Chapter 28 #2
“Enough.” Angela Virel’s voice cuts through the pavilion like a blade.
Unfolding to her feet, she turns toward the disturbance, her sightless gaze sweeping across the chaos without hesitation.
“Lucian and Aster Marrow. The Virel family has always considered yours an ally. Explain why you’ve brought armed men into my home. ”
Aster Marrow? I stare at my sister, trying to sort through the reality of this name I don’t recognize being associated with Sola.
A man—Lucian Marrow, presumably—steps forward before Sola can answer, one hand resting lightly against the button of his jacket. “My apologies, Angela. This was never intended as an insult to your family, but circumstances changed.”
Something tightens in Christian’s expression. “What circumstances?”
“The kind that no longer allow us the luxury of waiting.”
My gaze catches on Ciaran across the room. Our eyes lock through the chaos, and something dark flashes across his face. It punches the breath from my lungs, because it’s not fear or anger.
It’s betrayal.
Like he thinks I’ve been lying to him all along.
I drag my attention away from him and find Halvern near the side of the room. He’s standing strangely still beneath the pavilion lights while guests continue backing away from the stage around him.
The second I see his face, I know he isn’t surprised. If anything, he looks like someone watching events unfold exactly the way he expected them to.
“Rowan.” Ciaran steps toward me, ignoring the guests scrambling out of his path. “Did you know this? Tell me you had no idea.”
“I… I—”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know who these people are, other than that they were named in that newspaper clipping Damaris found. The Marrow family was mentioned. I just never knew Sola had become one of them.
“Right.” He scoffs, eyes blazing with a look that hurts worse than any gun could. It isn’t quite anger, but something far more dangerous, betrayal burning behind his expression like everything between us is cracking apart right in front of him.
“Rowan.” Sola reaches me before I can figure out what to do and pulls me into her arms. Her voice breaks against my hair. “I was so worried about you.”
“I missed you,” I whisper. My heart hurts as tears burn behind my eyes. I won’t cry in front of all these people, but still… I can only half-believe she’s actually here.
After a second, she pulls back just enough to look at me properly, her hands still gripping my shoulders while her gaze moves over my face like she’s trying to make up for years all at once. “Look at you. So handsome. So grown up.”
“Where did you go?”
She opens her mouth, but she is shoved aside by a guard who marches by before she can speak. Instead, she says, “Listen, there’s no time now, but I’ll tell you soon. Now, you need to come with me. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
“The Virels—”
“Not from the Virels,” she rushes out. “Though they are trouble as well.”
“Secure the exits!” Angela’s voice sounds different now. “They knew the sequence.”
Sola and I both look up to where Ciaran’s mother stands, leaning on her cane, eyes glaring into the void. “Whatever you’ve come for, Rowan stays in our custody.”
“Absolutely not.” For the first time, genuine fear flashes across Sola’s face. “Cassian, get my brother somewhere safe. My husband,” she adds to me as a dark-haired man appears beside her.
Husband? Since when do you have a husband?
I want to ask, but there’s no time. Chaos is spreading, amongst the guests mostly, and then someone closes an arm around me and starts pushing me toward the door. I don’t even know what to think, aside from the fact that the hurt hits so hard I almost forget how to breathe.
“Don’t touch him.” Ciaran barges through the crowd, pushing a guard aside who steps directly into his path.
Lucan follows him. “Ciaran—”
“No. Fucking damn it! They won’t take him.”
The entire pavilion fractures around me.
Shouting and movement and the sound of the Noctis collapse together so completely that I can barely tell where any of it is coming from.
Less than a minute ago, this was a private concert.
Now it feels like a battlefield, and I don’t even know who started the war.
Sola is standing here, alive after all these years, while guards close in around the stage and people keep moving and watching and reaching for me.
Something inside me gives way.
I’m tired of fighting. Tired of defending my emotions. Tired of wondering who I can trust.
All the panic and confusion and relief and anger combine so fast that I barely even realize I’m tearing my arm free from the guard before I stumble backward. My breathing collapses into sharp uneven gasps, and the medical band on my wrist flashes red.
