Chapter 27 #2
Rafe appears in my doorway. “Can we spiral about family conspiracies after dinner? Some of us still need to get dressed.”
Lucan glances at the time on the wall display and swears. “Shit. Your mom’s going to kill us.”
“You say that about every event.”
“And every event, she almost does.”
Rafe disappears toward the showers while Lucan digs through the pile of jackets dumped across the couch. Somewhere down the hallway, I can already hear staff moving through the mansion levels below us, preparing for the transport arrivals.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Nowhere yet.” Lucan pulls a black jacket from the pile before glancing at his multi-slate. “Adrian’s back on Sero, though. I’ll head down to Black Chapel after Angela’s event and see if anybody’s heard something useful.”
“At this hour?”
Lucan smirks. “The good gossip starts after midnight.” He finishes the rest of his drink before pointing the glass at me. “He’s got you wrapped, man.”
“Get the fuck out, dude.”
Rafe reappears, towel around his neck, and snorts. “Wow. Kicking us out for your boyfriend now?”
“Exactly.” I jerk my chin toward the door. “Damaris is probably waiting for his husband already anyway.”
“I hate you,” Lucan deadpans.
“No, you don’t.”
He flips me off before heading for the door, broad shoulders filling half the room while Rafe laughs under his breath and follows after him.
Damaris appears just long enough to shove a plate into Lucan's chest. “Eat before you start another fight.”
“You're getting bossy.”
“And yet you keep me around.”
The door slides shut behind them a minute later, finally leaving the wing quiet for once.
I pick up the glass Lucan abandoned beside the couch and stare out toward the city lights beyond the windows.
The Legacy event keeps circling around in my head.
Rowan saying somebody was there watching him. Dad admitting afterward that somebody got into the event who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.
We’ve always had enemies. That’s not new.
The problem is the possibility that whoever’s circling Rowan now might overlap with ours somehow.
And if that’s true, then this whole situation is a lot worse than I originally thought.
My multi-slate lights up again before I can think too hard about it.
mouse: Halvern finally released me. What are you actually doing right now, or is that classified too?
My mouth curves at the screen.
Fuck. I don’t even want out anymore.
Most of the time, Rowan looks like he’s watching everything around him at once, always thinking ahead even when he’s trying to relax.
But sometimes, late at night when it’s only the two of us, he’ll look at me with this quiet exhaustion underneath all that self-control, and it does something to me every single time.
Even now, I can picture him sitting in my room while Damaris cooks in the kitchen, pretending not to watch me while I take apart the old Noctis mechanism spread across the table.
The glow from the terminal catches in his hair whenever he looks up—gold-lit, beautiful, and getting harder to give back.
Rowan always acts like I’m the chaotic one between us, but half the time he watches me like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
I catch him doing it when I’m talking, fighting with Lucan, or explaining something he insists is statistically impossible, and Light, I love it more than I probably should.
I love the way he rolls his eyes at me while still listening anyway, and the way he goes soft whenever I pull him into my lap even though he’d never admit it.
And Light, the things I think about doing to him once he finally gets back tonight.
Peeling him out of that stiff performance shirt one button at a time.
Finding out what sound he makes when I take my time instead of rushing him.
He spends all day being watched by an entire academy, holding himself together so carefully that nobody sees the cracks.
I want to be the one place he never has to.
I want him loud and undone and mine, spread across my sheets with that maddening self-control finally gone.
It should scare me, how much I want to keep him.
How fast temporary turned into something I refuse to hand back.
A month ago Rowan Ashford was a name on my father’s list. Now he’s the last thought I have before I sleep and the first one when I wake, and some cold part of me already knows I’d burn a great deal down before I let anyone take him from me.
I carry Lucan’s abandoned glass out onto the terrace because my head’s too full to sit still anymore, and lean against the railing and look out across Caervast while the city glows beneath it in layers of gold and white.
My eyes find Rowan crossing the inner courtyard below with his case strapped over one shoulder while students move around him in clusters beneath the late evening lights.
The light catches in his hair every time he passes beneath one of the arches, turning the strands almost gold.
And all I can think about is how badly I want to call down to him just to watch him glance up at me with that annoyed expression he gets whenever he catches me staring again.
Then someone steps out beneath the lower archways behind him. Not close enough to approach Rowan directly, but not far enough away to feel accidental either.
Every instinct inside me sharpens when I realize he’s following the exact same route through the courtyard.
Rowan keeps walking. The man follows.
My grip tightens around the glass when he disappears behind one of the stone pillars, only to reappear farther down the path, still tracking Rowan without once trying to get close to him directly.
The guy is too old to be a student, and there’s something wrong about the way he moves through the crowd while keeping Rowan constantly inside his line of sight.
Everything else falls away as my attention locks onto him.
The comm in my pocket vibrates hard enough to break through my concentration. It’s Dad.
“Yeah, we’re coming now,” I answer, still tracking Rowan through the courtyard below.
The stranger keeps pace several steps behind him, weaving through the courtyard crowd without ever trying to get closer, all while watching Rowan with the kind of controlled patience that sets me on edge.
“Where’s Rowan Ashford right now?” Dad asks.
My gaze flicks back toward the path below. Rowan disappears beneath one of the archways before emerging farther down beside the fountain. The man follows again.
“Why?”
Static crackles softly through the multi-slate connection before Dad answers, the brief silence stretching just long enough to make something inside me go tight.
“We identified his sibling,” Dad says. “And we found the connection we were missing.”
Below me, Rowan slows near the outer staircase leading toward the mansion levels when the stranger disappears beneath the arches, only to reappear a moment later, watching him from a distance like he doesn’t want to be seen too clearly under the lights.
“And Ciaran?” His voice cuts through me this time, and everything inside me goes taut at the edge in his voice. “Rowan Ashford is not innocent.”