31. Chapter Thirty One Arryn
Chapter Thirty One: Arryn
I reached for Rhowyn in my sleep only to find emptiness in the spot she had occupied before I remembered that she had left earlier. Lifting my head, I could see the faint hints of dawn and knew she had been gone for hours. Searching the bond and worried about her mindset, I felt only confidence and assuredness and maybe a hint of frustration.
Looking at the others, I decided it was best to let them keep resting. Callum and Baer had been waking early to train the soldiers or rather the farmhands that were playing at being soldiers in our rebellion. They were exhausted from the long hours of physical discipline needed to prepare these men for the war we were just now entering. Brannoc was dead to the world, his magic fully depleted. I gazed down at them all fondly.
I had grown up without siblings, the only child to bless my parents’ marriage in all their years. It had been lonely until Brannoc came along. My mother had taken him under her wing, mothering him in the way he needed, though he resisted those efforts at every turn. I think a part of him feared getting too close for fear of losing another parental figure. Looking back, I can’t say I blamed him. My own mother had passed from depression shortly after my father had been executed by Titania, unable to find the will to go on without him. I had been angry with her for a while, but now, I understood. Now that I knew the depths of what love was like, I could finally sympathize with how she had felt, knowing I would feel the same if something ever happened to Rhowyn.
Somewhere along the way, my role had shifted from leader to older brother, these men becoming the siblings I had always hoped for. They were my new family, our ties closer than blood. Now, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t seek pleasure in their bodies from time to time. Each of them were good-looking men with hearts of gold, but that would come when we had more time to explore. For now, I was happy with what I had.
I dressed silently, years of practice in the barracks ensuring I could do so quickly and without a sound. After leaving our shared bed, I searched the bond, following the pull until I found Rhowyn in the War Room. I paused in the doorway and took in the breathtaking sight of her.
Before she’d broken the glamor, she’d been gorgeous, but now, she was stunning. Her skin glowed with her magic; no shell would be able to contain that power again. Her hair was tucked behind her now-pointed ear; the still-dyed green color complimented her tanned and supple skin. Lennox shifted and drew my notice to where he was sitting in a chair, silently watching her as her brow furrowed in focus. So homed in on her task and train of thought that she hadn’t heard my arrival. For a large man, I moved noiselessly when I wanted, but I hadn’t been doing anything to muffle the sounds of my entry. I looked at Lennox questioningly, wondering how long she had been here studying the map. He just shrugged as if to say he didn’t know what she was hoping to find.
Knowing she must be hungry and could use a distraction, I walked around until I was standing behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist to pull her against me. I nuzzled her neck as she melted into my touch. Always so responsive to me. Fighting the urge to bend her over the table and take her while Lennox watched, I whispered, “Have you been here all night?”
She hummed when I kissed her neck in the spot where her jaw met the long line of her nape. “Not all night,” she admitted, her hands rubbing against mine that were still wrapped around her.
“Only for the last three hours,” Lennox said, joining us at the table, leaning his back against the map and crossing his legs.
She snapped her gaze to his. “Has it been that long?”
He leaned in and kissed her briefly. “Yes, Princess.”
“Damn,” she said as I relaxed my hold, her hands moving to run through her hair that had been left to fall loosely around her shoulders.
“What are you looking for? Anything you’re hoping to find?” I asked, coming to stand next to her. Sometimes, talking out our thoughts could help us pinpoint just what we were looking for. At least, it did for me. Brannoc could testify to that and my need to use him as a sounding board.
She leaned back over the table, both hands bracing her weight on the ledge as she peered back down at the map. “I’m not sure. I feel like I’m missing something. There’s something here that we’re not seeing.” She sighed in frustration. “These areas here,” she pointed to where the land was dying in random patches throughout the kingdom, “I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a reason why these areas are being affected.”
We all studied the table, our minds drifting as we tried to come up with a reasonable answer. Though, the problem was that sometimes, when it came to magic, reason and logic simply didn’t apply. Lennox stiffened on the other side of Rhowyn, his eyes widening. “What are the names of these villages?”
My brow furrowed in confusion, wondering why that would matter, but doing as he asked, I listed them. “This is Aediobri, and this over here is Bonisana. These are Iria and Ocelum.”
His eyes lifted to mine in shock, his body taut as a bowstring as he met mine and Rhowyn’s gazes. “In each of those places, there are ruins. Ancient ruins, mostly overgrown, but still they haven’t been touched.”
“What do you mean? How do you know this?” I asked him, looking back down as if all the answers were there.
“I think I remember visiting these places with Titania as a child. I mean, my memory is kind of hazy, but I remember being scared of these ruins. I’d wait outside while she and my fathers would go inside,” he explained, his mind racing to make connections.
Turning to Rhowyn, I asked her, “Can you wake Brannoc? Have him bring the others too. I need to confirm what Lennox is saying.”
She nodded and closed her eyes to talk to him mentally. A part of me wished I had that connection with her like Brannoc and Baer, but I was more than happy with what we had. I’d rather have what I had than nothing at all. “You’re sure?” I asked Lennox again as I leaned over the table again.
