CHAPTER 97 ROHAN
ROHAN
Dark water. Trapped in the darkness, in a pool too deep for him to stand, Rohan marked the passing of time with the coming and going of high tide, during which he could hear the crashing of waves against the mountain of rock that had once been the mouth of a cave.
He’d almost made it all the way out. He’d leapt from the tunnel as the passageway behind him had caved in. Miraculously, the roof of the cave directly over the water he’d landed in had held.
The mouth of the cave had not.
Rohan had gotten nowhere trying to dig or claw his way out. He couldn’t even pull himself out of the water. He’d managed to keep himself from sinking for what he calculated to be nearly a day, but eventually, even Rohan’s strength would fail.
Dark water. The irony that this might be his end didn’t escape Rohan.
Surrounded by rocks and submersed in dark water—fate really was a bitch.
And the worst of it was that if Rohan died here, he’d die alone.
And Rohan found, in darkness and silence, much to his surprise, that he did not want to die alone.
And that was ridiculous, because what did it matter, really? If you were going to die, what did it matter if you died alone?
But again and again in the darkness, Rohan’s mind went to far more pleasant ways to die, to a winter girl who’d washed her hands of him and to Toby Hawthorne’s parting words.
Rohan didn’t want to think about Toby Hawthorne.
Dark water.
Alone.
Treading to stay afloat, Rohan threw his head back and roared—and then he heard something. Through the remains of the cave, through all that rock and stone, he heard something.
A rescue? Then he heard it again. A moan.
“Who’s there?” Rohan’s voice echoed off the pitch-black water all around him.
Through the rubble, Rohan heard a by now familiar voice. “So you did make it out. You’re welcome, by the way.” The Icelandic accent was a dead giveaway.
“You have a strange definition of the word out,” Rohan told Nora. Her voice was distant enough that he had to raise his to reply. “Are you—”
“I’m not dead yet. Just trapped beneath a little stone.”
A little. Rohan didn’t buy that. “How badly are you injured?” Had she been unconscious all this time? “Can you see anything? Hear anything? Anyone?”
Nora took her time replying. “They’ll either dig us out before we die, or they won’t.”
“You could have triggered that explosion remotely,” Rohan pointed out. “You’d be safe and sound.”
“And you would have died in that room.”
Toby had died anyway. Rohan had very little doubt of that.
“Besides,” Nora continued, her accent sharpening, “I had to stay to see it through to the end. I had to be sure, and I am. It’s done. Without the Gilded Blade, there will be no need for a Kyrie at all—not to mention no one left to lead them. If I die here, I die triumphant.”
“And the end justifies the means,” Rohan said, but his voice came out hollow, and for once in his life, he didn’t mean it. He thought of Toby, running toward something instead of away. “You’re a real hero.”
Nora didn’t take exception to Rohan’s tone. “There are no real heroes,” she said.
Every time Rohan thought Nora might have died, she said something, but each time, her subsequent silence stretched out a little longer, and every time it did, Rohan thought about the fact that if she died first, he’d be alone.
And Rohan didn’t want to die alone. So when his body cramped up for what felt like the hundredth time, when he started to sink yet again—he didn’t fight it.
Dark water.
Choose a rock.
Rohan let the water claim him, and as he sank, he began to flash back, and he didn’t fight that, either. Sinking down, down, down, he lived it all over again, right up to the point in time where everything was blood and the woman was screaming at him to stop.
The boy’s fingers tighten around the rock as he thinks: You never stopped him—
Rohan’s memory of that night had always ended there—or skipped ahead to the ledger, to the words he’d written in shaky childish scrawl in purple ink: I KILLED MUM.
A horrible secret.
But this time—this time, as Rohan’s lungs began to burn, the memory didn’t stop.
The boy takes a step toward her, rock tight in his hand. Sobbing, she pushes him back, and the boy finds his voice and says it out loud this time: “You never stopped him.”
Stunned, the woman backs up, wild-eyed. She doesn’t call him her beautiful boy. She doesn’t call him anything at all. She just falls to her knees.
And the boy drops the rock. As it hits the ground, the boy hears another sound. Footsteps—footsteps and a cane.
Rohan’s feet hit the bottom of the pool. A jolt of adrenaline had his eyes opening, and he pushed off—off and up and out of the water, gasping for air.
All these years, he’d thought he’d killed her, and he hadn’t.
And somehow, surrounded by dark water and jagged rocks, his body at its limit, Rohan knew that he was not dying here this day, alone or otherwise. He was, above all else, a survivor. He’d find a way to save himself and maybe even Nora. Perhaps she’d been right, perhaps there were no real heroes.
But Rohan could damn well play the part.