Chapter 31
CIARAN
Dad said he wouldn’t send half the fucking Virel guard force into Düren just because I’d lost my mind over one academy student.
He made it very clear that starting a war underground in Ward territory while half the old families were already circling each other would be catastrophic for everyone involved.
I told him I didn’t care. If Rowan was down there hurt because I let him run out of that pavilion alone, then I’d burn half of Düren to the ground dragging him back out.
Dad looked at me for a long moment after that before rubbing a hand across his mouth.
“Fucking hell,” Lucan muttered somewhere behind me.
Nobody laughed. Nobody even looked surprised.
“That,” Dad said, “is exactly why you’re not leading this rescue alone.”
So here we are. Dad, Lucan, Rafe, Marius, and six armed enforcers move through the lower levels beneath the safe house Cassian’s people located less than an hour ago.
Aster and Cassian Marrow walk beside us as though this entire nightmare isn’t balancing on a fault line that has been running beneath the old houses for years.
Never in my life did I think Rowan’s survival would depend on a Virel and a Marrow standing on the same side.
The deeper we descend, the worse the air becomes, thick with damp stone, rust, cold metal, and dust heavy enough that I can taste it at the back of my throat with every breath.
Rafe grimaces beside me as pipes rattle somewhere overhead. “How the fuck do people live like this?”
“Badly, apparently.” Lucan steps over a puddle of black water with visible disgust. “And Rowan grew up here.”
He did. Twenty years in a place like this and somehow he still learned how to be gentle.
“Focus,” Dad snaps without looking back.
Nobody argues. Not after Adrian recognized the shuttle markings or after Aster admitted somebody else had been shadowing Rowan for years. Especially not after I checked his medical feed for the twentieth time before remembering there was nothing left to check.
The empty screen keeps flashing through my head anyway.
Cassian walks beside Sola with one hand resting near the weapon beneath his coat, dark eyes scanning every corridor we pass while his guards spread farther ahead through the tunnels.
Under normal circumstances, families like ours would’ve handled this through calls, meetings, and lawyers. Right now, we’re carrying weapons through underground tunnels because Rowan is somewhere ahead of us.
And every minute we spend walking is another minute he spends down here alone.
Dad asked whether I trusted Cassian Marrow enough for him to walk armed beside us through the underground districts of Düren. I told him I trust him exactly as much as he trusts us, but Rowan is the thing we’re both trying to protect.
And I especially hate that while I was standing in Caervast thinking I understood Rowan better than anyone else, Aster apparently knew exactly where he was the entire time.
She brought him to Sero. Then she stepped back and trusted people like Halvern and Cassian to keep him alive. She left him wondering whether he was losing his mind. Left him surrounded by people who kept telling him he was safe.
Thank fuck I was the one who kept finding him first.
I should’ve been the one protecting him.
“He’s underground,” Aster says, her voice tightening as we move deeper through the tunnels. “If the Orlov remnants took him, they’ll keep him somewhere hidden near the old Ward districts.”
Lucan frowns. “The Orlovs were wiped out years ago.”
“So everyone believed,” Aster says. “I spent months tracing the woman after Rowan’s scholarship was approved.
Old Düren records. Black-market movement.
Dead aliases reappearing underground.” Her mouth hardens.
“She’s one of the last surviving Orlov leaders.
The rest died when the family fell apart. ”
Dad’s expression darkens.
Aster’s jaw sets. “She’s had men following Rowan since childhood. At first, he was just the boy who ended up with something he was never supposed to have. Then he left Düren, started playing Noctis, and somehow ended up attached to Angela Virel’s son. That’s when he became a problem.”
The words hit me like another punch to the ribs, because now every memory keeps replaying differently in my head. Rowan calling me half panicked in the middle of the night, telling me somebody had been standing outside his dorm again while I tried convincing him it was stress, paranoia, fear.
I should’ve fucking listened instead of climbing into his bed afterward and letting myself believe keeping him close was the same thing as keeping him safe.
The panic never fully leaves me. It just changes shape the deeper we move underground, stripping everything else away until all I can focus on is movement, exits, shadows, footsteps, and threats.
Find Rowan first. Fall apart later.
