She dared to look up at him, her elbow brushing his forearm. “I missed you.”
His mouth tightened. “We weren’t apart that long.”
Right. To an immortal, several weeks were nothing. “So? Am I not allowed to miss you?”
“I once told you that the people you care about are weapons to be used against you. Missing me was a foolish distraction.”
“You’re a real charmer, you know that?” She hadn’t expected tears or emotion, but it would have been nice to know he’d missed her at least a fraction as badly as she had. She swallowed, her spine locking, and pushed Sam’s clothes into his arms. “You can get dressed in here.”
She left him in the closet, and went right to the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and neck.
She returned to her bedroom to find him frowning.
Well, the pants fit—barely. They were too short, and did wonders for showing off his backside, but— “The shirt is too small,” he said. “I didn’t want to rip it.”
He handed it to her, and she looked a bit helplessly at the shirt, then at his bare torso. “I’ll go out first thing.” She sighed sharply through her nose. “Well, if you don’t mind meeting Aedion shirtless, I suppose we should go say hello.”
“We need to talk.”
“Good talk or bad talk?”
“The kind that will make me glad you don’t have access to your power so you don’t spew flames everywhere.”
Her stomach tightened, but she said, “That was one incident, and if you ask me, your absolutely wonderful former lover deserved it.”
More than deserved it. The encounter with the visiting group of highborn Fae at Mistward had been miserable, to say the least. And when Rowan’s former lover had refused to stop touching him, despite his request to do so, when she’d threatened to have Aelin whipped for stepping in … Well, Aelin’s new favorite nickname—fire-breathing bitch-queen—had been fairly accurate during that dinner.
A twitch of his lips, but shadows flickered in Rowan’s eyes.
Aelin sighed again and looked at the ceiling. “Now or later?”
“Later. It can wait a bit.”
She was half tempted to demand he tell her whatever it was, but she turned toward the door.
Aedion rose from his seat at the kitchen table as Aelin and Rowan entered. Her cousin looked Rowan over with an appreciative eye and said, “You never bothered to tell me how handsome your faerie prince is, Aelin.” Aelin scowled. Aedion just jerked his chin at Rowan. “Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to train on the roof. I want to know everything you know.”
Aelin clicked her tongue. “All I’ve heard from your mouth these past few days is Prince Rowan this and Prince Rowan that, and yet this is what you decide to say to him? No bowing and scraping?”
Aedion slid back into his chair. “If Prince Rowan wants formalities, I can grovel, but he doesn’t look like someone who particularly cares.”
With a flicker of amusement in his green eyes, the Fae Prince said, “Whatever my queen wants.”
Oh, please.
Aedion caught the words, too. My queen.
The two princes stared at each other, one gold and one silver, one her twin and one her soul-bonded. There was nothing friendly in the stares, nothing human—two Fae males locked in some unspoken dominance battle.
She leaned against the sink. “If you’re going to have a pissing contest, can you at least do it on the roof?”
Rowan looked at her, brows high. But it was Aedion who said, “She says we’re no better than dogs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually believes we’d piss on her furniture.”
Rowan didn’t smile, though, as he tilted his head to the side and sniffed.
“Aedion needs a bath, too, I know,” she said. “He insisted on smoking a pipe at the taproom. He said it gave him an air of dignity.”
Rowan’s head was still angled as he asked, “Your mothers were cousins, Prince, but who sired you?”
Aedion lounged in his chair. “Does it matter?”
“Do you know?” Rowan pressed.
Aedion shrugged. “She never told me—or anyone.”
“I’m guessing you have some idea?” Aelin asked.
Rowan said, “He doesn’t look familiar to you?”
“He looks like me.”
“Yes, but—” He sighed. “You met his father. A few weeks ago. Gavriel.”
Aedion stared at the shirtless warrior, wondering if he’d strained his injuries too much tonight and was now hallucinating.
The prince’s words sank in. Aedion just kept staring. A wicked tattoo in the Old Language stretched down the side of Rowan’s face and along his neck, shoulder, and muscled arm. Most people would take one look at that tattoo and run in the other direction.
Aedion had seen plenty of warriors in his day, but this male was a Warrior—law unto himself.
Just like Gavriel. Or so the legends claimed.
Gavriel, Rowan’s friend, one of his cadre, whose other form was a mountain lion.
“He asked me,” Aelin murmured. “He asked me how old I was, and seemed relieved when I said nineteen.”
Nineteen was too young, apparently, to be Gavriel’s daughter, though she looked so similar to the woman he’d once bedded. Aedion didn’t remember his mother well; his last memories were of a gaunt, gray face as she sighed her final breath. As she refused the Fae healers who could have cured the wasting sickness in her. But he had heard she’d once looked almost identical to Aelin and her mother, Evalin.
Aedion’s voice was hoarse as he asked, “The Lion is my father?”
A nod from Rowan.
“Does he know?”
“I bet seeing Aelin was the first time he wondered if he’d sired a child with your mother. He probably still doesn’t have any idea, unless that prompted him to start looking.”
His mother had never told anyone—anyone but Evalin—who his father was. Even when she was dying, she’d kept it to herself. She’d refused those Fae healers because of it.
