Chapter 29 #2
If Sola realizes I know more than I probably should, she doesn’t show it.
“Normally, as a Düren citizen, Rowan is obligated to serve rotations at the Ward,” she explains.
“If I told him before he left, he would’ve found some reason to stay.
Light, I wanted to tell him. I had everything planned.
I was looking forward to breaking the news that his annoying big sister had finally managed to change his life.
But the original plan changed the moment he and Damaris arrived. ”
“Why?” Dad asks.
“Because of the Legacy meeting surrounding the mafia ban. Cassian insisted we respect the additional security. Then everybody was watching everybody. The ports. Even the academy.”
“And the scholarship,” Lucan adds.
“And the scholarship.” Sola nods. “People started asking questions. Then Rowan arrived, and people paid far more attention to him than they should have.” Her gaze flicks briefly toward me. “At that point, bringing him openly into the Marrow household would’ve attached him to us.”
“So you left him in the dorms.”
“I put him somewhere visible,” she corrects. “Somewhere nobody could make him disappear without witnesses.”
“He missed you, you know,” I can’t help saying, because really, all this social posturing is getting on my nerves. He’s out there somewhere, and we’re sitting here talking while nobody knows whether he’s safe.
Something shifts across Sola’s face. Not guilt, but something worse. She looks exhausted.
“Yeah. I know.” Her laugh comes out hollow.
“Cass and I spent most of the first few years off-world. The longer I stayed away, the more convinced I became that contact would only draw attention back to him. At first, I told myself I was waiting until things settled down. Then a few months became a year. Then another. Eventually I stopped knowing whether I was protecting him or just trying to live with what I’d done. ”
“She talked about him constantly,” Cassian says.
Sola shoots him a look. “Cass.”
“Just saying.”
“When Rowan finally arrived on Sero, I thought I could fix it. That he’d be safer on campus, under Halvern’s wing.”
“So you just dumped him into Caervast with no explanation?” I snap.
I recall Rowan looking completely lost that first night at my party, overwhelmed, like he wanted to bolt, and still playing because I fucking ordered him to.
“Somewhere visible,” she shoots back. “Where no one could make him vanish without the whole academy noticing. Though you had your watchdog on him from the moment he arrived, didn’t you, Christian?”
She talks to Dad, but looks at me.
He shrugs, completely unbothered. “What can I say? The scholarship landed on my desk a month before the Orlov vote. Half the Reach was already jumping at shadows, and then somebody handed a Noctis place to a student from Düren who wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Caervast. At that point, I would’ve investigated a suspicious houseplant. ”
Sola shakes her head. “So you handed Rowan to your son.”
“I handed my son a file.”
“Mm.”
Dad sighs. “In my defense, I wasn’t expecting him to become emotionally attached.”
“Bullshit,” Lucan says.
“Language. I mean, every family on this planet started asking why. You weren’t subtle, Ciaran.”
Sola stands. “Yeah, well, if only the Virels were my only concern. I quickly noticed someone else taking an interest in him too.”
The memory hits like a fucking bomb. Rowan calling me half panicked in the middle of the night because somebody had been standing outside his room again.
Before I can stop myself, my hand is already checking my multi-slate one more fucking time.
Still nothing from Rowan.
Where are you, little mouse? Are you even safe right now?
Sola exhales, looking far less untouchable than when she first walked into the pavilion.
This time, when Cassian’s hand presses against her shoulder, she actually leans into it.
“I didn’t plan on any of this going so phenomenally wrong.
But your surveillance of Rowan drew more attention to him than I thought it would.
I was trying to protect him. Instead, I made him a target. ”
“A target for who?” Lucan asks.
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “But I started noticing someone else following him too. Which is why we needed to talk tonight.”
“Someone else?” I echo.
Sola arches a brow. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”
A few of the Marrow guards chuckle, and I bristle despite the amusement twinkling in her eye.
“What does that mean? Me shadowing Rowan accelerated things?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know anything anymore.”
I bring the whiskey to my mouth and wish I hadn’t.
I did that. I brought danger to his doorstep.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped treating Rowan like a target and started treating him like he was already safe. Safe because he was with me. Turns out that was a stupid fucking assumption.
“Every person who learns what Rowan knows becomes another reason for somebody to come after him, and I refuse to let my baby brother die because of it.”
He’s in danger.
“No,” I snap. “I’m getting real fucking tired of everybody in this room talking about protecting Rowan while he’s out there alone not answering a single one of my messages. If you’re not going to do something, I will.”
“Ciaran, darling, wait.”
I’m halfway toward the door when her voice makes me freeze. Slowly, I turn to face Mom, who’s still sitting on the stage, against the wall, the Noctis tucked between her legs. I forgot she was there. “What is it, Mom?”
“He knows the melody.”
“What melody?” Sola asks.
“The one I wrote a long time ago. It’s not just a song—not to me. But the music sheet was stolen and I considered it lost. Until Rowan played the melody.”
“Well, I doubt—” Dad begins, but one lifted hand has him swallow the rest of the words.
“It’s not just music. It was stolen from me because of its value.”
“Are you saying it appeared again?” I stare at her.
The same sequence Mom recognized at the Legacy Gala? What are the fucking odds?
And knowing Mom, she never just writes music. If it’s important to her, it’s important to us. To our entire family.
“Maybe—” someone begins, but the rest disappears beneath rising voices while guards from both families edge closer to their weapons.
“Enough!” Dad snaps, but nobody listens.
A loud bang crashes against the glass walls, and it’s enough for every weapon in the room to fly up.
Another bang follows, and Rafe jerks his chin toward the windows. “What the fuck?”
The pavilion doors burst open, cold night air rushing inside as Adrian stumbles across the marble floor.
Half the guards swing their guns toward him.
“What the fuck’s he doing here?”
Adrian freezes with both hands flying into the air. “I saw them!” he shouts, clearly flying high as a kite.
“Yeah, did you?” Lucan snorts. “I bet you saw a lot of other things flying.”
Adrian looks half out of his mind, dark hair damp against his forehead, breathing uneven like he sprinted half the cliffs to get here. He shakes his head hard. “No, you have to believe me. I saw them. The Orlovs. I saw the people who ruined my family.”
“The ban is still active,” Dad snaps. “They aren’t allowed on Sero.”
Adrian laughs, breathless, and points back toward the trees. “Yeah? Then somebody should tell them that. They’re about to take off. There are four of them, armed. And they’re dragging someone through the woods.”
Every nerve in my body locks. I’m already sprinting toward the pavilion doors, but a violent rush of wind tears through the trees below the cliffs as massive shuttle engines ignite somewhere beyond the forest.
“What the actual fuck?”
No. No, no, no. This can’t be fucking happening.
I bolt outside and run toward where a massive shuttle rises, its engine glow cutting brutally through the trees as gold-white light spills across the pavilion ceiling.
My hand tightens around the multi-slate as one horrible thought repeats over and over inside my skull.
Please don’t be on that shuttle.