He blew out a breath, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I think so.”
I laughed. “You don’t sound too confident.”
“I mean, like I said, it’s a little hazy, but I remember going here to Iria. It stuck with me because a shop owner came out and offered me a piece of Beltane Cake. It was one of the best days of my life at that point,” he admitted, and my heart broke a little at the knowledge that he’d never really had a normal childhood. Neither had Rhowyn.
“Okay. Why don’t you go get Jude and Jonathan. See if maybe they know more about this. Tell them to come immediately.” Lennox nodded and ran off to fetch Rhowyn’s family.
She turned to me. “Could this be the answer?” she asked, her eyes wide with the hope that we were finally on to something.
Not wanting to see her spirits crushed if we were wrong, I told her, “Let’s just wait until we hear from Brannoc and your grandfather. No sense getting ahead of ourselves in case we’re wrong.”
“You’re right.” She nodded, but I could see that logic hadn’t tempered that hope in the way I had wanted. Her anxiety ratcheted up slowly as we waited for the others to return. She stared at the table, her eyes almost vacant as her mind raced.
Finally, Brannoc entered, trailed by Callum and Baer. Rhowyn didn’t waste a moment. As soon as his eyes found hers, she was asking, “When you went to do reconnaissance did you find old ruins?”
His eyes narrowed as he stepped closer, alert now that it appeared we were on the verge of figuring out what Titania was after. He glanced at me briefly, his gaze asking so many questions, but I just dipped my head. Coming around the table to stand next to Rhowyn, he pointed to where I had sent him. “When I was here, it was mostly a ghost town. Everyone had already fled the rot and decay, but when I was exploring, I did find an area of thick foliage and growth that seemed extremely out of place. Everything around it was dead, but this was still vibrant. Do you think it was hiding something?”
“I don’t know,” I answered as Lennox brought in Jude and Jonathan. They nodded at me. Jonathan was stoic and blank, but Jude gave us all a smile in greeting. “Lennox, now that we’re all here, tell them what your suspicions are.”
“Rhowyn was studying the map; I haven’t spent much time in here. Tactics have never really been my best topic of interest, so I hadn’t looked at these areas very closely, but this morning, I finally did. I remembered that as a child, Titania had taken me to several of these villages. Her sole intent was to visit ruins, though she hid it under the guise of other reasons. It wasn’t until I saw the names that I remembered these trips, although the memories are hazy at best,” he explained to everyone.
Picking up where he left off, I continued, “Brannoc says that when he visited these sights,” I paused to point them out on the map as we circled around it, “he didn’t see any ruins.”
Brannoc stepped in. “What I did find was even more curious. I didn’t see ruins, but despite the towns having been abandoned with everything dead around it, there was always one location that was vibrant and alive with overgrown foliage. Initially, I had thought it was simply a concentration of magic that had kept those areas from succumbing to the drain, but now I’m starting to think they might have been the sights of these ruins.”
“I see,” Jude said, his brows furrowed as he took in the markers I had placed on the table to indicate the spread of the decay. “And you say that in all of these locations, there were ruins or concentrations of magic?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t had the chance to ask the other scouts yet to confirm, but I was wondering if you knew anything about these ruins?” All of us gazed at Jude with hope. For so long, we had been questioning what Titania was ultimately after, and I prayed we finally had the answers.
During our last confrontation at the Castle, she had alluded to her desire to become a goddess in her own right with power to rival that of Avalonia. But where had those ideas come from? What had made her think that this was indeed possible?
If we could understand what her end game was, then we could get ahead of her. We could cut her off and thwart her efforts. This could be just the chance we needed to shut her down for good. It almost seemed too good to be true, but when I thought about it, Rhowyn had said she had a pull to study the map. She said that something was telling her that there was more to those areas than we were seeing, important clues that we were missing. My gut told me that it was Avalonia pushing her. She’d always been sensitive to Avalonia’s pull, even back when she’d chosen the rope in the first trial against all our better judgment. Now, I knew that this was exactly what we needed.
Instead of Jude speaking, Jonathan cleared his throat. “During my efforts in the last rebellion, I had done a lot of studying. I read history and magic books, trying to understand what was occurring. I even went so far as to steal the books that I wasn’t supposed to have access to. At the time, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t have the knowledge that you have now. However, I do remember that in one of the stolen books, I read something about a race that came before us. One that was difficult to eradicate but was necessary to banish from our realm because of their deviance and perversion of magic. Their race was not able to cohabitate with ours, and Avalonia helped us fight them off when they tried to enslave us. These ruins could have been left over from their time, but if so, they are millennia old.”
I looked to Jude as he gave us his opinion. “It’s possible that these are their ruins, but it’s hard to say. Do you still have the book, Jonathan?”
He nodded. “I do, but I entrusted it with someone that I knew would keep it safe in hopes that I would be freed.”
“Who has it?” Rhowyn asked, her body nearly vibrating with the hope that coursed down our bond. We were on the right course, now we just needed to gather more information.
“Juniper Dara,” he said. All of us jolted at that information. We’d known she was involved but had no idea just how much she’d been an integral part of the rebellion. Now, we just had to find her.