Because they might identify him—and if Gavriel knew he had a son … If Maeve knew …
An old ache ripped through him. She’d kept him safe—had died to keep him out of Maeve’s hands.
Warm fingers slid around his hand and squeezed. He hadn’t realized how cold he was.
Aelin’s eyes—their eyes, the eyes of their mothers—were soft. Open. “This changes nothing,” she said. “About who you are, what you mean to me. Nothing.”
But it did. It changed everything. Explained everything: the strength, the speed, the senses; the lethal, predatory instincts he’d always struggled to keep in check. Why Rhoe had been so hard on him during his training.
Because if Evalin knew who his father was, then Rhoe certainly did, too. And Fae males, even half-Fae males, were deadly. Without the control Rhoe and his lords had drilled into him from an early age, without the focus … They’d known. And kept it from him.
Along with the fact that after he swore the blood oath to Aelin one day … he might very well remain young while she grew old and died.
Aelin brushed her thumb against the back of his hand, and then pivoted toward Rowan. “What does this mean where Maeve is concerned? Gavriel is bound through the blood oath, so would she have a claim on his offspring?”
“Like hell she does,” Aedion said. If Maeve tried to claim him, he’d rip out her throat. His mother had died for fear of the Fae Queen. He knew it in his bones.
Rowan said, “I don’t know. Even if she thought so, it would be an act of war to steal Aedion from you.”
“This information doesn’t leave this room,” Aelin said. Calm. Calculating—already sorting through every plan. The other side of their fair coin. “It’s ultimately your choice, Aedion, whether to approach Gavriel. But we have enough enemies gathering around us as it is. I don’t need to start a war with Maeve.”
But she would. She would go to war for him. He saw it in her eyes.
It nearly knocked the breath from him. Along with the thought of what the carnage would be like on both sides, if the Dark Queen and the heir of Mala Fire-Bringer collided.
“It stays with us,” Aedion managed to say. He could feel Rowan assessing and weighing him and bit back a snarl. Slowly, Aedion lifted his gaze to meet the prince’s.
The sheer dominance in that stare was like being hit in the face with a stone.
Aedion held it. Like hell he’d back down; like hell he’d yield. And there would be a yielding—somewhere, at some point. Probably when Aedion took that blood oath.
Aelin clicked her tongue at Rowan. “Stop doing that alpha-male nonsense. Once was enough.”
Rowan didn’t so much as blink. “I’m not doing anything.” But the prince’s mouth quirked into a smile, as if saying to Aedion, You think you can take me, cub?
Aedion grinned. Any place, any time, Prince.
Aelin muttered, “Insufferable,” and gave Rowan a playful shove in the arm. He didn’t move an inch. “Are you actually going to get into a pissing contest with every person we meet? Because if that’s the case, then it’ll take us an hour just to make it down one block of this city, and I doubt the residents will be particularly happy.”
Aedion fought the urge to take a deep breath as Rowan broke his stare to give their queen an incredulous look.
She crossed her arms, waiting.
“It’ll take time to adjust to a new dynamic,” Rowan admitted. Not an apology, but from what Aelin had told him, Rowan didn’t often bother with such things. She looked downright shocked by the small concession, actually.
Aedion tried to lounge in his chair, but his muscles were taut, his blood thrumming in his veins. He found himself saying to the prince, “Aelin never said anything about sending for you.”
“Does she answer to you, General?” A dangerous, quiet question. Aedion knew that when males like Rowan spoke softly, it usually meant violence and death were on their way.
Aelin rolled her eyes. “You know he didn’t mean it that way, so don’t pick a fight, you prick.”
Aedion stiffened. He could fight his own battles. If Aelin thought he needed protecting, if she thought Rowan was the superior warrior—
Rowan said, “I’m blood-sworn to you—which means several things, one of which being that I don’t particularly care for the questioning of others, even your cousin.”
The words echoed in his head, his heart.
Blood-sworn.
Aelin went pale.
Aedion asked, “What did he just say?”
Rowan had taken the blood oath to Aelin. His blood oath.
Aelin squared her shoulders, and said clearly, steadily, “Rowan took the blood oath to me before I left Wendlyn.”
A roaring sound went through him. “You let him do what?”
Aelin exposed her scarred palms. “As far as I knew, Aedion, you were loyally serving the king. As far as I knew, I was never going to see you again.”
“You let him take the blood oath to you?” Aedion bellowed.
She had lied to his face that day on the roof.
He had to get out, out of his skin, out of this apartment, out of this gods-damned city. Aedion lunged for one of the porcelain figurines atop the hearth mantel, needing to shatter something to just get that roaring out of his system.
She flung out a vicious finger, advancing on him. “You break one thing, you shatter just one of my possessions, and I will shove the shards down your rutting throat.”
A command—from a queen to her general.
Aedion spat on the floor, but obeyed. If only because ignoring that command might very well shatter something far more precious.
He instead said, “How dare you? How dare you let him take it?”
“I dare because it is my blood to give away; I dare because you did not exist for me then. Even if neither of you had taken it yet, I would still give it to him because he is my carranam, and he has earned my unquestioning loyalty!”