For one impossible second, all I can see is him—dark hair, dark eyes, beautiful in a dangerous way—cutting through the crowd like nothing in this room is going to stop him from reaching me.
“Rowan!”
Then three Marrow guards close the distance between us, cutting him off, and more bodies surge into the space separating the stage from the front rows.
Sola is alive. And Ciaran is looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am.
Shouting erupts across the pavilion. Guards push through the crowd, people start screaming, and my pulse climbs higher with every passing second, each beat landing hard enough to hurt.
None of this makes sense.
You disappeared. You came back. And somehow, everyone knows who you are except me.
The red light keeps flashing as my breathing gets worse.
I don’t know who’s trying to protect me anymore. I don’t know who I’m supposed to trust.
Somebody shouts for the exits to be secured. Somebody else shouts back. Guards surge toward the doors, and Marrow security collides with them halfway across the room.
For a heartbeat, nobody is looking at me.
So I tear myself free and run.
Cold air slams into me the second I burst out of the pavilion doors, my lungs locking as voices and movement explode behind me somewhere inside the glass hall.
I don’t stop running. The second I do, I know all of it is going to catch up to me at once.
The gardens blur past beneath the lights of Caervast. Gravel slips beneath my shoes and I nearly lose my footing turning down the path leading toward the forest beyond the winter terraces.
Every breath catches painfully behind my ribs, and branches whip against my arms and face the deeper I force myself into the trees. Breathing stops feeling automatic and starts becoming something I have to physically fight for.
The medical band buzzes, that warning light still flashing red.
The realization refuses to become real no matter how many times I replay the sight of her walking through those doors.
Halvern knew. Everyone knew. Everyone except me.
But Ciaran still came for me, still looked terrified when I ran.
My Zoryan came after me anyway.
The whole world rearranges itself faster than I can hold onto it. I shove through another wall of branches, breath tearing painfully from my lungs as the forest darkens around me.
Why tonight? Why now? And who the hell were the people standing beside her?
My multi-slate keeps vibrating, and it takes three attempts to hit the controls because my hands won’t stop shaking.
mouse, where are you
talk to me, baby
it’s a fucking puppet show here and i can’t find you
come on, rowan, answer me
where the hell are you
I can practically hear Ciaran’s voice behind the words, sharp and furious, panic bleeding through every syllable.
Please come find me. Please.
My vision keeps blurring trying to read while running at the same time, and underneath the messages and the panic and the sound of blood rushing through my ears, something else starts becoming impossible to ignore.
rowan…
Footsteps sound behind me, and I know for sure they aren’t mine. A branch cracks somewhere deeper in the trees, and panic tears through me so fast I nearly lose my footing against the wet ground.
I shove the multi-slate back into my pocket and break into a faster run, slipping hard against wet leaves. Mud soaks through the knees of my trousers when I nearly go down on the forest path.
Somebody is following me through the trees, and I’m sixteen again, running through Düren while panic rips itself loose inside my chest.
Then something clicks into place, panic connecting pieces I should have recognized sooner while the footsteps behind me drag old memories to the surface.
The same shadow waiting outside the library, watching from the corridors and following me across Tolian, awakening the same instinct that haunted my childhood.
Run, because if they catch you, something terrible will happen.
The same terrible instinct screams at me to run faster as I hear them getting closer somewhere behind me through the trees.
I should have never run from the pavilion. Every part of me wants to turn around and run straight back to Ciaran even as panic forces me deeper into the trees.
I want to go back. I want him. My Zoryan.
Another branch snaps somewhere behind me, much closer this time.
I barely make it past one of the lower stone paths before someone slams into my back hard enough to send both of us to the ground.
Pain explodes through my shoulder as I hit the leaves and gravel, the impact knocking the last of the air from my lungs.
Somebody grabs the back of my coat and forces me flat against the forest floor. I fight blindly, panic and adrenaline ripping through me, and I nearly tear free.
“Get off me—”
A rough hand catches my jaw and forces my head back until I finally manage to focus on the woman crouched above me between the trees. Dark hair spills forward beneath the forest shadows, and her pale eyes study me with unsettling calm before a slow smile spreads across her face.
“Hello again, Rowan Ashford.”