my attention to the cracked balcony door.
It opened a little wider, revealing Rowan standing still and silent as a wraith, staring at the mountains that separated her kingdom and mine.
Was she sleepwalking? Recovering from a nightmare?
Calmed somewhat by the knowledge that she wasn’t gone, I took a moment to throw on a shirt and slip my feet into shoes. Which was more than she had done.
She was barefoot, in only my shirt, but she wasn’t shivering. She wasn’t reacting at all.
Opening the door wider, I joined her on the balcony, making plenty of noise to alert her. She didn’t turn, though, or register that I was there.
“Lemmikki?” I called softly.
She sucked in a breath, shoulders tensing, but she didn’t turn around. I moved closer until I could make out her profile. There was enough moonlight to see the storms brewing in her eyes, the unguarded set to her features. It was a sharp contrast, a strange realization that she usually was guarded these days, unlike before .
Stranger still to think there had been a time when all I had wanted was for her to hide her expression. And now…now I wanted her honesty. Craved it.
“What is it?” I asked, joining her against the railing.
She was silent for long enough that I thought she wouldn’t answer. I waited for her expression to shutter as it so often did. So it surprised me to hear her raspy voice instead.
“You were right, you know.” She shook her head, peering up at me.
I didn’t want to startle her into retreat, so I only raised my eyebrows.
“You asked me why I went in the tunnel...” She paused, taking a breath and staring out at the mountains once more. Toward Lochlann. Did she miss her home?
Of course she did. So why did that send a pang through me?
“At first, maybe I was just bored,” she acknowledged. “But that last time…I was running away.”
I had surmised as much, but I never expected her to admit it. I stayed silent in the hopes that she would expound, and after a beat, she did.
“Before I left, Avani hadn’t left her room for months. The weight of her grief…it settled over the castle until I felt like I couldn’t breathe, let alone joke or laugh or even grieve myself.”
I sorted through my memories, trying to put together what I knew of Lochlann from my studies and spies. Avani was her older sister…who had lost her husband shortly after they were married. It had just been a bit of information at the time I’d heard it, one more political fact to stow away, important only because it affected who would ascend the throne.
I hadn’t thought of the Lochlannians as people, let alone a family who grieved the loss of one of their own. Even after I met Rowan, I had managed to forget how recently she had lost someone.
I thought of her relationship with her cousin, the desperation with which she protected him, and this time, it was guilt that stayed my tongue.
“I lost my first brother when he was only a baby, before I even got to meet him. And it was sad, in a distant sort of a way. But Mac.” Her voice broke. “He was everything a big brother should be. Protective and funny and kind. No one’s pain could trump Avani’s. I know that, but the rest of us were grieving, too.”
She was talking faster now, like she would combust if she couldn’t get the words out.
“And my mother wanted me to choose a husband, not just to marry, which I was willing to do, but someone I could be in love with.”
The thought churned in my stomach, niggling at all the things we kept shoved under the bed we shared every night.
“But who in their right mind would want to go through what Avani did? Not to mention the entire stars-damned war my family managed to kick off because of love.”
It was hard to say whether I agreed with her. I had never even considered the possibility of love, and therefore never taken time to debate whether it was a good enough reason to marry someone.
Especially when the odds were against you. When that union could start a war. When it was dangerous for them both.
Rowan swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut for several seconds before opening them again. “So, I told her to choose for me. It was one of the only things we’ve ever fought about, just days before I left.”
She looked up at me again, pale eyes shimmering in the silvery moonlight.
“I was running away in that tunnel. When it caved in, I wasn’t half as scared as I should have been, because in some ways, being forced to come to Socair felt easier than going home.” She said the words like a confession. “And now my family probably thinks Davin and I are dead, and we may never see them again. And it’s all my fault.”
Her hands fidgeted uncomfortably in her lap, her body tensing as if telling me this had cost her more than she was ready to give. She glanced down at them and let out a small, strained breath.
I had known since her fever that she felt a degree of guilt over what happened, but this was the first time I realized just how much. Had it all been crashing down on her all along, each reminder that she landed herself here like another grain of salt in a wound she had delivered to herself?
For all the things I had done in my lifetime, the pain I had inflicted, I found that I couldn’t take the shattered expression on her face for a single moment more.
I had no experience in being comforting, but I could give her logic. And the truth was, we had all put more blame at her feet than she strictly deserved.
“You couldn’t have known that the tunnel would close in,” I told her. “And whatever your feelings on it, you had no choice but to go to Socair when that happened.”
“That’s not what you said before,” she pointed out.
“I say a lot of things,” I muttered. “You will see your family again, Lemmikki. You said yourself your father would come for you.”
Not a single person in this kingdom doubted that the King of Lochlann would come after his daughter, for better or worse. It was only a matter of when.
“I’ve seen your men fight, Evander. How many people will die before that happens?” It was the first time she had expressed anything but confidence in her ability to make it home. It was worse, somehow, than when she taunted me with threats of her father. “Who do you think will be leading that charge? My father. My uncles. My cousins.”
She met my eyes then, too many things for me to read churning in her own.
“And you?” The blood drained from her face, as though the thought was just now dawning on her. “Will you lead your men to the mountain pass?”
Was she worried that I would be the one to slaughter her family myself? Worried because whatever else had happened, she had heard rumors of my cruelty and was now imagining it taken out on the people she loved?
It was possible. But she leaned closer to me as if on instinct, her fists balled like she was fighting not to physically stop me from going. There was no anger in her gaze. No vengeance.
Only fear.
Against all rationality, I wondered if she was afraid for me, rather than of me. If somewhere along the way, she had found herself with the same vested interest in my safety I had in hers.
I nodded, unable to give her anything but truth in the wake of all her hard-wrought honesty. “I would have no choice.”
She closed her eyes, swallowing back some emotion, and I had to give her something. I had left her without hope once before, and I wouldn’t do that again if I had any other choice.
“But I don’t intend for that to happen,” I assured her.
She opened her eyes, her brow furrowing.
“Then what do you intend? When you took me, did you honestly plan for me to stay here forever?”
I thought back to the moment I realized she was going to marry Korhonan, and that Iiro would sit on the throne.
“I didn’t plan anything,” I admitted. “I just…panicked. Though, in fairness to me, I have tried to give you back twice now.”
“Twice?” She raised her eyebrows. “What was the second time?”
“I sent a letter to Iiro after—while you were recovering,” I corrected myself, knowing how she avoided reminders of the flogging. “It had my father’s seal and stated that we would agree to the terms decided on at the negotiations, if they were still inclined.”
Her slim nostrils flared, her fists balling in what looked like the same panic that sometimes overtook her when she was faced with the prospect of leaving bed for too long.
But that couldn’t be right. She wanted to go back to Elk.
Of course, she did. I had managed to forget that in the past weeks, how hard she had fought to get back to Korhonan.
“And what did he say?” she asked.
“He declined.”
“Oh.” Her tone was unreadable, and she looked back out at the storm brewing over the mountains. “Well then, I guess we’re both stuck in this.”
Another gale blew in, and I watched the storm clouds just barely visible in the distance. Had she known it was coming? Was that why she had come out here?
Or was she only drowning in memories of the home she missed and the family she had been left behind?
Whether it was Elk or Lochlann, it was important for me to remember that given her choice, she would never have chosen to stay at Bear. More important, still, to remember that I wouldn’t have chosen for her to be here either.
We were stuck, like she said. That was all this was.