Aedion went rigid. “And what about our unquestioning loyalty? What have you done to earn that? What have you done to save our people since you’ve returned? Were you ever going to tell me about the blood oath, or was that just another of your many lies?”
Aelin snarled with an animalistic intensity that reminded him she, too, had Fae blood in her veins. “Go have your temper tantrum somewhere else. Don’t come back until you can act like a human being. Or half of one, at least.”
Aedion swore at her, a filthy, foul curse that he immediately regretted. Rowan lunged for him, knocking back his chair hard enough to flip it over, but Aelin threw out a hand. The prince stood down.
That easily, she leashed the mighty, immortal warrior.
Aedion laughed, the sound brittle and cold, and smiled at Rowan in a way that usually made men throw the first punch.
But Rowan just set his chair upright, sat down, and leaned back, as if he already knew where he’d strike Aedion’s death blow.
Aelin pointed at the door. “Get the hell out. I don’t want to see you again for a good while.”
The feeling was mutual.
All his plans, everything he’d worked for … Without the blood oath he was just a general; just a landless prince of the Ashryver line.
Aedion stalked to the front door and flung it open so hard he almost ripped it off its hinges.
Aelin didn’t call after him.
CHAPTER
29
Rowan Whitethorn debated for a good minute if it was worthwhile to hunt down the demi-Fae prince and tear him into bloody ribbons for what he’d called Aelin, or if he was better off here, with his queen, while she paced in front of her bedroom fireplace. He understood—he really did—why the general was enraged. He’d have felt the same. But it wasn’t a good-enough excuse. Not even close.
Perched on the edge of the plush mattress, he watched her move.
Even without her magic, Aelin was a living wildfire, more so now with the red hair—a creature of such roaring emotions that he could sometimes only watch her and marvel.
And her face.
That gods-damned face.
While they’d been in Wendlyn, it had taken him a while to realize she was beautiful. Months, actually, to really notice it. And for these past few weeks, against his better judgment, he’d thought often about that face—especially that smart-ass mouth.
But he hadn’t remembered just how stunning she was until she’d taken off her hood earlier, and it had struck him stupid.
These weeks apart had been a brutal reminder of what life had been like until he had found her drunk and broken on that rooftop in Varese. The nightmares had started the very night she’d left—such relentless dreams that he’d nearly vomited when he flung himself out of them, Lyria’s screaming ringing in his ears. The memory of it sent cold licking down his spine. But even that was burned away by the queen before him.
Aelin was well on her way to wearing a track in the rug before the fireplace.
“If that’s any indication of what to expect from our court,” Rowan said at last, flexing his fingers in an attempt to dislodge the hollow shakiness he hadn’t been able to master since his magic had been smothered, “then we’ll never have a dull moment.”
She flung out a hand in a dismissive wave of irritation. “Don’t tease me right now.” She scrubbed at her face and huffed a breath.
Rowan waited, knowing she was gathering the words, hating the pain and sorrow and guilt on every line of her body. He’d sell his soul to the dark god to never have her look like that again.
“Every time I turn around,” she said, approaching the bed and leaning against the carved post, “I feel like I’m one wrong move or word away from leading them to ruin. People’s lives—your life—depend on me. There’s no room for error.”
There it was, the weight that had been slowly crushing her. It killed him that he’d have to add to it when he told her the news he carried—the reason he’d disobeyed her first order to him.
>
He could offer her nothing but the truth. “You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won’t be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don’t need to tell you that you can do this—you know you can. I wouldn’t have sworn the oath to you if I didn’t think you could.”
She slid onto the bed beside him, her scent caressing him. Jasmine, and lemon verbena, and crackling embers. Elegant, feminine, and utterly wild. Warm, and steadfast—unbreakable, his queen.
Save for the weakness they both shared: that bond between them.
For in his nightmares, he sometimes heard Maeve’s voice over the crack of a whip, cunning and cold. Not for all the world, Aelin? But what about for Prince Rowan?
He tried not to think about it: the fact that Aelin would hand over one of the Wyrdkeys for him. He locked that knowledge up so tightly that it could escape only in his dreams, or when he woke reaching across a cold bed for a princess who was thousands of miles away.
Aelin shook her head. “It was so much easier being alone.”
“I know,” he said, clamping down on the instinct to sling his arm around her shoulders and tuck her in close. He focused on listening to the city around them instead.
He could hear more than mortal ears, but the wind no longer sang its secrets to him. He no longer felt it tugging at him. And stuck in his Fae body, unable to shift … Caged. Restless. Made worse by the fact that he couldn’t shield this apartment from any enemy attacks while they were here.
Not powerless, he reminded himself. He had been bound head to toe in iron before and had still killed. He could keep this apartment secure—the old-fashioned way. He was just … off-balance. At a time when being off-balance could be fatal to her.
For a while, they sat there in silence.
“I said some appalling things to him,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, unable to help the growl. “He said some equally appalling things to you. Your tempers are evenly matched.”
She let out a breathy chuckle. “Tell me about the fortress—what it was like when you went back to help rebuild.”