I keep seeing him running through the trees, shaking so badly he could barely stay upright while I stood frozen inside that fucking pavilion instead of following him. Every second since then has felt like another mistake stacked on top of the last one.
He looked terrified, and I let him run anyway.
I should’ve known something was wrong the moment he started shaking while playing.
Fuck the sequence. Fuck whatever Mom heard in those notes.
None of it matters now. I keep seeing Rowan looking at me from that stage, hurt and confused and waiting for something I never gave him before turning and running.
Dad told me three times on the way down here that beating myself up wouldn’t help Rowan. I know, and I also know that if he’s hurt because I let him leave that pavilion alone, I’m never going to forgive myself for it.
A noise echoes somewhere farther down the corridor.
Everybody stills.
One of the guards ahead signals sharply toward a rusted steel door hidden between old transit pipes, half concealed behind darkness and crumbling concrete.
Blood streaks across the floor beneath it.
For one horrible second, the entire corridor tilts beneath me. Then I’m moving before anybody can stop me.
Several guards appear farther down the corridor, blocking the way toward the final steel door at the end.
They don’t notice us at first, too busy arguing beside old transit pipes while cigarette smoke curls through the dim underground light.
“Go.” Dad shoves my shoulder forward. “We’ll cover you.”
I barely hear the rest before the corridor explodes into gunfire. Shouts tear through the tunnels while Lucan and Rafe move beside the guards and Cassian’s men open fire from the opposite side.
One of the men reaches for his weapon, but I shoot him before he can fully turn around.
I don’t stop moving. Somewhere behind me, Dad is shouting orders while Marius covers the corridor and somebody crashes hard into the wall beside the pipes, but all I can focus on is the steel door at the end of the hallway.
Rowan. Every instinct inside me knows he’s behind that fucking door.
A guard lunges toward me from the side corridor and I slam him backward hard enough that his head cracks against the concrete before grabbing the weapon from his hand without even slowing down.
“Ciaran!” Dad shouts.
I ignore him.
The lock shatters beneath the first shot. Then I’m shoving the door open so hard the rusted metal slams against the wall.
The smell hits me, blood and cold metal and fear thick enough to coat the back of my throat.
My entire body locks in place.
The figure slumped beside the chair at the center of the room doesn’t even look like Rowan anymore. A Noctis lies discarded nearby beneath the weak overhead light, one broken string hanging loose, dark blood smeared across the wood and strings.
Rowan is crumpled on the floor beside the chair, rope still hanging from one wrist. Bruises stain the pale skin of his throat, so dark they almost look black beneath the dim light.
His mouth is bloodied, one side of his face swollen badly enough that I can barely recognize him at first, and his hands—
Fuck. His hands. Blood streaks across his fingers and knuckles, swollen and trembling faintly even now like his body still remembers the strain of playing long after he physically stopped.
The broken sound that leaves his throat when his body shifts hits harder than the blood.
All I can see is him sitting beside me in the tower with those same careful hands resting across the Noctis while he explained finger placement I wasn’t really listening to because I was too busy watching him.
Now those hands are covered in blood.
And for a breath, I think I’m already too late.
The gun slips from my hand before I even realize my fingers stopped holding it. Then I’m on my knees in front of him so fast the impact cracks painfully through them against the stone floor.
“Rowan.” My voice breaks so badly I barely recognize it myself. “Fuck. Mouse—”
My hands shake when I touch his face, terrified of hurting him even more. His head lolls sideways against my palm without reacting at all, his skin freezing beneath my fingers.
His skin is too fucking cold, and panic tears through me until I stop hearing the gunfire outside altogether as I press shaking fingers desperately against the side of his throat, searching for a pulse.
I can’t find anything.
No. Not him.
Then something finally flutters weakly beneath my fingertips, uneven and fragile, but there.
Relief slams through me so fast it almost hurts.
I force myself to examine the rest of him for injuries.
A sharp, “Fuck,” escapes me when I pull up his shirt to reveal dark bruising across his midsection.
Broken ribs, surely. Rage pulses white-hot against the inside of my skull, but I exhale hard through my nose and tell myself to keep it together.
I pull Rowan carefully against my chest, one hand cradling the back of his head. His body sags against mine like he doesn’t even have enough strength left to hold himself upright anymore.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper against his hair, voice shaking. “Stay with me, mouse. Please.”